Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/325

Rh pleased me. I saw in two other places likewise the people at their meals, breakfast and dinner, and saw that here too the food was good and abundant.

I passed by my negroes of the peach-tree yesterday afternoon, and saw them coming home with a crowd of others at about six o'clock. One of them sprang over a hedge when he saw me, and grinning with his white teeth, asked from me a half dollar.

April 20th.—Good day, my sweet child! I have just had my second breakfast, at twelve o'clock, of bananas. I am beginning to like this fruit. It is gentle and agreeable, and has a wholesome effect, as well as the mild air here, that is to say, when it is mild. But even here the climate is very changeable. Yesterday the thermometer fell in one day twenty-four degrees, and it was so cold that my fingers were stiff as icicles. To-day again one is covered with perspiration, even when one sits quietly in the shade. We have been twice at great dinners with planters some miles from here, but I am so annoyed by great dinners, and made so ill by the things I eat, that I hope, with all my heart, not to go to any more. But my good hostess, who has a youthful soul, in a heavy and somewhat lame body, heartily enjoys being invited out.

Yesterday, as we were taking a drive, the carriage, which has generally to go through heavy sand, made a stand in a wood for the horses to rest. Deeper down in the wood I saw a slave village, or houses resembling one, but which had an unusually irregular and tumble-down appearance. At my wish Mr. Poinsett went with me to it. I found the houses actually in the most decayed and deplorable condition, and in one house old and sickly negroes, men and women. In one room I saw a young lad very much swollen, as if with dropsy; the rain and wind could enter by the roof; everything was naked in the room; neither fire-wood nor fire was there, although the day was chilly. In another wretched house we saw an old woman lying