My companion was a very intelligent native African, of the name of Scipio, who 'hired his time' of his mistress, and obtained his living by doing odd jobs around the streets and wharves of Georgetown. Portions of the country through which we passed were almost as wild as the forests of Oregon, and in some places the feeling against the North and Northern travelers ran very high. I had some strange encounters with swollen streams and roaring secessionists, in which my negro driver was of great service to me; and the knowledge I thus gained of him led me for the first time to the opinion, that real elevation and nobility of character may exist under an ebony skin. Our first day on the road was clear, sunshiny, and of delicious temperature--one of those days so peculiar to the Southern winter, when the blood bounds through every vein as if thrilled by electricity, and a man of lively temperament can scarcely restrain his legs from dancing a breakdown. Night found us thirty miles on our way, and under the roof of a hospitable planter. A storm came on with the going down of the sun, and lasted during the following day; but, desiring to arrive at my destination before the servant should set out to meet me, I decided to push on in the rain. Our second day's travel was attended with sundry interruptions and adventures, and night overtook us in the midst of a forest, uncertain where we were, and half dead from exposure to the storm; but after several hours of hard riding, we found ourselves, drenched to the skin and benumbed with the cold, before the door of a one-story log cabin, tenanted by a family of POOR WHITES. The rain was falling in torrents, and the night was as 'dark as the darkest corner of the dark place below.' We were in the midst of what seemed an endless forest of turpentine pines, and had seen no human habitation for hours. Not knowing where the road might lead us, and feeling totally unable to proceed, we determined to ask shelter at the shanty for the night. In answer to our summons a wretched-looking, half-clad, dirt-bedraggled woman thrust her head from the door-way, with the inquiry, 'Who are ye?' 'We'm only massa and me, and de hoss, and we'm half dead wid de cold,' said Scipio; 'can't we cum in out ob de rain?' 'Wal, strangers,' replied the woman, eying us as closely as the darkness would permit, 'you'll find mighty poor fixins har, but I reckon ye can come in.'