Between the Ashly and Santee rivers, a distance of more than thirty miles, there are upon the main thoroughfare but three dwelling-houses. Upon the banks of the latter, one begins first to see something of the wealth of the Carolina rice-plantations. For many miles up and down the North and South Santee rivers, which are here separated but a single mile, are cultivated those deep, rich bottoms, annually flowed and inexhaustible in resource, which are the glory of the State. The lordly owners of these manors pass the winter months in superintending the affairs of the homesteads, gathering about them all those luxuries which minister to ease and pleasure, of which none better understand the value, or select with more taste, than do these descendants of king Charles's cavaliers, and entering with a zeal and alacrity into those rural sports which are the zest and glory of a southern country life. Finer horsemen, more skilled marksmen, on the plain or in the forest, hardier frames for pugilistic feats, or a quicker eye and prompter hand for a game at fence, the world cannot produce. They are generally men also of liberal learning and generous dispositions; frank, hospitable, and courteous; and, bating a tithe of that hot-blood chivalry upon which they are too apt to pride themselves, noble and humane in all their impulses. One marks every where at the South the eminently kind relations which exist between master and servant. To every man born and bred upon the plantation, the negro seems essential, in a thousand respects with which a northerner can have no sympathy. I saw nothing of what we call prejudice against color in all my travels. In infancy the same nurse gives food and rest to her own child and to her master's; in childhood the same eye watches and the same hand alternately caresses and corrects them; they mingle their sports in boyhood; and through youth up to manhood there are ties which link them to each other by an affinity that no time or circumstances can destroy. An illiterate, rough planter, who was by no means remarkable for the kindness he showed his servants, said to me one day: 'I travelled last summer all over Iowa territory, and I didn't see a nigger in two months. To be sure I felt kind o' badly, but it couldn't be helped; so I made the best of it, thinking all the time I should be home again bye and bye. Well, Sir, I got back again as far as Zanesville in 'Hio, where there was a gineral muster and a heap of people; and pretty soon I heard a banjo; thinks I, there's some of _our folks_, I know; and sure enough there was two niggers and a wench going it powerful; and the way I went up to 'em and got hold of their hands, and says I, 'How are you, my good fellows? how are you, girl?' and the way I shook and they shook, was a caution to abolitionists, I tell you?'