CHAP. XXIV.] SALE OF SLAVES. 5.9 



was no small advantage. When I got to Macon, my attention 

 was forcibly called to the newness of things, by my friend s 

 pointing out to me the ground where there had been a bloody 

 fight with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and I was told how 

 many Indians had been slaughtered there, and how the present 

 clerk of the Circuit Court was the last survivor of those who had 

 won the battle. The memory of General Jackson is quite idol 

 ized here. It was enough for him to give public notice in the 

 papers that he should have great pleasure in meeting his friends 

 at a given point on a given day, and there was sure to be a 

 muster of several hundred settlers, armed with rifles, and pre 

 pared for a desperate fight with 5000 or 7000 Indians. 



At Macon I was fortunate enough to meet with Mr. William 

 Pickett, a friend of Mr. Blount s, who, after returning from the 

 wars in Texas, had most actively aided Mr. Koch in digging up 

 the skeleton of the fossil whale, or zeuglodon, near Clarkesville. 

 As I was anxious to knoAv the true position of that remarkable 

 fossil, and to ascertain how much of it had been obtained in a 

 single locality, I gladly accepted Mr. Pickett s offer, to act as 

 guide in this excursion. On repairing to the stable for the horse 

 destined to draw our vehicle, we were met with a singular piece 

 of intelligence. The stable-boy who had groomed it in the morn 

 ing was &quot; up for sale.&quot; Without his assistance we could not 

 start, for this boy had the key of the harness-room. So I deter 

 mined to go to the auction, where I found that a sale of land and 

 negroes was going on, in consequence of the state having fore 

 closed one of those mortgages, before alluded to, on which public 

 money borrowed from European capitalists had been lent by the 

 state, for agricultural improvements. I first saw an old man 

 sold for 150 dollars ; then a boy, seventeen years old, knocked 

 down for 535 dollars, on which a bystander remarked to me, 

 &quot; They are selling well to-day.&quot; Next came on the young mar 

 in whose immediate release I was more especially interested. 

 He stepped forward, hat in hand, with an easy, natural air 

 seeming to be very indifferent to the scene around him, whilt 

 the auctioneer began to describe him as a fine griff (which mean& 

 three parts black), twenty-four years old, and having many su- 



