however, may pass to and fro between the city and Sullivan's Island without risk. Of late years it has been discovered that there are certain healthy spots, even in the country, during the most sickly months. These are in the pine barrens at a distance from the swamps. To be safe in them it is necessary that the land be as barren as possible, and that not a tree be cut down except to leave room for the house. Even a little garden, it is considered, would entail some risk. I saw several of these retreats, which are occupied by the overseers of plantations. The preceding remarks respecting liability to sickness, apply to the natives, who, you are aware, are generally exempt, after the age of from ten to fifteen years, from the yellow or stranger's fever, their apprehensions being confined to what they term the "country fever,” and "fever and ague." With regard to the yellow fever, I understand that, generally speaking, the probability would be greatly against a stranger escaping its fatal effects, who should remain in Charleston or Savannah during the sickly season. There are two points connected with the yellow fever here, which are subjects of animated, and sometimes of angry controversy: 1st, whether it is contagious? and, 2nd, whether it is imported, or originates at home? With regard to the first point, I believe the negative is supported by the best authority. A most intelligent friend told me, that he had slept in the same bed with a person who had the fever in the stage of black vomit, without suffering; and Dr. who lived in Sir William Jones's family in India, informed me, that he was in Philadelphia, under Dr. Rush, I think, in 1798, and attended the hospital, where upwards of 5000 patients were admitted, whom he visited daily, and that he never took the fever; that he once saw a young man swallow, with impunity, a tea-spoonful of black vomit, and take large quantities out of the stomachs of those who had died, and rub it over his arms, and that he had seen the patients eject it copiously on the nurses. With respect to the origin of the fever, I believe the weight of authority, both in numbers and respectability, is against the idea of its being imported; but here I am on delicate and uncertain ground. In passing through Charleston, at present so animated and gay, and with a climate at this season so delicious and so pure, it is melancholy to think of the stillness and desertion which will soon pervade its streets, when the heats will almost suspend all intercourse among the natives, and when the stranger who has been so rash as to remain in this infected region, will move with fearful and trembling steps, his imagination filled with apparitions of "the 66 pestilence that walketh in darkness," and his heart sickened with the "destruction which "wasteth at noon-day." Having visited Cadiz and Lisbon, you are no stranger to the melancholy feelings excited by a view of the graves of our countrymen who have fallen victims to an epidemic on a foreign shore. "No voice well known, through many a day, But the real plague-spot of Charleston is its slave population; and the mixture of gaiety and splendour, with misery and degradation, is too incongruous not to arrest the attention even of the superficial. It always reminded me of the delicate pink peach-blossoms which surround the black hovels of the slaves on the plantations. I shall never forget my feelings on being present, for the first time, at a sale of slaves, which took place here in a public street through which I was passing the other day. Turning from a fashionable promenade, enlivened by gay parties and glittering equipages, I came suddenly in sight of at least 80 or 100 Negroes sitting on a large heap of paving stones; some with most melancholy and disconsolate faces, and others with an air of vacancy and apathy, apparently insensible to what was passing around them. Several merchants and planters were walking about, examining the unhappy creatures who were to be offered for sale. A poor woman, apparently about 28 years of age, with a child at her breast, her two little boys, from four to six years old, and her little girl, about eight, composed the first lot. They were mounted on a platform (with the auctioneer,) taking hold of each other's hands, and the little boys looking up at their mother's face with an air of curiosity, as if they wondered what could make her look so sad. The mother then spoke a few words, in a faultering voice, to the auctioneer, who repeated them aloud, in which she expressed a strong desire to be purchased by some one who lived near Charleston, instead of being sent to a distant plantation. They were then put up with all the ordinary auction slang, and finally knocked down at 350 dollars each. As soon as they came down from the platform, many of the Negroes crowded around the mother, inquiring if she knew who had bought her, or whither she was going; but all that she knew of her future destiny was, that a new owner had obtained possession of her and her offspring for 350 dollars each. I could not stay to see the repetition of the sad process on the person of a field labourer, who composed the next lot, and who appeared depressed and dejected beyond what I had conceived. The melancholy feelings with which I quitted this scene were not diminished by the reflection, that it was my country which first transported the poor African to these western shores; that it was when they were the shores of a British colony that slavery was first introduced, by British ships, British capital, and with the sanction and encouragement of a British Parlia ment. Would that I could forget that, in a single year, no less than 30,000 slaves were introduced into America by more than a hundred vessels belonging to a single British port; that the efforts of many of the American States to abolish the importation of slaves, were long defeated by the royal negative which was put |