I waked early, just before dawn, and was watching alternately the embers of the big log, still aglow in the deep chimney, and the white light beginning to break through the honeysuckles and vines which hung over the verandah, and shaded the wide, open window, when the clock struck five. The door opened softly, and in stepped Amos Hill in his stockings. He came to the foot of our beds, picked up our dirty boots, and stole out again, as noiselessly as he had entered. The next minute I heard the blacking brushes going vigorously, and knew that I should appear at breakfast with a shine on in which I should have reason to glory, if I were preparing to walk in Bond Street, instead of through the scrub on the Cumberland Mountains. I turned over for another, hour’s sleep (breakfast being at 6.30 sharp), but not without first considering for some minutes which of us two--if things were fixed up straight in this blundering old world--ought to be blacking the other’s boots. The conclusion I came to was that it ought _not_ to be Amos Hill. The Negro “Natives”, Rugby, Tennessee, 30th October 1880. There is one inconvenience in this desultory mode of correspondence,--that one is apt to forget what one has told already, and to repeat oneself. I have written something of the white native of these mountains; have I said anything of his dark brother? The subject is becoming a more and more interesting and important one every day, through all these regions. In these mountains, the negro, perhaps, can scarcely be called a native. Very few black families, I am told, were to be found here a year or two since. My own eyes assure me that they are multiplying rapidly. I see more and more black men amongst the gangs on roads and bridges, and come across queer little encampments in the woods, with a pile of logs smouldering in the midst, round which stand the mirth-provoking figures of small black urchins, who stare and grin at the intruder on horseback, till he rides on under the gold and russet and green autumnal coping of hickories, chestnuts, and pines.