Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

. . .General Saxton has lent me a horse and I had a ride through the plantation to a strange old fort, of which there are two here, like those in St. Augustine, built by a French explorer about the time of the Pilgrims, and older, therefore, than any remains in New England, even the Higginson house at Guilford, Connecticut. They are built of a curious combination of oyster shells and cement . .. and are still hard and square, save where water-worn. One is before this house and a mere low redoubt; the other, two miles off, is a high square house, bored with holes for musketry and the walls still firm; though a cannon-ball would probably crush them.

. .. William, our attendant, speaks with contempt of the cultivation of this famous plantation--“No yam, sa; no white potato, no brimstone” --which is the startling name given to the yellow sweet potato such as we have at the North, but which is superseded here by a smaller and more insipid white one....

A boatload of holiday negroes crossed the river, and as the women, in gay colors with head-kerchiefs, were carried ashore in the men's arms, I was reminded of similar scenes in Fayal, while the continuous sing-song