lusively in the hands of white men. Employers never can trust the blacks with anything which requires careful attention and accuracy.

Travelling along I noticed both black and white men in the fields and cottages, but apparently the blacks are in the majority. They seemed to be the main labouring population. The country seems very raviney, and if the land is not cared for it is apt to run out into ravines, as frequently happens in the hands of careless tenants. I gather that it frequently happens that when land has been over-cropped it is abandoned to wood for a time-in all this country wherever it is let alone wood springs up.

I stopped at the Haw River to see the cotton mills there. They carry out the whole process of manufacture, from cleaning the cotton as it comes loose from the fields to the manufacture of the cloth and the dyeing of it, in the same not very large establishment. The mills are worked by water power, as is always the case in this part of the country. All the Atlantic States have the advantage of an unlimited water power, the country sloping from the Alleghanies to the sea with many running streams, and being in this respect a great contrast to most of the country west of the Alleghanies. In the mills all the labour is white-there are no blacks employed; they are said not to be sufficiently careful. At any rate it is not the habit to employ them. Colonel Hmanager of the mill which I visited, first said that the labour was excellent, but coming to details he found a good many faults with his people, and said that he had just turned off several families for irregular attendance by way of example. I was surprised to hear that the working hours are twelve hours a day. That system is fully enforced. The people work from seven in the morning to half-past seven in the evening, with only half-an-hour for dinner. This really

the

seems too much, and I gather that it is very doubtful whether more is done in twelve hours than by those who work only ten hours. This Southern master seemed to me to be more severe with his work people than an English master could be. Perhaps he is too much of a military man. The women earn about fifty cents a day, the men from seventy-five cents to a dollar. The Southern mills seem to have taken, in relation to those of the North, much the same position which the Indian mills do to those of Lancashire. They manufacture

only the coarser qualities of goods, leaving the finer qualities to the Northern mills. They claim that they have a better climate in the South, with less extremes of heat and cold, fewer short days, and less need of fuel and lights; and they have great advantage, they say, not only in the saving in the carriage of cotton, but also in that they are saved the serious expense of packing it. Their labour, too, is cheaper than that in the North.

Here I went out to see the farm of Mr. B, a New Jersey man, who has lately established a farm of six hundred acres, principally with the object of breeding horses. The road, as usual, I find detestable, but Mr. B says the New Jersey roads are good-they have a good gravel soil there. Pasture and cattle-breeding have been somewhat neglected in these Southern States, and he hopes to show them the way to improve. He has a very high opinion of the black peoplelikes them as labourers, and thinks they only need to be treated fairly and civilly to get good work out of them; in fact, they work as well as white men, and better: and the only complaints against them come from those who do not treat them fairly nor pay them regularly. He, too, says that there is great irregularity in the payment of wages. His only doubt is about the rising generation. He thinks the old ex-slaves who were accustomed to work do very well, but the children are not sufficiently under the control of their parents, and are growing up with an indisposition to work. He is strong on the excellence of the climate here about 800 feet above the sea. It is never so hot in summer, he says, as in the Northern Atlantic States. The thermometer does not usually rise above 80 degrees, and the winters are mild and good. There seeins to be no doubt that there is a great change in the winter climate as one passes South through Virginia into the Carolinas and Georgia.

I had met in the train an old Scotchman, Mr. M, who has been upwards of forty years settled in this State. He is a builder by trade, and has done much work of that kind, but has now acquired land and settled down. He took me to dine with a friend, Mr. II, who keeps a store at Haw River, and who is married to a New England wife. This lady gave us a very nicely-cooked meal, very neatly served. Throughout the States it does seem that the New England people are in many respects superior. Mr. Mvery kindly insisted on

taking me to his house at Salisbury, where I was most comfortably accommodated. In the morning we walked about the town, which seemed a nice rural place. Mr. M's wife is also a New Englander, but they are all now thoroughly Southern in feeling, both as to the war and as to the question of slavery. According to Mr. M the Northerners were the first slave-holders, and when they found that slaves were not a profitable property in the North they sold them South, and went in for abolition. In the war the North Carolinian people did not go heartily with the South till their feelings got embittered by the great destruction of property and other illusages to which they were subjected by the Northern armies. A sister of his own was burnt out by the Federal soldiers and died from exposure. He and his son-in-law, who is also a contractor for public works, told me a good deal about the blacks, whom they have much employed. They decidedly like them as labourers. In the North the white men get higher wages and do more work. There they will not allow the competition of the negro; especially the foreigners-Irishmen being most prominent-will not; but the Southern climate is too hot for the Irish-they do not care to come South; while the Southern whites not being anxious to work as hired labourers, do not object to the negroes performing that function. Thus the blacks are not bull-dosed on labour questions, and altogether get on very well. Wages in the South are certainly a good deal lower than in the North, and the negroes can live on much cheaper and poorer food than the Northern whites. Most of the Southern whites have land more or less, and many of them employ, or hope to employ, negroes. They are always glad to hire them when they can afford to do so. The better and more moderate of the Southern whites certainly wish to conciliate and utilise the negroes.

Mr. M, while speaking while speaking so well of the so well of the negroes in other respects, dwelt very much on that which I had before heard, their want of family affection and kindness to one another in sickness. He tells the story of a son whom he nursed through small-pox, and who was then set to nurse his own father who had taken the disease, but deserted the father and left him to die. There seems to be a general concurrence of assertion, that in slave times it was necessary for the white masters and mistresses to see that the black children were looked after and that the sick were nursed. Now these things are much neglected.

Mr. M― has a good deal of land. Part of it is farmed" by one of his sons, who is also a medical man. Part is let to a black man on shares, and part to a white man. The great difficulty, he says, is the tendency to let down the land. We visited a suburb almost entirely inhabited by blacks. Most of these people own their own house and patches of land—some one, some two, some three, some six acres, and they seem to get on very well. Many of them appeared to be of mixed blood. One man was quite fair with blonde hair, but quite woolly. Several among them are blacksmiths; they affect that trade a good deal.

Having occasion to send a telegram here, I noticed the excessive charge-one dollar for eight words to New York. I have since found that this is so in all out-of-the-way places. The telegraphs in the United States are entirely in the hands of monopolist private companies, and they charge just in proportion to the absence of competition. There is no fixed rule with reference to distance, or anything else.

This is the day of the general election. I went to see the voting. There is a contest between two white candidates, but one of them is an Independent and seems to be supported by the blacks. There is little sign of excitement. The ballot-box is kept at an open window, and the proceedings are conducted in a loose sort of way. Half a dozen people, officials and others, are in the room behind the box. There is no pretence of secrecy in regard to the ballot papers. Papers with the names of the candidates are lying about. Each voter takes one and gives it to be put into the box. I understand they generally pride themselves on voting openly. The blacks seem to be voting freely; there is no sign of intimidation. After breakfast I started for South Carolina.

SOUTH CAROLINA.

I entered the 'Petrel' State of South Carolina on the day of the election, and the first station in that State that we came to was full of people dressed in the famous red shirt, which we also saw continually at all the stations as we came a'ong. In this part of the State there does not seem to be a very serious contest; it is only in the lower regions, where the black population is very numerous, that there is any

doubt about the result of the elections. The constitution of South Carolina is still that which was imposed upon it after the war. It has not been revised, and is still of the popular character dictated by Northern ideas. All the county and local officers are elected; there is no such system of nomination as prevails in North Carolina. Here the elections for Congress, for the State Assembly, and for the local offices, all take place together, are all entered in one 'ticket.' Mr. Wade Hampton, the present Governor, is a moderate Democrat, and his re-election is not opposed on this occasion. Where there is a serious contest it is in regard to the members of Congress and State Assembly, and the local officers. Red shirts now seem to be only a party badge. I saw no appearance of actual bull-dosing,' but there were many signs of election-day-many people about, a good deal of talking and shouting and galloping about on horseback, and some few symptoms of whisky. There were a good many negroes about, and they did not look terrorised. There is no need to terrorise them just here, as they have no chance-the whites having it all their own way. A few blacks go with the Democrats, and I saw one or two of them wearing the red shirt. On my arrival in Columbia, the capital of the State, in the evening, things seemed pretty quiet the election had passed without any serious trouble.

The country between Salisbury and Columbia is still much like what I had before seen, but it became almost hilly. The tobacco country was left behind a long way back. All this through which I pass to-day is principally cotton country. Much of the cotton plant is very short and small, but apparently very productive; many fields are at this time very heavy with cotton. It is quite a profitable cultivation when an average of half a bale an acre is obtained. If some fields yield a good deal more, there is also a good deal of poor cultivation which does not yield more than a quarter of a bale, or even less than that. Cotton requires much weeding, and if that is neglected the result is bad. On all hands I am told that the cotton cultivation has greatly extended in the upper country. It now grows right up to the Blue Mountains,' as they are called. Some is cultivated by whites, but more on land owned by whites, with the aid of black labour.

I met in the train a Canadian barrister taking his family