_Jan. 29._ Outside of our plantations, the people for once are excited
with good reason. In the most awkward, incomplete, bungling way the
negroes are allowed to preëmpt twenty and forty acre tracts; so
everybody is astir, trying to stake out claims and then to get their
claims considered by the Commissioners. These gentlemen meanwhile are
at loggerheads, the land is but half surveyed, and everything is
delightfully confused and uncertain. Still it is the beginning of a
great thing,--negroes become land-owners and the door is thrown open
to Northern immigration. Years hence it will be a satisfaction to look
back on these beginnings,--now it is very foggy ahead and very
uncertain under foot.