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while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across 

 her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of 

 rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. 

 Mary Wiggins and an old Cotton-tree are the most 

 picturesque objects that I have seen for these 

 twenty years. 



On my arrival at home, my agent made me a 

 very elegant little present of a scorpion and a 

 couple of centipedes : the first was given to him, 

 but the large centipede he had shaken out of a 

 book last night, and having immediately covered 

 her up in a phial of rum, he found this morning 

 that she had produced a young one, which was 

 lying drowned by her side. 



I find that my negroes were called away from 

 their attention to the works yesterday evening (for 

 the crop is now making with the greatest activity), 

 and kept up all night by a fire at a neighbouring 

 estate. On these occasions a fire-shell is blown, 

 and all the negroes of the adjoining plantations 

 hasten to give their assistance. On this occasion 

 the fire was extinguished with the loss of only five 

 negro houses ; but this is a heavy concern to the 

 poor negro proprietors, who have lost in it their 

 whole stock of clothes, and furniture, and finery, 

 which they had been accumulating for years, and 

 to which their attachment is excessive. 



