Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/337

Rh be much agitated by the wind, the clouds appeared high, and were driven with velocity over my head. I saw the clear sky appear in all its beauty in the northwest. Before sundown the wind was high, the sun shone in full splendor, and a few fleecy clouds, careering high in the upper vault of heaven, gave assurance that the rains were over and gone.

At nightfall I returned to the forks of the road, and after much observation, finally concluded to follow the right hand road, in which I am satisfied that I committed a great error. Nothing worthy of notice occurred for several days after this. As I was now in a thickly-peopled country, I never moved until long after night, and was cautious never to permit daylight to find me on the road; but I observed that the north-star was always on my left hand. My object was to reach the neighborhood of Columbia, and get upon the road which I had traveled and seen years before in coming to the South; but the road I was now on must have been the great Charleston road, leading down the country, and not across the courses of the rivers. So many people traveled this road, as well by night as by day, that my progress was very slow; and in some of the nights I did not travel more than eight miles. At the end of a week, after leaving the forks, I found myself in a flat, sandy, poor country; and as Thad not met with any river on this road, I now concluded that