"I was exceedingly amused at one thing in these singular little communities, which was, that matches of convenience are almost as common among them as among their more fashionable masters. I suspect it would puzzle some of your fashionable belles to guess how these have their origin, and what is the fortune upon which they are founded. I will tell you, if you have never observed it yourself. The most active and sober hands, who are able to finish their tasks early, and of course live well, are always in great demand for husbands; and a well-favoured girl is almost sure to select one of these for her _helpmate_ in the true sense of the word. Nor is this excellence confined to the males; many of the women are in as much demand among the lazy fellows for their prowess in the field, as the active men are among the women. "While the mothers are at work in the field, their helpless offspring are all left under the care of the superannuated women, in a large hut, or several large huts provided for that purpose; and a more unearthly set of wrinkled and arid witches you never saw, unless you have more curiosity than most of your Carolinians. These scenes, especially if visited by moonlight, transport a man into the centre of Africa at once; there is the dark, sluggish stream, the dismal-looking pine-barrens, and the palmetto, the oriental-looking cabbage-tree, aided by the foreign gibberish, and the unsteady light of the pine logs before the door, now and then casting a fitful gleam of light upon some of these natives of the shores of the Niger, with their tattooed visages, ivory teeth, flat noses, and yellow and blood-shot eyeballs. "I do not observe much difference between the North and South Carolinians, except in the case of those who inhabit the most southern portions of the latter state. There your rich are more princely and aristocratic, and your poor more wretched and degraded; but to tell you the plain truth, many of your little slaveholders are miserably poor and ignorant; and what must be the condition of that negro who is a slave to one of these miserable wretches? They are uniformly hard and cruel masters, and the more fortune or fate frowns upon them, the more cruel they become to their slaves. This is a singular development of human character, and not easily accounted for, unless we suppose them to be revenging themselves of fate.