When Generals Gillmore and Saxton, therefore, proposed to take our party through Lady’s and St. Helena Islands, without any previous notice to the blacks; to show us the crops, the villages, the negroes at church and on their plantations, I prepared myself for any disappointment. The morning was a beautiful one; and, although the rays of the unclouded sun were intense, a fresh breeze from the ocean made the trip by no means uncomfortable. On steaming up to Beaufort we found carriages, in waiting, on the opposite side, at the upper end of Lady’s Island. Some little cabins, surrounded by unfenced fields of cotton, remarkably free from weeds, stood near the landing; and a few picaninnies watched our debarkation, while their fathers, cleanly clad and respectful, stood by the carriages. The sandy road led off among the cotton fields down the island. On either side were old wire fences, constructed by the former proprietors, sometimes running along fine avenues of trees, in the stems of which the wires are deeply imbedded, and sometimes propped up on crazy posts. Here and there could be seen frame houses, containing three or four rooms, the old residences of the overseers, or, indeed, sometimes of the planters themselves; for Southern “mansions” were generally inferior, in every particular, save high-sounding titles, to Northern “cottages.” Rude pine-log cabins, sometimes with the bark removed in a rough attempt at hewing, dotted the fields. They were, occasionally, large enough for two rooms, and were nearly always surrounded by a few growing garden vegetables, separated in no way however, from the rows of cotton that extended up to them. Sometimes, for half a mile, the road passed through a splendid avenue of live-oaks, the pendulous Spanish moss, from the limbs, sweeping across our carriage tops, while the whistle from the mocking-bird came from the upper branches. Then the avenue faded away into a thicket of dwarf live-oaks, trespassing for several yards, each side of the road, upon the cotton fields, and mingling presently with cotton-woods, bayonet plants and other like species of the palmetto, yellow pines and a clambering growth of grape-vines and honeysuckles. Through this undergrowth could still be seen the long rows of cotton stretching along on either hand out of sight.