CHAP. XVII.] BEAUFORT. 231 



was a novel and curious scene, especially when we approached 

 Beaufort, a picturesque town composed of an assemblage of villas, 

 the summer residences of numerous planters, who retire here 

 during the hot season, when the interior of South Carolina is un 

 healthy for the whites. Each villa is shaded by a verandah, 

 surrounded by beautiful live oaks and orange trees laden with 

 fruit, though with leaves slightly tinged by the late severe frost. 

 It is hoped that these orange trees will not suffer as they did in 

 February, 1835, for then the cold attacked them much later in 

 the season, and after the sap had risen. The Pride-of-India tree, 

 with its berries now ripe, is an exotic much in favor here. A 

 crowd of negroes, in their gay Sunday clothes, came down to 

 look at our steamboat, grinning and chattering, and looking, 

 as usual, perfectly free from care, but so ugly, that although 

 they added to the singularity and foreign aspect of the scene, 

 they detracted greatly from its charms. 



Had it not been for the dense beds of oysters between high 

 and low water mark, hundreds of which adhere to the timbers of 

 the pier at Beaufort, as barnacles do in our English ports, I might 

 have supposed the channel to be really what it is called, a river. 



An old Spanish fort, south of Beaufort, reminded me that this 

 region had once belonged to the Spaniards, who built St. Augus 

 tine, still farther to the south, the oldest city in the United 

 States, and I began to muse on the wonderful history of the 

 Anglo-Saxon race in settling these southern states. To have 

 overcome and driven out in so short a time Indians, Spaniards, 

 and French, arid yet, after all, to be doomed to share the terri 

 tory with three millions of negroes ! 



Of this latter race, we had not a few passengers on board. 

 Going into the steerage to converse with some of them, my curi 

 osity was particularly attracted to a group of three, who were 

 standing by themselves. The two younger, a girl and a lad, 

 were very frank, and willing to talk with me, but I was imme 

 diately joined by a young white man, not ill-looking, but who 

 struck me as having a very determined countenance for his age. 

 &quot; These colored people,&quot; he said, &quot; whom you have been speaking 

 to, belong to me, and they have probably told you that I have 



