Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/343

Rh my wife and children. I remembered the streets by which I had come from the country to the jail, and was quickly at the extremity of the town, marching towards the residence of the paltry planter, at whose house I had lodged on my way South. It was late at night, when I left Columbia, and it was necessary for me to make all speed, and get as far as possible from that place before day. I ran rather than walked, until the appearance of dawn, when I left the road and took shelter in the pine woods, with which this part of the country abounds.

I had now been traveling almost two months, and was still so near the place from which I first departed, that I could easily have walked to it in a week, by daylight; but I hoped, that as I was now on a road with which I was acquainted, and in a country through which I had traveled before, that my future progress would be more rapid, and that I should be able to surmount, without difficulty, many of the obstacles that had hitherto embarrassed me so greatly.

It was now in my power to avail myself of the knowledge I had formerly acquired of the customs of South Carolina. The patrol are very rigid in the execution of the authority with which they are invested; but I never had much difficulty with these officers anywhere, From dark until ten or eleven o'clock at night, the patrol are watchful, and always traversing the country