LIFE OF WILSON. 
Ixv 
be insufficient to tempt me that wny, for I doubt whether my funds would be 
sufficient to carry me through. 
" The innkeepers in the southern states are like the vultures that hover 
about their cities ; and treat their guests as the others do their carrion : are as 
glad to see them, and pick them as bare. The last letter I wrote you was on 
my arrival in Charleston. I found greater difficulties to surmount there than 
I had thought of. I solicited several people for a list of names, but that abject 
and disgraceful listlessness and want of energy, which have unnerved the 
whites of all descriptions in these states, put me off from time to time, till at 
last I was obliged to walk the streets, and pick out those houses which, from 
their appearance, indicated wealth and taste in the occupants, and introduce 
myself. Neither M., Dr. R., nor any other that I applied to, gave me the 
least assistance, though they promised, and knew I was a stranger. I was 
going on in this way, when the keeper of the library, a Scotsman, a good man, 
whose name had been mentioned to me, made me out a list from the directory; 
and among these I spent ten days. The extreme servility, and superabund- 
ance of negroes, have ruined the energy and activity of the white population. 
M. appears to be fast sinking into the same insipidity of character, with a 
pretty good sprinkling of rapacity. In Cliarleston, however, I met with some 
excellent exceptions, among the first ranks of society; and the work excited 
universal admiration. Dr. D. introduced it very handsomely into the Courier. 
On hearing of General Wilkinson's arrival, I waited on him. lie received 
me with kindness — said he valued the book highly — and paid me the twelve 
dollars ; on which I took occasion to prognosticate my final success on receiving 
its first fruits from him. 
" I will not tire you by a recital of the difficulties which I met with between 
Charleston and Savannah, by bad roads, and the extraordinary flood of the 
river Savannah, where I had nearly lost my horse, he having, by his restiveness, 
thrown himself overboard ; and, had I not, at great personal risk, rescued him, 
he might have floated down to Savannah before me. 
" I arrived here on Tuesday last, and advertised in the Republican, the 
editors of which interested themselves considerably for me, speaking of my 
book in their Thursday's paper with much approbation. The expense of adver- 
tising in the southern states is great; but I found it really necessary. I have 
now seen every person in this place and neighborhood, of use to be seen. Here 
I close the list of my subscriptions, obtained at a price worth more than five 
times their amount. But, in spite of a host of difficulties, I have gained my 
point; and should the work be continued in the style it has been begun, I liave 
no doubt but we may increase the copies to four hundred. I have endeavored 
to find persons of respectability in each town, who will receive and deliver the 
volumes, without recompense, any further than allowing them to make tlie first 
selection. By this means the rapacity of some booksellers will be avoided. 
" The weather has been extremely warm these ten days, the thermometer 
stood in the shade on Friday and Saturday last, at 78° and 79°. I have seen 
no frost since the 5th of February. The few gardens here are as green and 
luxuriant as ours are in summer — i'ull of flowering shrubbery, and surrounded 
with groves of orange trees, fifteen and twenty feet high, loaded with fruit. 
Vol. I.— E 
