The white men who were bound served listlessly; they that were well were as lazy as the weather; they that were newly come over and ill with the "seasoning" fever tossed upon their pallets, longing for the cooling waters of home.

The white men who were free swore that the world, though fair, was warm, and none walked if he could ride.

The sunny, dusty roads were left for shadowed bridle paths; in a land where most places could be reached by boat, the water would have been the highway but that the languid air would not fill the sails.
It was agreed that the heat was unnatural, and that, likely enough, there would be a deal of fever during the summer.
But there was thick shade in the Fair View garden, and when there was air at all it visited the terrace above the river.

The rooms of the house were large and high-pitched; draw to the shutters, and they became as cool as caverns.

Around the place the heat lay in wait: heat of wide, shadowless fields, where Haward's slaves toiled from morn to eve; heat of the great river, unstirred by any wind, hot and sleeping beneath the blazing sun; heat of sluggish creeks and of the marshes, shadeless as the fields.