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 In these days of railroads and steam, it can scarcely be credited that a woman actually rode alone, in the night, through a wild unsettled country, a distance—going and returning—of a hundred and twenty-five miles; and that in less than forty hours, and without any interval of rest! Yet even this fair equestrian, whose feats would astonish the modern world, admitted that one of her acquaintances was a better horsewoman than herself. This was Miss Esther Wake, the beautiful sister-in-law of Governor Tryon, after whom Wake County was named. She is said to have ridden eighty miles—the distance between Raleigh and the Governor’s head-quarters in the neighbourhood of Colonel Slocumb’s residence—to pay a visit; returning the next day. What would these women have said to the delicacy of modern refinement, fatigued with a modern drive in a close carriage, and looking out on woods and fields from the windows!