"The old silver, damask and India china still remaining show how these feasts were set out.... Miss Lucas has already told us something of what the country could furnish in the way of good cheer, and we may be sure that venison and turkey from the forest, ducks from the rice fields, and fish from the river at their doors, were there.... Turtle came from the West Indies, with 'saffron and negroe pepper, very delicate for dressing it.' Rice and vegetables were in plenty--terrapins in every pond, and Carolina hams proverbially fine. The desserts were custards and creams (at a wedding always bride cake and floating island), jellies, syllabubs, puddings and pastries.... They had port and claret too ... and for suppers a delicious punch called 'shrub,' compounded of rum, pineapples, lemons, etc., not to be commended by a temperance society." "The dinner over, the ladies withdrew, and before very long the scraping of the fiddlers would call the gentlemen to the dance,--pretty, graceful dances, the minuet, stately and gracious, which opened the ball; and the country dance, fore-runner of our Virginia reel, in which every one old, and young joined."[161] It is little wonder that Eliza Pinckney, upon returning from just such a social function to take up once more the heavy routine of managing three plantations, complained: "At my return thither every thing appeared gloomy and lonesome, I began to consider what attraction there was in this place that used so agreeably to soothe my pensive humor, and made me indifferent to everything the gay world could boast; but I found the change not in the place but in myself."[162]