Now as to outfit. Not over $5 each in money, _silver_, for you are supplied with transportation and food by Government and there's nothing here to buy. Bed-sacks and pillow ditto. Three umbrellas with light covers, fly-paper, tin cups, bowls, and tea-pot, set of wooden boxes for rice, sugar, and other stores furnished by army rations. Spring-balance that will weigh about twenty pounds, knife, fork, and spoons for each of you, _plated_, thermometer, three pounds of tea in one of the boxes. We now have plenty of rice, sugar, molasses, vinegar, hominy, potatoes, coffee, and beans, from army stores, and on plantations can get fresh lamb, mutton, chickens, eggs, milk; so we shall fare better than I thought. _Beaufort, March 17._ I don't think they would let you take a servant; it's difficult enough to get you here alone, and there are plenty of servants here which you are supposed to teach not only to read but--what is more immediately important--to be _clean_ and industrious. If you feel any hesitation about coming in contact with them you shouldn't come, for they are sharp enough to detect apathy or lurking repugnance, which would render any amount of theoretical sympathy about worthless. Tell your father their nature and disposition is nothing new to me. I was with them in Egypt long enough to get pretty well acquainted, and though these sons of Western Africa are not exactly of the same stock as the Nubians, they are certainly no more degraded or lazy. In fact, from what I have already seen here I am agreeably disappointed. Think of their having reorganized and gone deliberately to work here some weeks ago, without a white man near them, preparing hundreds of acres for the new crop! The Irish wouldn't have done as much in the same position. This comparison of the negroes with the Irish is made by the letter-writers, as will be seen, more than once,--almost always to the disadvantage of the Irish. Forty years ago the Irish were still merely immigrants, and, further, they were practically the only people in this country who suggested comparison with negroes. The next letter is the first from W. C. G., whom Mr. Philbrick has already mentioned as destined to be his assistant. _March 24. Coffin's Point._ It is the largest plantation on the Islands, numbering in its full days over 250 hands, or head, as the negroes call themselves.