I have heard, however, that the wife of a South Carolina
cracker once declared her dislike of it in the following terms:
"Coon and collards is pretty good fixins, but 'gator and turnips I can't
go, no how."
Collards, you will understand, are a kind of cabbage. In this country, you
will often hear of long collards, a favorite dish of the planter.
Among the marksmen who were engaged in shooting alligators, were two or
three expert chewers of the Indian weed - frank and careless spitters - who
had never been disciplined by the fear of woman into any hypocritical
concealment of their talent, or unmanly reserve in its exhibition. I
perceived, from a remark which one of them let fall, that somehow they
connected this accomplishment with high breeding. He was speaking of four
negroes who were hanged in Georgia on a charge of murdering their owner.
"One of them," said he, "was innocent. They made no confession, but held
up their heads, chawed their tobacco, and spit about like any gentlemen."
You have here the last of my letters from the south. Savannah, which I
left wearing almost a wintry aspect, is now in the full verdure of summer.
The locust-trees are in blossom; the water-oaks, which were shedding their
winter foliage, are now thick with young and glossy leaves; the Pride of
India is ready to burst into flower, and the gardens are full of roses in
bloom.
Letter XVI.
An Excursion to Vermont and New Hampshire.
Addison County, Vermont, _July_ 10, 1843.
I do not recollect that I ever heard the canal connecting the Hudson with
Lake Champlain praised for its beauty, yet it is actually beautiful - that
part of it at least which lies between Dunham's Basin and the lake, a
distance of twenty-one miles, for of the rest I can not speak. To form the
canal, two or three streams have been diverted a little from their
original course, and led along a certain level in the valley through which
they flowed to pour themselves into Champlain. In order to keep this
level, a perpetually winding course has been taken, never, even for a few
rods, approaching a straight line. On one side is the path beaten by the
feet of the horses who drag the boats, but the other is an irregular bank,
covered sometimes with grass and sometimes with shrubs or trees, and
sometimes steep with rocks. I was delighted, on my journey to this place,
to exchange a seat in a stage-coach, driven over the sandy and dusty road
north of Saratoga by a sulky and careless driver, for a station on the top
of the canal-packet. The weather was the finest imaginable; the air that
blew over the fields was sweet with the odor of clover blossoms, and of
shrubs in flower.
