If history did but record the barbarous scenes yet enacted on the
banks of this lovely stream, the contrast with its calm surface
sweeping gently onward to mingle its waters with the great deep,
would be strange indeed. How mellowed by the calm beauty of a summer
evening, the one!-how stained with scenes of misery, torment, and
death, the other!

Let us beg the reader to follow us back to the time when Marston is
found in possession of the plantation, and view it as it is when his
friends gather round him to enjoy his bounteous hospitality.

We have ascended the Ashly on a bright spring morning, and are at a
jut covered with dark jungle, where the river, about twenty rods
wide, sweeps slowly round ;-flowering brakes, waving their tops to
and fro in the breeze, bedeck the river banks, and far in the
distance, on the left, opens the broad area of the plantation. As we
near it, a beautifully undulating slope presents itself, bounded on
its upper edge by a long line of sombre-looking pines. Again we
emerge beneath clustering foliage overhanging the river; and from
out this-sovereign of a southern clime-the wild azalia and fair
magnolia diffuse their fragrance to perfume the air. From the pine
ridge the slope recedes till it reaches a line of jungle, or hedge,
that separates it from the marshy bottom, extending to the river,
against which it is protected by a dyke. Most of the slope is under
a high state of cultivation, and on its upper edge is a newly
cleared patch of ground, which negroes are preparing for the
cotton-seed.

Smoking piles burn here and there, burned stumps and trees point
their black peaks upward in the murky atmosphere, half-clad negroes