LIFE OF WILSON. 
XCIX 
the turpentine to run into. Of hogs they have immense multitudes; 
one person will sometimes own five hundred. The leaders have 
bells round their necks ; and every drove knows its particular call, 
whether it be a conch-shell, or the bawling of a negro, though half 
a mile oflF. Their owners will sometimes drive them for four or 
five days to a market, without once feeding them. 
The taverns are the most desolate and beggarly imaginable ; 
bare, bleak and dirty walls ; — one or two old broken chairs, and a 
bench, form all the furniture. The white females seldom make 
their appearance ; and every thing must be transacted through the 
medium of negroes. At supper, you sit down to a meal, the very 
sight of which is sufficient to deaden the most eager appetite ; and 
you are surrounded by half a dozen dirty, half-naked blacks, male 
and female, whom any man of common scent might smell a quar- 
ter of a mile off. The house itself is raised upon props, four or 
five feet ; and the space below is left open for the hogs, with whose 
charming vocal performance the wearied traveller is serenaded the 
Avhole night long, till he is forced to curse the hogs, the house, and 
every thing about it. 
“ I crossed the river Taw at Washington, for Newbern, which 
stands upon a sandy plain, between the rivers Trent and Neuse, 
both of which abound with alligators. Here I found the shad fish- 
ery begun, on the 5th instant ; and wished to have some of you with 
me to assist in dissecting some of the finest shad I ever saw. 
Thence to Wilmington was my next stage, one hundred miles, with 
only one house for the accommodation of travellers on the road ; 
two landlords having been broken up with the fever. 
The general features of North Carolina, where I crossed it, 
are immense, solitary, pine savannas, through which the road winds 
among stagnant ponds, swarming with alligators ; dark, sluggish 
creeks, of the colour of brandy, over which are thrown high wooden 
bridges, without railings, and so crazy and rotten as not only to 
alarm one’s horse, but also the rider, and to make it a matter of 
