spread a table full of good things for me in the wilderness, and well garnished it with ingenuous kindness. I was immediately at home and treated as one of the family. After breakfast we rode to the house of his brother, Capt. H. Rugeley, a sprightly young planter with a young wife, two babes, and 14 negroes, all his own. Returned and dined with both, very patriarchally. Met several ladies and gentlemen of the wilderness.
Rugeley anecdotes.—Our uncle, the late Rowland Rugeley, Esq. the facetious poet, and much-loved companion of the ducal family of Montagu, married a beautiful but poor girl, and both soon {62} after died of the yellow fever, within a month of each other.
Before, in, and after the long revolutionary war, the late Colonel Rugeley lived one of the most esteemed of men. Although on the British side, he was thought to be an American at heart; and his extensive influence, as a first settler at Camden, was generously exerted in doing good, and procuring mercy for and from both parties. His good opinion and favourable representation, were life and salvation to hundreds on both sides, often under confiscation and sentence of death, the fruits of a hasty court-martial. Many Americans when taken prisoners by the British, were suffered to be at large on their parole of honour, never to fight more; but having broken their parole and being taken again in arms, they were hanged and shot instantly in great numbers. But if there were any, on either side, who happily knew Colonel Rugeley, that knowledge, and his confirmation of it, was complete redemption. He was a favourite, also, because he never suffered his soldiers to plunder, as others did. Being once in an extremity, he cut and marked some pine blocks, so as to resemble cannon on an intrenchment, and in conse-
