'Use your whip, uncle,' and away we go at a respectable trot over the principal road on the island, which, from the fact of its having been made of oyster shells, is called the 'Shell road,' and extends ten miles to Port Royal Ferry, at the extreme western point of the island. Timely showers have laid the dust, and all the trees and bushes wear clean faces. In the yards there are peach trees in bloom, beautiful crimson japonicas, the jonquil and snowdrop; while everywhere by the roadside we see the ungainly form and coarse flower of the prickly pear. Passing the rifle pits and picket station, we soon turn off from the Shell road, and pass through what was formerly a handsome forest of pines, but which now has been cleared by the soldier's axe, and rejoices in the title of 'pickpocket tract.' Few of the plantations lie on the main road, and many of them, like the one we are now seeking, are approached only by going over several cross roads and by lanes. Our last turn takes us into a handsome avenue of live oaks, whose overarching branches are adorned with long ringlets of the graceful Spanish moss. In the woods on either side of the drive way are dogwood and Pride-of-Asia trees in full blossom, wild honeysuckle, and the sweet yellow jasmine which fills the air with its delicious fragrance. As we drive into the yard, the plantation house suddenly appears to view, half hidden by the dense foliage of magnolia and orange trees. Although called one of the finest residences on the island, the house is inferior to many of our larger farmhouses in New England, and is a simple two-story structure of wood, resting on brick piles, with a veranda in front. Just beyond the path that leads by the house, is a handsome flower garden, while both in the rear of the 'great house' and beyond the flower garden are rows of negro huts. We are soon greeted by our hosts--one, a brave Vermonter, who served faithfully in the army till disabled, the other, a Quaker of Philadelphia, who has left family and friends to labor for the freedman--and ushered into the principal room of the house, where we are presented to a party of the neighboring superintendents and school teachers. Dinner is all ready, and we sit down to a right royal entertainment, the chief dishes of which are portions of an immense _drumfish_ cooked in various fashion. Few entertainers can prove more agreeable than Northern men with Southern hospitality, and we eat and make merry without even a thought of Colonel Barnwell, whose home we have thus 'invaded,' and who, perchance, is shivering in the cold, and suffering the privations of a rebel camp in Eastern Virginia. We must not omit the praise due to our cook, a woman taken from the 'field hands,' and whose only instructors have been our hosts, neither of whom can boast of much knowledge of the art of cooking. It would, however, be hardly safe to trust to an untutored field hand, as I once learned to my