LETTEES FEOM ALABAMA. 
151 
LETTER VII. 
July 3d. 
You ask me whether the farms here are similar 
to such as you are familiar with. There are some 
peculiarities about them, and as all are laid out 
pretty nearly upon the same plan, a description of 
one will serve, with a little variation, for all. Of 
course the houses differ in their degrees of comfort 
and elegance, according to the taste or finances of 
their proprietors, but in general they are built 
double ; a set of rooms on each side of a wide pas- 
sage, which is floored and ceiled in common with 
the rest of the house, but is entirely open at each 
end, being unfurnished with either gate or door, 
and forming a thoroughfare for the family through 
the house. Various kinds of climbing plants and 
flowers are trained to cluster about either end of 
these passages, and by their wild and luxuriant 
beauty take away the sordidness which the rude 
eharacter of the dwellings might otherwise present. 
The Glycine frutescens with its many stems twisted 
tightly together like a ship’s cable, hangs its beau- 
tiful bunches of lilac blossoms profusely about, like 
clusters of grapes ; the elegant and graceful Scarlet 
Cypress-vine * [Ipomoea coccineai) with hastate 
leaves, and long drooping vermilion flowers, shaped 
like those of a convolvulus ; the still more elegant 
* See engraving on page 206. 
