The South has two kinds of frontier,—that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Saturday, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white.

Never was such a motley company gathered in one place,—old men with grizzled heads, all with a rabbit-foot in their pocket, a necklace for a charm around their necks, their bronzed breasts open to view; old mammies with scarlet bandannas; young belles of all shades—here a mulatto girl in pale-blue dress and[78] pointed shoes, her waist as disfigured as any Parisian\'s, there a mammoth, coal-black negro driving a pair of splendid mules.

Here is an original turnout; it was once a sulky. The shafts stick out above the great ears of the mule; the seat has been replaced by an old rocking-chair; the wheels are wired-up pieces of a small barrel that have replaced some of the spokes, while fully half the harness is made up of rope, string, and wire. The owner\'s clothes are one mass of patchwork, and his hat is full of holes, out of which the unruly wool escapes and keeps his hat from blowing off.

The sidewalk presents a moving panorama unmatched for richness of color. As we leave the town, we ride past plantations that once had palatial residences, whose owners had from one to three thousand slaves, the little log cabins arranged around and near the house. In many cases the houses are still there, but dilapidated.

[79]Here, where each white person was once worth on an average thirty thousand dollars, to-day you may buy land for a dollar an acre, with all the buildings. It is a lovely park-like country, with clear streams running through meadows, branching into a dozen channels, where the fish dart about; and the trees shade and perfume the air with their rich blossoms, and the whole region is made exquisitely vocal with the song of the peerless mocking-bird. Here, too, the marble crops out from the soil, and some of the r............