lxii 
LIFE OF 
house of a planter, who informed me that every year, in August 
and September, almost all his family were laid up with the bilious 
fever ; that at one time forty of his people were sick, and that of 
thirteen children, only three were living. Two of these, with their 
mother, appeared likely not to be long tenants of this world. 
Thirty miles farther I came to a place on the river Nottoway, 
called Jerusalem. Here I found the river swelled to such an 
extraordinary height, that the oldest inhabitant had never seen the 
like. 
“ After passing along the bridge, I was conveyed in a boat, 
termed a flat , a mile and three quarters through the wood, where 
the torrent, sweeping along in many places, rendered this sort of 
navigation rather disagreeable. I proceeded on my journey, passing 
through solitary pine woods, perpetually interrupted by swamps, 
that covered the road with water two and three feet deep, 
frequently half a mile at a time, looking like a long river or pond. 
These, in the afternoon, were surmountable ; but the weather being 
exceedingly severe, they were covered every morning with a sheet 
of ice, from half an inch to an inch thick, that cut my horse’s legs 
and breast. After passing a bridge, I had many times to wade, 
and twice to swim my horse, to get to the shore. I attempted to 
cross the Roanoke at three different ferries, thirty-five miles apart, 
and at last succeeded at a place about fifteen miles below Halifax. 
A violent snow storm made the roads still more execrable. 
“ The productions of these parts of North Carolina are hogs, 
turpentine, tar, and apple brandy. A tumbler of toddy is usually 
the morning’s beverage of the inhabitants, as soon as they get out 
of bed. So universal is the practice, that the first thing you find 
them engaged in, after rising, is preparing the brandy toddy. You 
can scarcely meet a man whose lips are not parched and chopped, 
or blistered, with drinking this poison. Those who do not drink it, 
they say, are sure of the ague ; I, however, escaped. The pine 
woods have a singular appearance, every tree being stripped, on one 
or more sides, of the bark, for six or seven feet up. The turpentine 
covers these parts in thick masses. I saw the people, in different 
parts of the woods, mounted on benches, chopping down the sides 
of the trees, leaving a trough or box for the turpentine to run into. 
Of hogs they have immense multitudes ; one person will sometimes 
