knowledge of surgery the skill and talent of a musician. To please the new-comers, he composed a tune, and, with much gravity, recommended it to the officers as one of the most celebrated airs of martial music. The joke took, to the no small amusement of the British. Brother Jonathan exclaimed, it was "nation fine;" and in a few days, nothing was heard in the provincial camp but the air of "Yankee Doodle."

Little did the author, in his composition, then suppose, that an air, made for the purpose of levity and ridicule, should be marked for such high destinies. In twenty years from that time, the national march-now universally recognized by the patriots-inspired the heroes of Bunker's Hill; and, in less than thirty, Lord Cornwallis and his army marched into the American lines to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."

"Woe worth the hour when it is crime

To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause,
When all that makes the heart sublime,
The glorious throbs that conquer time,
Are traitors to our cruel laws."-LOWELL.

THE general appearance of the majority of the coloured people in the streets of Charleston denoted abject fear and timidity, some of them as I passed looking with servile dread at me (as they did at almost every one who happened to pass), so that I could read in many of their looks a suspicion of interference, which, commiserating their condition as I did, was quite distressing.

It is impossible to form a correct estimate of what the perpetuators of slavery have to expect, if once the coloured population obtain a dominant position. The acknowledged gradual depopulation of the whites in the slave states, through

sickness, exhaustion of the land, and consequent emigration, united with other causes, there is no doubt will eventually result in a great preponderance of coloured people, who, aroused by the iniquitous treatment they undergo, will rise under some resolute leader, and redress their wrongs. I was quite struck to see in Charleston such a disproportion of the colours, and, without exaggerating, I can say, that almost if not quite three-fourths of those I met in the streets were, if not actually of the negro race, tinged in a greater or less degree with the hue.

Pursuing my perambulations, I came to the slave and general cotton place of vendue, to the left of the General Post-office, which building is a very substantial edifice of stone. Here a

dozen or twenty auctioneers were loudly holding forth to the assembled crowds, and cracking up their wares in New York style. The most indescribable scene of bustle and confusion prevailed, the whole street being covered with open bales and boxes of goods. In one part of the street was a slave warehouse, and advertisements were placarded outside of the particulars of the various lots to be offered for competition, and now on view. As the privilege of viewing in this instance was confined to those who possessed tickets, I did not apply for one, as I knew that the wish would be attributed to curiosity, and

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AN UNTRUSTY OVESEER.

possibly a worse construction be put upon it, through my being a stranger in the place.

Passing onwards through the assembled throng, I got into a more secluded part of the city, and came upon a large burial-ground, in which many of the monuments erected to the memory of the dead were of a very expensive description. One in particular attracted my notice; this, on inquiry of a gentlemanly-looking man, who, like myself, was inclined to "meditate among the tombs," I ascertained had been erected by the relatives of a planter, who had resided in an adjoining state, but who had several cotton plantations within ten miles of Charleston; these he occasionally visited, but in general confided to the care of an overseer, who lived with his family on one of them. The season anterior to his last visit had been a very unpropitious one, and he was much dissatisfied with the management. To prevent a recurrence of this loss, and, under the strong impression that the hands were not worked as they should be, he resolved to inspect the plantations himself, and administer some wholesome discipline in propria persona; for this purpose, he visited one of the plantations, intending afterwards to proceed to the others in rotation. It so happened that he arrived when not expected; and, finding his overseer absent, and many of the hands not as

DEVOTEDNESS OF NEGROES.

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closely engaged as he wished, he became violently enraged. Summoning the overseer, he ordered all hands in front of the house to witness a punishment, and causing eight or ten of those whom he pointed out to be tied up at once and well whipped, stood by the while in uncontrollable anger to give directions. In the midst of the scene, and while urging greater severity, he was seized with a fit of apoplexy, which was of such a nature, that it at once closed his career, and he died instantaneously. Directly the man fell, the negroes collected round him and uttered cries and lamentations, and the poor wretch who was at the moment the victim of his brutality, on being untied, which was immediately done, joined in it. Notwithstanding that my companion had a decided leaning towards the extinction of slavery, (although he started various objections to its abolition,) I was quite inclined to believe his relation, having, when in Florida, met with a somewhat similar instance of the devotedness of the negro race, in an old woman who was bitterly bewailing the loss of her deceased mistress. The latter was an English lady, but not over kind to her, and reflected no credit on her countrywomen. The poor creature in touching strains enlarged upon her beauty and accomplishments, but when I questioned her as to her treatment of the negroes in general belonging to the estates, would