Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/366

Rh plantation on the beautiful river. How amiable and refreshing is youth when it will be so.

The banks of the river were romantically beautiful and exuberantly green; no wonder that the first white discoverers were so enchanted that they described the country as an earthly paradise.

The ruins of the first church in Jamestown were still standing, at least one wall, and shone out red brick from a bright green wood by the river.

At night on the sea it was also stiflingly hot. A good, kind negro-woman was my attendant, and we talked of various things. She had been a slave in Baltimore, and her master's family had assisted her to obtain her freedom. I asked her if she was as well off now she was free, as when she was a slave in a good family.

“Better, ma'am, better,” was her energetic reply; and added, “I do not believe that God intended any human being to be slave of another.”

The woman was remarkably happy and contented with her present life.

There were very few passengers in the saloon. A couple of handsome, elderly ladies sat and conversed together, in an undertone, about life and its incidents. They spoke of the fate of friends and acquaintances; they spoke of the death-bed of a godless man, who had departed this life without one backward glance of regret for the past, without one glance of hope for the future; they made reflections on all this: their countenances were mild and serious.

Two young girls, from twelve to fifteen years of age, meantime rushed in and out of the room, like wild young colts or calves for the first time turned out into the pastures. I took care to keep out of their way. The elderly ladies looked at them.

“Wild young girls!” said one of them, mildly disapproving.