Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/353

Rh “Sir!” again exclaimed the other, “Tom Jefferson was the cause of my father losing fifty thousand dollars, through the embargo!”

With these words he reseated himself, red in the face as a turkey-cock, and with an air as if to say, that after that nothing could be said. A smile was on almost every countenance in the railway carriage; and when Tom Jefferson's enemy almost immediately after took his departure, the thin gentleman turned to me, saying in his good-tempered calm way,—

“That settles it! Jefferson was certainly a bad man. But in any case he was a patriot.”

A hundred young men, soldiers from Charleston, travelled by this train, on a visit to the Georgia militia in Maçon. They were handsome, pleasant-looking, merry young fellows, who got out at every station to refresh themselves, and then hurried in again.

A couple of so-called Indian mounds, that is ancient burial hills of the Indians, and which resemble our sepulchral mounds, excepting that they are larger and flatter at the top, and in which arms and weapons are found, were the only remarkable things we saw on the way.

At sunset we reached Maçon. The country had now assumed another character; we saw verdant hills and valleys, and beautiful white country houses shining out upon the hills amid their gardens.

On all hands lay lofty trees; we drove over a couple of small rivers, with chocolate-hued water, and wooded banks; the city lay, as it were, imbedded in wood. It looked young and romantic, half concealed in the valley, and half stretching itself out on the open hills. It took my fancy; I was glad to be there, and had besides a certain pleasure in finding myself here alone and unknown, and able to live at an inn. I engaged a room at the hotel, “Washington House,” where I found a remarkably