CHAP. XIX.] GORDONIA FUBESCENS. 261 



(or Franklinia of Bartram), a plant allied to the camellia. One 

 of these I saw every where in the swamps near the Altamaha, 

 where it is called the loblolly bay (Gordonia lasianthus), forty 

 feet high, and even higher, with dark green leaves, and covered, 

 T am told, in the flowering season, with a profusion of milk- 

 white, fragrant blossoms. This plant has a wide range in the 

 southern states, whereas the other, G. pitbcscens, often seen in 

 greenhouses in England, about thirty feet high, is confined, as I 

 am informed by Mr. Couper, to a very limited area, twenty 

 miles in its greatest length, the same region where Bartram first 

 discovered it, seventy years ago, near Barrington Ferry, on the 

 Altamaha.^ In no other spot in the whole continent of Amer 

 ica has it ever been detected. If we were told that one of these 

 two evergreens was destined in the next 2000 or 3000 years to 

 become extinct, how could we conjecture Avhich of them would 

 endure the longest ? We ought to know first whether the area 

 occupied by the one has been diminishing, and that of the other 

 increasing, and then which of the two plants has been on the 

 advance. But even then we should require to foresee a count 

 less number of other circumstances in the animate and inanimate 

 world affecting the two species, before we could make a probable 

 guess as to their comparative durability. A single frost more 

 severe than that before alluded to, which cut off the orange-trees 

 in Florida after they had lasted a century and a half, might 

 baffle all our calculations ; or the increase of some foe, a minute 

 parasitic insect perhaps, might entirely alter the conditions on 

 which the existence of these or any other trees, shrubs, or quad 

 rupeds depend. 



During a fortnight s stay at Hopeton, we had an opportunity 

 of seeing how the planters live in the south, and the condition 

 and prospects of the negroes on a well-managed estate. The 

 relation of the slaves to their owners resembles nothing in the 

 northern states. There is an hereditary regard and often attach 

 ment on both sides, more like that formerly existing between 

 lords and their retainers in the old feudal times of Europe, than 

 to any thing now to be found in America. The slaves identify 

 * Bartram, pp. 159, 465, 



