Under this humiliating disability the Huguenots lived and labored for a considerable period, until the propriety of their lives, the purity of their virtues, and their frequently-tried fidelity in the cause of the country, forced the majority to be just.

An act, passed in 1696, making all aliens, THEN inhabitants, free--enabling them to hold lands and to claim the same as heirs--according liberty of conscience to all Christians (except Papists), &c .-- placed our refugees on a footing of equality with the rest of the inhabitants, and put an end to the old hostilities between them .-- When our traveller turned his back upon this "kind, loving, and affable people," to pursue his journey into North Carolina, his first forward step was into a howling wilderness.

The Santee settlement, though but forty miles distant from Charleston, was a frontier--all beyond was waste, thicket and forest, filled with unknown and fearful animals, and "sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful,"-- which the footstep of man dreaded to disturb.

Of the wild beasts by which it was tenanted, a single further extract from the journal of Mr.Lawson will give us a sufficient and striking idea.

He has left the Santee settlements but a single day--probably not more than fifteen miles.