slept at the mail-house. Met several travellers who knew my friends in the interior, and found them talkative and agreeable on subjects interesting to me, after I had told them who I was, what I was, whither going, and for what purpose.
12th.—At four this morning we left the city by the mail, four in hand, and drove on to a team-boat, worked by eight horses, by which we were ferried over the Ashley river, large and broad as the Thames. We soon entered what seemed to be an interminable forest, and rode 28 miles to breakfast, in company with his Excellency J. Geddiss, Esq.,[11] {51} Governor of South Carolina, an Irish gentleman of much style, but apparently of easy, kind, sociable and polite manners. We met accidentally; and he presided at table, frequently helping and inviting me to beefsteak, chicken, cakes, coffee and tea, for which we paid three quarters of a dollar. We passed a large deep black-looking pond, on the banks of which are sometimes seen as many as ten huge alligators, ten feet along. A puppy carried thither and made to cry, calls them instantly up from the bottom of the pond, when they seize and eat it, as they would the carriers, if they remained. I saw no plantation on which I should like to live; but the best are not viewed from the road. Many, however, I observed cleared, cultivated, worn out, and abandoned, with their houses burnt down, or otherwise in ruins. Passed, during the day, General Young Blood and other gentlemen-travellers, who all invariably bowed politely to me and to my fellow-travellers. On inquiring the cause of this
