Providence--or rather, I should say, a fate--for 't is a heathen and no
Christian relationship. Soon after this visit, I was summoned into the
wooden porch or piazza of the house, to see a poor woman who desired to
speak to me. This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress
who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such
irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to
me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of
a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing
and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost
savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty
clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I was inconceivably shocked
and sickened. The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore
tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend
to her ailments and give her proper remedies; but these are natural
results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of improper treatment of the
female frame--and though there may be alleviation, there cannot be any
cure when once the beautiful and wonderful structure has been thus made
the victim of ignorance, folly, and wickedness.

After the departure of this poor woman, I walked down the settlement
towards the infirmary or hospital, calling in at one or two of the houses
along the row. These cabins consist of one room about twelve feet by
fifteen, with a couple of closets smaller and closer than the state-rooms
of a ship, divided off from the main room and each other by rough wooden
partitions in which the inhabitants sleep. They have almost all of them a
rude bedstead, with the grey moss of the forests for mattress, and filthy,
pestilential-looking blankets, for covering. Two families (sometimes eight
and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden
frames pinned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose
enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little