The wheat was all garnered, and the land
ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian-corn standing, but I saw no
pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many
turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little
miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of
our cornfields. The rail-fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders
of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied.
The houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the
garden-fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely
of trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very
generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious
and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar
to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental
President, was frequently met with. The women were still more
distinguishable from our New-England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,
delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,
dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a
land of olives.
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