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everybody can cut as much wood as he likes, still it is pretty expensive. Marriages are
always performed by the	sheriff, who is the only	officer in	the	place.	The
Negro	children are never	christened, and there is	a big fine	for	teaching	one
of them to read. Some of them preach to others, but it is always some terrible nonsense.
After we arrived	in Pearlington we lay there fourteen days before	we began
to	take on wood. It	was so cold nobody could remember so hard a winter.	It
froze for a whole week,	so	the sugar	plantations	suffered	dreadfully.	We had
nothing to do. We slept	on	board at night and ate	with the	owner,	for	our cook
had left us.
I had bought a gun, and I went hunting almost every day. Here is lots of game and you do not need to go far, especially if you have hounds with you. The owner had three, and, by feeding the other dogs from the town on board, we could	get as many as we	wanted by whistling for them. And	they	knew how	to
hunt.	As soon as they started any game they would	go running	it till they	got
it	up in a tree. Then	they stood and barked, so we could soon find it.
Strangely enough	with the exception of the deer, all the game,	even	the
foxes will jump into a tree when hunted. The rabbits, which are much smaller than ours will jump for hollow trees. So	you	always bring an	ax when hunting,
to cut down the	trees. The owner's son	and	I went hunting	one day, and we
heard the dogs barking. When we got there we saw the tree was hollow, so we knew it was either a rabbit or an opossum hiding there. We had no ax, so Alfred went home to get one, while I stayed on watch, that it should not run away. When he came back we cut a hole in the tree. I put my arm in and got hold of	the	leg of a rabbit.	It was too big to pull through the hole, so	both
of us got a	club so we could	hit it when I let it go and it ran out by the	root
of the tree. Well we were ready and I let go, but it went so fast both of us hit behind it and it got	away.
The opossum has to	be	hunted at	night with	torches	made of	pitch pine,
which is so full	of resin it burns like a candle. By the help	of the light one
can see them in	the trees when the dogs	have	chased them up, and then shoot
them or cut down	the tree. When it	has fallen down	it does	not move and you
need just to let	it twist its tail	around your finger and	you can carry it
where you will.	I have since seen	one with eight	young on her back. They
twist their tails	around the mother,	and spit like	cats if	anyone comes near
them.
Here are also raccoons and a few bears and panthers, but I have never seen the two latter. The soil in the woods is very poor, but higher up the river there are some cotton plantations. At last we got our load of wood and sailed again to New Orleans.
We	had	several Indians	with us, who brought deer hides to town.	They
dressed	in skin trousers and	moccasins, and all had woolen blankets to wrap up
in instead of shirts. The women and men dressed alike, only the women had long hair. They are not so handsome as the South American Indians, but look more intelligent and savage, but they never had any money until after they sold their skins, so they left their guns as security. They all had guns except the children who had bows and arrows.
We had no cook and Capt. Williams sent me to New Orleans to get one. I could not find one, so I went on board an English ship and asked one of the
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