dispatch from Savannah, about the “mules, negroes, and horses” he had brought out with him in his march to the sea. * * * * * Early in the morning the Wayanda landed us at the noted “Dick Taylor plantation,” owned, before the war, by the son of President Taylor, and now occupied by negroes, under authority from the United States. The work here did not seem to be progressing so well as on the little farms of the Sea Islanders, and the sugar-planters of the party shook their heads ominously at the prospect. The negroes seemed to have no one to give unity and direction to their efforts. Their old master was gone, and each one now wanted to be master, not only to himself, but, also, to several of the rest. A couple of their head men even fell into a quarrel about the truthfulness of their respective statements to the Chief Justice, while still in his presence. The quarters were not clean; the fences had in some places been taken for fire-wood, and the general aspect of the place suggested neglect and decay.[35] Near this was another plantation, abandoned by its Rebel owners, and occupied by lessees from the United States. The absence of responsible proprietors could be everywhere read in the dilapidated buildings and the general air of neglect. Still there was a fair crop of cane and cotton, and the negroes seemed to be working tolerably well for their Northern employers. * * * * * A sharp thunder-storm preceded us a few moments in our visit to Mr. May’s plantation, and we found everything in mud. The Rebels had carried off his carriages, and there was nothing for it but to walk up the bank, and through the sticky alluvial soil, to the beautiful orange grove, in the midst of which we found the wide, rambling, many-porched, one-story house, flanked by the negro cabins and the sugar-house. The guerrillas had repeatedly ravaged the place, and whatever furniture they could not carry off, they took good care to break. Still enough had been gathered together to make half a dozen rooms quite comfortable. In the first we entered, a sofa stood in the middle of the floor, with slippers and dressing-gown lying beside it, hastily abandoned at our approach. A little stand, holding a lamp and a book about cotton culture, stood at its head, and above both was hung a voluminous musquito-bar. It was the overseer’s place of retreat when he wanted to read or write. Before we had been in the house many minutes, we began to appreciate the necessity for such fortifications. Presently the negroes led up horses, and we started for a gallop over the plantation. It was its third year of profitable culture by free labor. The stock of cane had nearly run out during the first and second years of the war, and, from necessity, cotton had been largely planted; although no one knew better than the proprietor that sugar land was unfit for successful cotton culture.