CHAP. XX.] INDIFFERENCE TO COLD. 21 



with a large family, at sunrise, when, the frost was so hard, that 

 every pool of water in the road was incrusted with ice. In the 

 course of the winter, some ponds, they said, had borne the weight 

 of a man and horse, and there had been a coroner s inquest on 

 the body of a man, lately found dead on the road, where the 

 question had been raised whether he had been murdered or frozen 

 to death. They had placed me in a thorough draught, and, un 

 able to bear the cold any longer, I asked leave to close the win 

 dow. My hostess observed, that &quot; I might do so, if I preferred 

 sitting in the dark.&quot; On looking up, I discovered that there was 

 no glass in the windows, and that they were furnished with large 

 shutters only. For my own part, I would willingly have been 

 content with the light which the pine-wood gave us, but seeing 

 the women and girls, with bare necks and light clothing, perfectly 

 indifferent to the cold, I merely asked permission to put on my 

 great coat and hat. These Georgians seemed to me, after their 

 long summer, to be as insensible to the frost as some Englishmen 

 the first winter after their return from India, who come back 

 charged, as it were, with a superabundant store of caloric, and 

 take time, like a bar of iron out of a furnace, to part with their 

 heat. 



A farmer near Parramore s Hill, thinking I had come to settle 

 there, offered to sell me some land at the rate of two dollars an 

 acre. It was well timbered, and I found that the wood growing 

 on this sandy soil is often worth more than the ground which it 

 covers. Another resident in the same district, told me he had 

 bought his farm at two and a half dollars (or about half-a-guinea) 

 an acre, and thought it dear, and would have gone off to Texas, 

 if he were not expecting to reap a rich harvest from a thriving 

 plantation of peach trees and nectarines, just coming into full 

 bearing. A market for such fruit had recently been opened by 

 the new railway, from Macon to Savannah. He complained of 

 want of elbow-room, although I found that his nearest neighbor 

 was six or seven miles distant ; but, he observed, that having a 

 large family of children, he wished to lay out his capital in the 

 purchase of a wider extent of land in Texas, and so be the better 

 able to provide for them. 



