and onward we jogged over that apparently unending level of creaking sand, without one sign of human industry or human life. As matters began to grow serious, and my weary steed to manifest symptoms of dissatisfaction which could not be mistaken, a kind Providence sent a fellow-being along my path, in the shape of the most hideous, tattered, and wo-begone negro I had ever seen--my first specimen of a plantation servant. The poor fellow's face and garments, however, sadly belied him; for upon my salutation of 'Boy, good morning; can you tell me where I can find water for my horse?' he touched his rimless hat and most civilly replied: 'Oh, yes, Massa! dere is fine water just back ob you!' 'Back of me?' I replied. 'Strange I did not see it!' and turning my horse to retrace the path, the negro discovered my greenness, and laughing, said: 'Why, Massa, you 'ab no bucket to water de horse!' 'Bucket?' I inquired in astonishment! 'Bucket? What do you mean, boy? What _do_ you mean?' The poor fellow could scarcely contain his gravity, while he replied, pointing to the bottom of the sulky: 'Sure, Massa 'ab no bucket! Massa no bin long in Carolina to tink water he horse widout bucket! Every body hab bucket on he carriage in Carolina!' Here was indeed a perplexity of which I had never dreamed, and to extricate myself from which more than surpassed my share of even Yankee shrewdness. I could not think of driving fourteen long miles back to my morning resting-place in the heat of that torrid sun, nor of going forward the twelve miles to my first stopping place on the Georgetown road; and yet, from all the information I could gain from the negro, these seemed the only conditions upon which horse or driver were ever again to meet with the proprieties of civilized existence. In utter despair I looked up to my informer, with a respect I had never bestowed upon tattered garments before, and asked: 'Boy, what _am_ I to do?' 'Don' know, Massa! Neber see a carriage wid'out bucket afore! Don' know, Massa!' Though my informant had hitherto evidently been greatly amused at my perplexity, the despair of my countenance, or his pity for the jaded beast, now awakened his sympathies; and after scratching his head--a manipulation which the negro invariably performs when he is in trouble--he suddenly rolled the whites of his great eyes up to me and said with quickness, 'Me tink now, Massa! Me tink how Massa water he horse!' and plunging into the woods, presently returned with his _hat_ filled with water. It was a capital thought, and the promptitude of its execution would have done honor to a Connecticut pedler. My dilemma was over; the negro's hat of water was a goblet of ambrosia to my steed; and the tattered son of Ham became in my eyes fair as a messenger of the gods.