The tobacco is forthcoming, together with a few gaudy head-handkerchiefs and little parcels of sugar, and "nyoung maussa" has it all his own way with the simple creatures. These negroes are as near the original wild African type as if a few years instead of more than a century of contact with civilization had passed over them. They are all the direct descendants of original importations, chiefly Ghoolahs and Ashantees; indeed, "Gullah niggah" is a favorite term of playful reproach among them. Their _male_ names are still largely Ashantee, as "Cudjo," "Cuffee," "Quarcoo," "Quashee," etc., and their dialect, a mixture of "pigeon English" and Ghoolah, strongly impregnated with the French of the Huguenot masters of their forefathers, is simply incomprehensible to a stranger, whether white or black. Indeed, when excited and talking rapidly even those who have grown up among them can scarcely understand the lingo. "Coom, Hondree," says an old nurse to her little charge at bedtime, "le' we tek fire go atop:" in English, "Come, Henry, let's take a light and go up stairs." "Child" is "pickny;" "white man" (or woman), "buckrah;" "I don't know," "Me no sabbée;" "Is it not?" "Enty?"; "watermelon" is "attermillion" or "mutwilliam;" and so on. Paying a medical visit, I enter a house where the patient is a sick child: the old crone who is sitting in the doorway with a boy's head between her knees, performing the office of which monkeys are so fond, calls out, "Lindy! de buckrah coom." "What's the matter with the child?" I inquire. "Ki, maussa! me no sabbée wha' do a pickny," replies the intelligent Lindy, who wishes me to know that she knows nothing about the case. We shall see more of them before leaving the plantation. A day on the water and a long drive are excellent preparatives for a supper of broad rice-waffles toasted crisp and brown before the crackling hickory fire, of smoking spare-ribs and luscious tripe, of rich, fragrant Java coffee with boiled milk and cream; nor does a sound night's sleep unfit one for enjoying at breakfast a repetition of the same, substituting link sausages and black pudding for the tripe and spare-ribs, and superadding feathery muffins and soft-boiled eggs.