American Adventures Part 48

Any negro can have a ticket to go about the neighborhood, but cannot leave it without a pa.s.s. No strangers allowed to come on the place without a pa.s.s.

The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work well done. The task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength of the negro.

All visiting between the Georgia plantation to be refused. [The Telfairs owned another plantation on the Georgia side of the river.]

No one to get husbands or wives across the river. No night meeting or preaching allowed on the place except on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday morning.

If there is any fighting on the place whip all engaged in it, no matter what may be the cause it may be covered with.

In extreme cases of sickness employ a physician. After a dose of castor oil is given, a dose of calomel, and blister applied, if no relief, then send.

My negroes are not allowed to plant cotton for themselves.

Everything else they may plant. Give them ticket to sell what they make.

I have no Driver (slave-driver). You are to task the negroes yourself. They are responsible to you alone for work.

Certain negroes are mentioned by name:

Many persons are indebted to Elsey for attending upon their negroes.

I wish you to see them or send to them for the money.

If Dolly is unable to return to cooking she must take charge of all the little negroes.

Pay Free Moses two dollars and a half for taking care of things left at his landing.

Bull Street, the fashionable street of the city, is a gem of a street, despite the incursions made at not infrequent intervals, by comparatively new, and often very ugly buildings. Every few blocks Bull Street has to turn out of its course and make the circuit of one of the small parks of which I have spoken, and this gives it charm and variety.

On this street stands the De Soto Hotel, which, when I first went to Savannah, years ago, was by all odds the leading hostelry of the city.

It is one of those great rambling buildings with a big porch out in front, an open court in back, and everything about it, including the bedchambers, very s.p.a.cious and rather old fashioned. Lately the Savannah Hotel has been erected down at the business end of Bull Street. It is a modern hotel of the more conventional commercial type. But even down there, near the business part of town, it is not confronted by congested cobbled streets and clanging trolley cars, but looks out upon one of the squares, filled with magnolias, oaks and palms. But another time I think I shall go back to the De Soto.

The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.

Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.

Elsewhere, however, there are several skysc.r.a.pers, most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme.

Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs.

It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot say, but Mr. H.H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall in the year 1811.

The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quant.i.ties of these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.

All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed.

Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.

All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circ.u.mference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.

On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered.

I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the a.s.sortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.

In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his role of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.

Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it is like some n.o.ble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age, poverty and starvation--dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarre did in New Orleans.

The Hermitage has, I believe, no great history save what is written in its old chipped walls of stucco-covered brick, and the slave-cabins which still form a background for it. It is a story of baronial decay, resulting, doubtless, from the termination of slavery. Hordes of negroes of the "new issue" infest the old slave-cabins and on sight of visitors rush out with almost violent demands for money, in return for which they wish to sing. Their singing is, however, the poorest negro singing I have ever heard. All the spontaneity, all the relish, all the vividness which makes negro singing wonderful, has been removed, here, by the fixed idea that singing is not a form of expression but a mere noise to be given vent to for the purpose of extracting backsheesh. It is saddening to witness the degradation, through what may be called professionalism, of any great racial quality. These negroes, half mendicant, half traders on the reputation of their race, express professionalism in its lowest form. They are more pitiful than the professional tarantella dancers who await the arrival of tourists, in certain parts of southern Italy, as spiders await flies.

CHAPTER LII

MISS "JAX" AND SOME FLORIDA GOSSIP

"Or mebbe you 're intendin' of Investments? Orange-plantin'? Pine?

Hotel? or Sanitarium? What above This yea'th _can_ be your line?..."

SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.")

It is the boast of Jacksonville (known locally by the convenient abbreviation "Jax") that it stands as the "Gate to Florida." But the fact that a gate is something through which people pa.s.s--usually without stopping--causes some anguish to an active Chamber of Commerce, which has been known to send bands to the railway station to serenade tourists in the hope of enticing them to alight.

If I were to personify Jacksonville, it would be, I think, as an amiable young woman, member of a domestic family, whose papa and mama had moved to Florida from somewhere else--for it is as hard to find a native of Jacksonville in that city as to find a native New Yorker in New York.

Miss Jacksonville's papa, as I conceive it, has prospered while daughter has been growing up, and has bought for her a fine large house on a main corner, where many people pa.s.s. Having reached maturity Miss Jacksonville wishes to be in Florida society--to give, as it were, house parties, like those of her neighbors, the other winter resorts.

She sees people pa.s.sing her doors all winter long, and she says to herself: "I must get some of these people to come in."

To this end she brushes off the walk, lays a carpet on the steps, puts flowers in the vases, orders up a lot of fancy food and drink (from the very admirable Hotel Mason), turns on the lights and the Victor, leaves the front door invitingly open, and hopes for the best. Soon people begin to come in, but as she meets them she discovers that most of them have come to see papa on business; only a few have come on her account.

They help themselves to sandwiches, look about the room, and listen to what Miss Jacksonville has to say.

Time pa.s.ses. Nothing happens. She asks how they like the chairs.

"Very comfortable," they a.s.sure her.

"Do have some more to eat and drink," says she.

"What is your history?" a guest asks her presently.

"I haven't much history to speak of," she replies. "They tell me Andrew Jackson had his territorial government about where my house stands, but I don't know much about it. We don't care much about history in our family."

"What do you do with yourself?"

"Oh, I keep house, and go occasionally to the Woman's Club, and in the evenings father tells me about his business."

"Very nice," says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do you gamble? Can you make love?"

"I dance a little and play a little golf out at the Florida Country Club," she says, with but small signs of enthusiasm. "The thing I'm really most interested in, though, is father's business. He lost a lot of money in the fire of 1901, but he's made it all back and a lot more besides."

"What about surf-bathing?" asks the pleasure-seeking visitor, stifling a yawn.

"There's Atlantic Beach only eighteen miles from here. It's a wonderful beach. Father's putting a million in improvements out there, but there's no time to go there just now. However, if you'd like to, I can take you down and show you the new docks he has built."