CHAPTER XVIII. 



Savannah to Darien. Anti-Slavery Meetings discussed. War with En 

 gland. Landing at Darien. Crackers. Scenery on Altamaha River. 

 Negro Boatmen singing. Marsh Blackbird in Rice Grounds. Hospi 

 tality of Southern Planters. New Clearing and Natural Rotation of 

 Trees. Birds. Shrike and Kingfisher. Excursion to St. Simon s 

 Island. Butler s Island and Negroes. Stumps of Trees in Salt Marshes 

 proving Subsidence of Land. Alligator seen. Their Nests and Habits. 

 Their Fear of Porpoises. Indian Shell Mound on St. Simon s Island. 

 Date-palm, Orange, Lemon, and Olive Trees. Hurricanes. Visit to 

 outermost Barrier Island. Sea Shells on Beach. Negro Maid-Servants. 



Dec. 31, 1845. ON the last day of the year we sailed in a 

 steamer from Savannah to Darien, in Georgia, about 125 miles 

 farther south, skirting a low coast, and having the Gulf-stream 

 about sixty miles to the eastward of us. Our fellow-passengers 

 consisted of planters, with several mercantile men from northern 

 states. The latter usually maintained a prudent reserve on 

 politics ; yet one or two warm discussions arose, in which not 

 only the chances of war with England, and the policy of the 

 party now in power, but the more exciting topic of slavery, and 

 the doings at a recent anti-slavery meeting in Exeter Hall, 

 London, were spoken of. I was told by a fellow-passenger, that 

 some of the Georgian planters who are declaiming most vehe 

 mently against Mr. Polk for so nearly drawing them into a war 

 with Great Britain, were his warmest supporters in the late 

 presidential election. &quot; They are justly punished,&quot; he said, &quot; for 

 voting against their principles. Although not belonging to the 

 democratic party, they went for Polk in order that Texas might 

 be annexed ; and now that they have carried that point, their 

 imaginations are haunted with the image of the cotton trade 

 paralyzed, an English fleet ravaging the coast and carrying away 

 their negroes, as in the last war, and, worst of all, the abolition 

 ists of the north looking on with the utmost complacency at their 

 ruin.&quot; One of the most moderate of the planters, with whom I 

 conversed apart, told me that the official avowal of the English 



