the last night of the poor fellow's life ---- himself watched with him. I
suppose the general low diet of the negroes must produce some want of
stamina in them; certainly, either from natural constitution or the effect
of their habits of existence, or both, it is astonishing how much less
power of resistance to disease they seem to possess than we do. If they
are ill, the vital energy seems to sink immediately. This rice
cultivation, too, although it does not affect them as it would whites--to
whom, indeed, residence on the rice plantation after a certain season is
impossible--is still, to a certain degree, deleterious even to the
negroes. The proportion of sick is always greater here than on the cotton
plantation, and the invalids of this place are not unfrequently sent down
to St. Simon's to recover their strength, under the more favourable
influences of the sea air and dry sandy soil of Hampton Point.

Yesterday afternoon the tepid warmth of the air and glassy stillness of
the river seemed to me highly suggestive of fishing, and I determined, not
having yet discovered what I could catch with what in these unknown
waters, to try a little innocent paste bait--a mystery his initiation into
which caused Jack much wonderment. The only hooks I had with me, however,
had been bought in Darien--made, I should think, at the North expressly
for this market; and so villanously bad were they that, after trying them
and my patience a reasonable time, I gave up the attempt and took a lesson
in paddling instead. Amongst other items Jack told me of his own fishing
experience was, that he had more than once caught those most excellent
creatures Altamaha shad by the fish themselves leaping out of the water
and _landing_, as Jack expressed it, to escape from the porpoises, which
come in large schools up the river to a considerable distance,
occasioning, evidently, much emotion in the bosoms of the legitimate
inhabitants of these muddy waters. Coasting the island on our return home
we found a trap, which the last time we examined it was tenanted by a