of the costless labour. The market price of negroes fluctuates with the price of produce.
Buffaloes, which herd together in vast numbers, are thus decoyed and taken; but not alive. A man dresses himself in one of their skins, and walks on all fours to the brink of a stupendous precipice, so concealed as to be unobserved by the hurrying animals. The decoy steps aside, and down rush and tumble the herd, and break their necks or legs in falling. The skins and tongues are then taken and the carcases left.
28th.—Took leave of Captain Rugeley, and accompanied {67} Major Rowland Rugeley to the seat and goodly plantation of his wife's venerable father, Mickle, Esq. to dine and spend the day and night; being now on my return to the city, by way of Columbia. Here I found a rich patriarchal table, and at it, Major J. Jo. Mickle and J. Elliston Pea, two only sons and favorites, young gentlemen of fine fortunes. After dinner we went a hunting but caught nothing, except one of the most venomous serpents, called a Mocoson, and the rattle of a rattle-snake. Examined a vegetable, said to be efficacious as a remedy for the bite of these deadly serpents, and received a root of it. It is cultivated in gardens, but taken originally from the forest. It resembles a fleur-de-lis, and the flag which grows in English marshes, and is called the Rattle-snake's Master-piece. When the leg or hand of a man is bitten, the limb is buried in the earth, until a milky decoction and fomentation can be made from this herb, which, if promptly applied externally and internally, is an unfailing specific. The burying the parts effected, prevents, it is said, the poison from circulating through the system to the heart. I witnessed, at a late hour this evening, a tempest remarkably awful,
