_19th._--I met my old shipmate, Mr. Moses Wood. I bought twilled nankeen trowsers for two dollars and a half. London clothes of good and best kinds sell at lower prices than in London. _Rattlesnakes._--A gentleman informed me that he once shot a rattlesnake as thick as his thigh, and 26 years old. Its age is known by its tail. It was near biting him. A neighbour of his left his house in search of his swine, and being long away, his wife went after him and found him dead, killed by a snake, to the bite of which the poor deceased had applied a quid of tobacco, then found sticking on the wound. Another neighbour, {405} who was also bitten, managed to walk home before he fell, but died very soon after his arrival. I was told, also, of a planter, out with his dogs and rifle after a deer, which he shot; but on bringing it to lay on the horse, a rattlesnake struck the man, who was found dead, with the buck and horse, which being tied to a tree was starved to death. Thus they were all found dead in one heap together. _20th._--By conversation with Judge King, to whom I presented J. Wright's pamphlet on slavery, I learn that my negro case was much noticed, and its exposure much and indignantly regretted. Mr. King says that it was indiscreet in me to report facts, except from the evidence of my own senses! If no testimony is to be received, but that of our own eyes, half the evidence in the world is worthless. The Carolinians love slavery, and hate all who hate it. Both Mr. King and Mr. Duncan state, that in consequence of that affair, and of my being a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land, if Gregory should prosecute me for an advertisement, which I found it necessary, in pursuing the claims on the Rugeley property, to publish against him, I should meet with but little mercy from the jury! _21st._--Called on Patrick Duncan, Esq., and took a final leave of him and his beautiful gardens, in which are oranges, figs, sugar-canes, pomegranates, and the prairie grass of South America, soft as silk in hand. {406} Received, from my warm-hearted Irish friend, Mr. Wood, 50 dollars, an unsolicited loan, although he knows me not. Here is faith, greater than almost any I have yet found in America. The slave-owners, in this state, must maintain all their helpless and infirm slaves, or kill them privately. They cannot become chargeable to the parish, or state. O humanity, where art thou!!! As a punishment for the lassitude of age, or the idleness of youth, a _nigger_ is stripped naked, well flogged, then dressed all over with treacle (or molasses) and hung up by his heels on a tree, in a swamp full of flies and mosquitoes, which lick up the sweets, and sting and bleed him dreadfully into the bargain. He is then a living lump of inflammation. What ingenious torture this! how refined! how honourable to the taste and ingenuity of a nation, the freest of the free, and who boast of superabundant polish and civilization!