dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and
prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals. The very appetite
proceeding from labour and peace of mind is gone! Our sleep is disturbed
by the most frightful dreams! Sometimes I start awake, as if the great
hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to
announce the arrival of the enemy: we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my
poor wife, with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if
we were to see each other no more. She snatches the youngest children from
their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions
the horrour of the dreadful moment! She tries to hide them in the cellar,
as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire! I place all my servants at
the window, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish. Fear
industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to
each other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole
hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense! What
a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a soldier
engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the
spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the
next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, quite
unmans me. Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest
despondency: at last, finding it was a false alarm, we return once more to
our beds; but what good can the sleep of nature do us, when interrupted
with _such_ scenes?"

* * * * *

But we will suppose our planter to have escaped the scalping knife and
tomahawk; and in the course of years situate in a thick, settled
neighbourhood of planters like himself, who have struggled through all the
foregoing difficulties: he is now a man of some consequence, builds a