not least, emancipation would effectually put a stop to the breeding, selling, and exporting of slaves to the sugar-growing States of the South, where, unless the accounts we usually read of slavery be exaggerated and distorted, the life of the negro is shortened by severe toil and suffering.

Had the white man never interposed to transplant the negro into the New World, the most generous asserters of the liberties of the coloured race would have conceded that Africa afforded space enough for their development. Neither in their new country, nor in that of their origin, whether in a condition of slavery or freedom, have they as yet exhibited such superior qualities and virtues as to make us anxious that additional millions of them should multiply in the southern States of the Union; still less, that they should overflow into Texas and Mexico.

12

CHAPTER X.

Wilmington, N. C.-Mount Vernon.—Return to Philadelphia.— Reception of Mr. Dickens.-Museum and Fossil human Bones.— Penitentiary. Churches.-Religious Excitement.--Coloured People of Fortune.-Obstacles to their obtaining Political and Social Equality. No natural Antipathy between the Races.- Negro Reservations.

Jan. 22.-I Now turned my course northwards, and, after a short voyage in a steamer from Charleston, landed at Wilmington, in North Carolina. Here I collected fossils from tertiary formations of two ages, the Miocene marls, and an underlying Eocene limestone, harder than that of Shell Bluff and the Santee canal before mentioned; but containing many of the same shells, corals, and teeth of fishes. I then went by railway to South Washington, visiting several farms on the banks of the north-east branch of Cape Fear river. Here I found cretaceous green marls, similar to those which I had seen 350 miles to the N. E. in New Jersey, with belemnites and other characteristic organic remains, some of species not previously known.

On several of the small plantations here I found the proprietors by no means in a thriving state, evidently losing ground from year to year, and some of them talking of abandoning the exhausted soil, and migrating with their slaves to the south-western States. If, while large numbers of the negroes were thus carried to the South, slavery had been abolished in North Carolina, the black population might ere this have been

reduced considerably in numbers, without suffering those privations to which a free competition with white labourers must expose them, wherever great facilities for emigration are not afforded.

A railway train shooting rapidly in the dark through the pine forests of North Carolina has a most singular appearance, resembling a large rocket fired horizontally, with a brilliant stream of revolving sparks extending behind the engine for several hundred yards, each spark being a minute particle of wood, which, after issuing from the chimney of the furnace, remains ignited for several seconds in the air. Now and then these fiery particles, which are invisible by day, instead of lagging in the rear, find entrance by favour of the wind through the open windows of the car, and, while some burn holes in the traveller's cloak, others make their way into his eyes, causing them to smart most painfully.

At Petersburg, Mr. Ruffin, the agriculturist, and Mr. Tuomey, accompanied me in an excursion to collect tertiary fossils in the neighbourhood, and I examined with much instruction the organic remains in their cabinets. At Washington I saw M. Nicollet, and had a long conversation with this eminent astronomer and naturalist, who died the year after. He had just returned from a geographical and geological survey of the Far West, and higher parts of the valley of the Mississippi and Missouri. He showed me the ammonites, baculites, and other chalk fossils brought by him from those distant regions, which establish the wide range of that peculiar assemblage of organic remains characteristic of the cretaceous era.

From the deck of our steam-boat on the Potomac we saw Mount Vernon, formerly the plantation of General

Washington. Instead of exhibiting, like the farms in the northern States, a lively picture of progress and improvement, this property was described to me by all as worn out, and of less value now than in the days of its illustrious owner. The bears and wolves, they say, are actually re-entering their ancient haunts, which would scarcely have happened if slavery had been abolished in Virginia.

The air was balmy on the Potomac the last day of January, and the winter had been so mild in the southern States, that we were surprised, on recrossing the Susquehanna at Havre de Grâce in Maryland, to see large masses of floating ice brought down from the Appalachian hills, and to feel the air sensibly cooled while we were ferried over the broad river. It struck me as a curious coincidence, and one not entirely accidental, that, precisely in this part of our journey, I once more saw the low grounds covered with huge boulders, reminding me how vast a territory in the South I had passed over without encountering a single erratic block. These far transported fragments of rock are decidedly a northern phenomenon, or belong to the colder latitudes of the globe, being rare and exceptional in warmer regions.

Philadelphia, Feb. 1.-The newspapers are filled with accounts of the enthusiastic reception which Mr. Charles Dickens is meeting with every where. Such homage has never been paid to any foreigner since Lafayette visited the States. The honours may appear extravagant, but it' is in the nature of popular enthusiasm to run into excess. I find that several of my American friends are less disposed than I am to sympathise with the movement, regarding it as more

akin to lion-hunting than hero-worship. They express a doubt whether Walter Scott, had he visited the U. S., would have been so much idolised. Perhaps not; for Scott's poems and romances were less extensively circulated amongst the millions than the tales of Dickens. There may be no precedent in Great Britain for a whole people thus unreservedly indulging their feelings of admiration for a favourite author; but if so, the Americans deserve the more credit for obeying their warm impulses. Of course, many who attend the foreigner's crowded levee are merely gratifying a vulgar curiosity by staring at an object of notoriety; but none but a very intelligent population could be thus carried away to flatter and applaud a man who has neither rank, wealth, nor power, who is not a military hero or a celebrated political character, but simply a writer of genius, whose pictures of men and manners, and whose works of fiction, have been here, as in his own country, an inexhaustible source of interest and amusement.

When at Philadelphia I was present at several meetings of the American Philosophical Society, and of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In the museum of the former body I was shown a limestone from Santas, in Brazil, procured by Captain Elliott, of the U. S. navy, which contains a human skull, teeth, and other bones, together with fragments of shells, some of them retaining a portion of their colour. The rock is less solid than that of Guadaloupe, which it resembles. We are informed, that the remains of several hundred other human skeletons, imbedded in a like calcareous tufa, were dug out at the same place, about the year 1827.* The soil covering the solid stone supported a growth of

* American Philosophical Transactions, 1828, p. 285.