Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation: 1838-1839 Part 9

In the evenings I attempted to walk out when the air was cool, but had to run precipitately back into the house to escape from the clouds of sand-flies that had settled on my neck and arms. The weather has suddenly become intensely hot; at least, that is what it appears to me. After I had come in I had a visit from Venus and her daughter, a young girl of ten years old, for whom she begged a larger allowance of food as, she said, what she received for her was totally inadequate to the girl's proper nourishment. I was amazed, upon enquiry, to find that three quarts of grits a week--that is not a pint a day--was considered a sufficient supply for children of her age. The mother said her child was half-famished on it, and it seemed to me terribly little.

My little workmen have brought me in from the woods three darling little rabbits which they have contrived to catch. They seemed to me slightly different from our English bunnies; and Captain F----, who called to-day, gave me a long account of how they differed from the same animal in the northern States. I did not like to mortify my small workmen by refusing their present; but the poor little things must be left to run wild again, for we have no conveniences for pets here, besides we are just weighing anchor ourselves. I hope these poor little fluffy things will not meet any rattlesnakes on their way back to the woods.

I had a visit for flannel from one of our Dianas to-day,--who had done her task in the middle of the day, yet came to receive her flannel,--the most horribly dirty human creature I ever beheld, unless indeed her child, whom she brought with her, may have been half a degree dirtier.

The other day, Psyche (you remember the pretty under nurse, the poor thing whose story I wrote you from the rice plantation) asked me if her mother and brothers might be allowed to come and see her when we are gone away. I asked her some questions about them, and she told me that one of her brothers, who belonged to Mr. K----, was hired by that gentleman to a Mr.

G---- of Darien, and that, upon the latter desiring to purchase him, Mr.

K---- had sold the man without apprising him or any one member of his family that he had done so--a humane proceeding that makes one's blood boil when one hears of it. He had owned the man ever since he was a boy.

Psyche urged me very much to obtain an order permitting her to see her mother and brothers. I will try and obtain it for her, but there seems generally a great objection to the visits of slaves from neighbouring plantations, and, I have no doubt, not without sufficient reason. The more I see of this frightful and perilous social system, the more I feel that those who live in the midst of it must make their whole existence one constant precaution against danger of some sort or other.

I have given Aleck a second reading lesson with S----, who takes an extreme interest in his newly acquired alphabetical lore. He is a very quick and attentive scholar, and I should think a very short time would suffice to teach him to read; but, alas! I have not even that short time.

When I had done with my cla.s.s, I rode off with Jack, who has become quite an expert horseman, and rejoices in being lifted out of the immediate region of snakes by the length of his horse's legs. I cantered through the new wood paths, and took a good sloping gallop through the pine land to St. Annie's. The fire is actually still burning in the woods. I came home quite tired with the heat, though my ride was not a long one.

Just as I had taken off my habit and was preparing to start off with M----and the chicks for Jones's, in the wood wagon, old Dorcas, one of the most decrepid, rheumatic, and miserable old negresses from the further end of the plantation, called in to beg for some sugar. She had walked the whole way from her own settlement, and seemed absolutely exhausted then, and yet she had to walk all the way back. It was not otherwise than slightly meritorious in me, my dear E----, to take her up in the wagon and endure her abominable dirt and foulness in the closest proximity, rather than let her drag her poor old limbs all that way back; but I was glad when we gained her abode and lost her company. I am mightily reminded occasionally in these parts of Trinculo's soliloquy over Caliban. The people at Jones's had done their work at half-past three. Most of the houses were tidy and clean, so were many of the babies. On visiting the cabin of an exceedingly decent woman called Peggy, I found her, to my surprise, possessed of a fine large bible. She told me her husband, Carpenter John, can read, and that she means to make him teach her. The fame of Aleck's literature has evidently reached Jones's, and they are not afraid to tell me that they can read or wish to learn to do so. This poor woman's health is miserable; I never saw a more weakly sickly looking creature. She says she has been broken down ever since the birth of her last child. I asked her how soon after her confinement she went out into the field to work again. She answered very quietly, but with a deep sigh: 'Three weeks, missis; de usual time.' As I was going away, a man named Martin came up, and with great vehemence besought me to give him a prayer-book. In the evening, he came down to fetch it, and to show me that he can read. I was very much pleased to see that they had taken my hint about nailing wooden slats across the windows of their poor huts, to prevent the constant ingress of the poultry. This in itself will produce an immense difference in the cleanliness and comfort of their wretched abodes. In one of the huts I found a broken looking-gla.s.s; it was the only piece of furniture of the sort that I had yet seen among them. The woman who owned it was, I am sorry to say, peculiarly untidy and dirty, and so were her children: so that I felt rather inclined to scoff at the piece of civilized vanity, which I should otherwise have greeted as a promising sign.

I drove home, late in the afternoon, through the sweet-smelling woods, that are beginning to hum with the voice of thousands of insects. My troop of volunteer workmen is increased to five; five lads working for my wages after they have done their task work; and this evening, to my no small amazement, Driver Bran came down to join them for an hour, after working all day at Five Pound, which certainly shows zeal and energy.

Dear E----, I have been riding through the woods all the morning with Jack, giving him directions about the clearings, which I have some faint hope may be allowed to continue after my departure. I went on an exploring expedition round some distant fields, and then home through the St.

Annie's woods. They have almost stripped the trees and thickets along the swamp road since I first came here. I wonder what it is for: not fuel surely, nor to make gra.s.s land of, or otherwise cultivate the swamp. I do deplore these pitiless clearings; and as to this once pretty road, it looks 'forlorn,' as a worthy Pennsylvania farmer's wife once said to me of a pretty hill-side from which her husband had ruthlessly felled a beautiful grove of trees.

I had another snake encounter in my ride this morning. Just as I had walked my horse through the swamp, and while contemplating ruefully its naked aspect, a huge black snake wriggled rapidly across the path, and I pulled my reins tight and opened my mouth wide with horror. These hideous-looking creatures are, I believe, not poisonous, but they grow to a monstrous size, and have tremendous _constrictive_ power. I have heard stories that sound like the nightmare, of their fighting desperately with those deadly creatures, rattlesnakes. I cannot conceive, if the black snakes are not poisonous, what chance they have against such antagonists, let their squeezing powers be what they will. How horrid it did look, _slithering_ over the road! Perhaps the swamp has been cleared on account of its harbouring these dreadful worms.

I rode home very fast, in spite of the exquisite fragrance of the wild cherry blossoms, the carpets and curtains of wild flowers, among which a sort of glorified dandelion glowed conspicuously; dandelions such as I should think grew in the garden of Eden, if there were any at all there. I pa.s.sed the finest magnolia that I have yet seen; it was magnificent, and I suppose had been spared for its beauty, for it grew in the very middle of a cotton field; it was as large as a fine forest tree, and its huge glittering leaves shone like plates of metal in the sun; what a spectacle that tree must be in blossom, and I should think its perfume must be smelt from one end of the plantation to the other. What a glorious creature!

Which do you think ought to weigh most in the scale, the delight of such a vegetable, or the disgust of the black animal I had just met a few minutes before? Would you take the one with the other? Neither would I.

I have spent the whole afternoon at home; my 'gang' is busily at work again. Sawney, one of them, came to join it nearly at sun-down, not having got through his day's task before. In watching and listening to these lads, I was constantly struck with the insolent tyranny of their demeanour towards each other. This is almost a universal characteristic of the manner of the negroes among themselves. They are diabolically cruel to animals too, and they seem to me as a rule hardly to know the difference between truth and falsehood. These detestable qualities, which I constantly hear attributed to them as innate and inherent in their race, appear to me the direct result of their condition. The individual exceptions among them are, I think, quite as many as would be found under similar circ.u.mstances, among the same number of white people.

In considering the whole condition of the people on this plantation, it appears to me that the princ.i.p.al hardships fall to the lot of the women; that is, the princ.i.p.al physical hardships. The very young members of the community are of course idle and neglected; the very very old, idle and neglected too; the middle-aged men do not appear to me over-worked, and lead a mere animal existence, in itself not peculiarly cruel or distressing, but involving a constant element of fear and uncertainty, and the trifling evils of unrequited labour, ignorance the most profound, (to which they are condemned by law); and the unutterable injustice which precludes them from all the merits and all the benefits of voluntary exertion, and the progress that results from it. If they are absolutely unconscious of these evils, then they are not very ill-off brutes, always barring the chance of being given or sold away from their mates or their young--processes which even brutes do not always relish. I am very much struck with the vein of melancholy, which a.s.sumes almost a poetical tone in some of the things they say. Did I tell you of that poor old decrepid creature Dorcas, who came to beg some sugar of me the other day? saying as she took up my watch from the table and looked at it, 'Ah? I need not look at this, I have almost done with time!' Was not that striking from such a poor old ignorant crone?

Dear E----. This is the fourth day that I have had a 'gang' of lads working in the woods for me after their task hours, for pay; you cannot think how zealous and energetic they are; I daresay the novelty of the process pleases them almost as much as the money they earn. I must say they quite deserve their small wages.

Last night I received a present from Mrs. F---- of a drum fish, which animal I had never beheld before, and which seemed to me first cousin to the great Leviathan. It is to be eaten, and is certainly the biggest fish food I ever saw; however, everything is in proportion, and the prawns that came with it are upon a similarly extensive scale; this magnificent piscatorial bounty was accompanied by a profusion of Hamilton green peas, really a munificent supply.

I went out early after breakfast with Jack hunting for new paths; we rode all along the road by Jones's Creek, and most beautiful it was. We skirted the plantation burial ground, and a dismal place it looked; the cattle trampling over it in every direction--except where Mr. K---- had had an enclosure put up round the graves of two white men who had worked on the estate. They were strangers, and of course utterly indifferent to the people here; but by virtue of their white skins, their resting-place was protected from the hoofs of the cattle, while the parents and children, wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, of the poor slaves, sleeping beside them, might see the graves of those they loved trampled upon and browsed over, desecrated and defiled, from morning till night. There is something intolerably cruel in this disdainful denial of a common humanity pursuing these wretches even when they are hid beneath the earth.

The day was exquisitely beautiful, and I explored a new wood path, and found it all strewed with a lovely wild flower not much unlike a primrose.

I spent the afternoon at home. I dread going out twice a-day now, on account of the heat and the sand flies. While I was sitting by the window, Abraham, our cook, went by with some most revolting looking 'raw material'

(part I think of the interior of the monstrous drum fish of which I have told you). I asked him with considerable disgust what he was going to do with it, he replied, 'Oh! we coloured people eat it, missis;' said I, 'Why do you say we coloured people?' 'Because, missis, white people won't touch what we too glad of.' 'That,' said I, 'is because you are poor, and do not often have meat to eat, not because you are coloured, Abraham; rich white folks will not touch what poor white folks are too glad of; it has nothing in the world to do with colour, and if there were white people here worse off than you (amazing and inconceivable suggestion, I fear), they would be glad to eat what you perhaps would not touch.' Profound pause of meditation on the part of Abraham, wound up by a considerate 'Well, missis, I suppose so.' After which he departed with the horrid looking offal.

To-day--Sat.u.r.day--I took another ride of discovery round the fields by Jones's. I think I shall soon be able to survey this estate, I have ridden so carefully over it in every direction; but my rides are drawing to a close and even were I to remain here this must be the case unless I got up and rode under the stars in the cool of the night. This afternoon I was obliged to drive up to St. Annie's: I had promised the people several times that I would do so. I went after dinner and as late as I could, and found very considerable improvement in the whole condition of the place; the houses had all been swept, and some of them actually scoured. The children were all quite tolerably clean; they had put slats across all their windows, and little chicken gates to the doors to keep out the poultry. There was a poor woman lying in one of the cabins in a wretched condition. She begged for a bandage, but I do not see of what great use that can be to her, as long as she has to hoe in the fields so many hours a day, which I cannot prevent.

Returning home, Israel undertook to pilot me across the cotton fields into the pine land; and a more excruciating process than being dragged over that very uneven surface in that wood wagon without springs I did never endure, mitigated and soothed though it was by the literally fascinating account my charioteer gave me of the rattlesnakes with which the place we drove through becomes infested as the heat increases. I cannot say that his description of them, though more demonstrative as far as regarded his own horror of them, was really worse than that which Mr. G---- was giving me of them yesterday. He said they were very numerous, and were found in every direction all over the plantation, but that they did not become really vicious until quite late in the summer; until then, it appears that they generally endeavour to make off if one meets them, but during the intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical, they instantly coil themselves for a spring. The most intolerable proceeding on their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the trees, and either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches.

There is something too revolting in the idea of serpents looking down upon one from the shade of the trees to which one may betake oneself for shelter in the dreadful heat of the southern midsummer; decidedly I do not think the dog-days would be pleasant here. The moca.s.sin snake, which is nearly as deadly as the rattlesnake, abounds all over the island.

In the evening, I had a visit from Mr. C---- and Mr. B----, who officiates to-morrow at our small island church. The conversation I had with these gentlemen was sad enough. They seem good and kind and amiable men, and I have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slaveholders; but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of their discourse has a morally m.u.f.fled sound, which one must hear to be able to conceive. Mr. B---- told me that the people on this plantation not going to church was the result of a positive order from Mr. K----, who had peremptorily forbidden their doing so, and of course to have infringed that order would have been to incur severe corporal chastis.e.m.e.nt. Bishop B----, it seems, had advised that there should be periodical preaching on the plantations, which, said Mr. B----, would have obviated any necessity for the people of different estates congregating at any given point at stated times, which might perhaps be objectionable, and at the same time would meet the reproach which was now beginning to be directed towards the southern planters as a cla.s.s, of neglecting the eternal interest of their dependents. But Mr. K---- had equally objected to this. He seems to have held religious teaching a mighty dangerous thing--and how right he was! I have met with conventional cowardice of various shades and shapes in various societies that I have lived in; but anything like the pervading timidity of tone which I find here on all subjects, but above all on that of the condition of the slaves, I have never dreamed of. Truly slavery begets slavery, and the perpetual state of suspicion and apprehension of the slaveholders is a very handsome offset, to say the least of it, against the fetters and the lash of the slaves. Poor people, one and all, but especially poor oppressors of the oppressed! The att.i.tude of these men is really pitiable; they profess (perhaps some of them strive to do so indeed) to consult the best interests of their slaves, and yet shrink back terrified from the approach of the slightest intellectual or moral improvement which might modify their degraded and miserable existence. I do pity these deplorable servants of two masters more than any human beings I have ever seen--more than their own slaves a thousand times!

To-day is Sunday, and I have been to the little church on the island. It is the second time since I came down to the south that I have been to a place of worship. A curious little incident prefaced my going thither this morning. I had desired Israel to get my horse ready and himself to accompany me, as I meant to ride to church; and you cannot imagine anything droller than his horror and dismay when he at length comprehended that my purpose was to attend divine service in my riding habit. I asked him what was the trouble, for though I saw something was creating a dreadful convulsion in his mind, I had no idea what it was till he told me, adding, that he had never seen such a thing on St. Simon's in his life--as who should say, such a thing was never seen in Hyde Park or the Tuileries before. You may imagine my amus.e.m.e.nt, but presently I was destined to shock something much more serious than poor Israel's sense of _les convenances et bienseances_, and it was not without something of an effort that I made up my mind to do so. I was standing at the open window speaking to him about the horses, and telling him to get ready to ride with me, when George, another of the men, went by with a shade or visor to his cap exactly the shape of the one I left behind at the north, and for want of which I have been suffering severely from the intense heat and glare of the sun for the last week. I asked him to hand me his cap, saying, 'I want to take the pattern of that shade.' Israel exclaimed, 'Oh missis, not to-day; let him leave the cap with you to-morrow, but don't cut pattern on de Sabbath day!' It seemed to me a much more serious matter to offend this scruple than the prejudice with regard to praying in a riding habit; still it had to be done. 'Do you think it wrong, Israel,'

said I, 'to work on Sunday?' 'Yes, missis, parson tell we so.' 'Then, Israel, be sure you never do it. Did your parson never tell you that your conscience was for yourself and not for your neighbours, Israel?' 'Oh yes, missis, he tell we that too.' 'Then mind that too, Israel.' The shade was cut out and st.i.tched upon my cap, and protected my eyes from the fierce glare of the sun and sand as I rode to church.

On our way, we came to a field where the young corn was coming up. The children were in the field--little living scarecrows--watching it, of course, as on a weekday, to keep off the birds. I made Israel observe this, who replied, 'Oh missis, if de people's corn left one whole day not watched, not one blade of it remain to-morrow; it must be watched, missis.' 'What, on the Sabbath day, Israel?' 'Yes, missis, or else we lose it all.' I was not sorry to avail myself of this ill.u.s.tration of the nature of works of necessity, and proceeded to enlighten Israel with regard to what I conceive to be the genuine observance of the Sabbath.

You cannot imagine anything wilder or more beautiful than the situation of the little rustic temple in the woods where I went to worship to-day, with the magnificent live oaks standing round it and its picturesque burial ground. The disgracefully neglected state of the latter, its broken and ruinous enclosure, and its s.h.a.ggy weed-grown graves, tell a strange story of the residents of this island, who are content to leave the resting-place of their dead in so shocking a condition. In the tiny little chamber of a church, the grand old litany of the Episcopal Church of England was not a little shorn of its ceremonial stateliness; clerk there was none, nor choir, nor organ, and the clergyman did duty for all, giving out the hymn and then singing it himself, followed as best might be by the uncertain voices of his very small congregation, the smallest I think I ever saw gathered in a Christian place of worship, even counting a few of the negroes who had ventured to place themselves standing at the back of the church--an infringement on their part upon the privileges of their betters--as Mr. B---- generally preaches a second sermon to them after the _white_ service, to which as a rule they are not admitted.

On leaving the church, I could not but smile at the quaint and original costumes with which Israel had so much dreaded a comparison for my irreproachable London riding habit. However, the strangeness of it was what inspired him with terror; but, at that rate, I am afraid a Paris gown and bonnet might have been in equal danger of shocking his prejudices.

There was quite as little affinity with the one as the other in the curious specimens of the 'art of dressing' that gradually distributed themselves among the two or three indescribable machines (to use the appropriate Scotch t.i.tle) drawn up under the beautiful oak trees, on which they departed in various directions to the several plantations on the island.

I mounted my horse, and resumed my ride and my conversation with Israel.

He told me that Mr. K----'s great objection to the people going to church was their meeting with the slaves from the other plantations; and one reason, he added, that he did not wish them to do that was, that they trafficked and bartered away the cooper's wares, tubs, piggins, &c., made on the estate. I think, however, from everything I hear of that gentleman, that the mere fact of the Hampton people coming in contact with the slaves of other plantations would be a thing he would have deprecated. As a severe disciplinarian, he was probably right.

In the course of our talk, a reference I made to the Bible, and Israel's answer that he could not read, made me ask him why his father had never taught any of his sons to read; old Jacob, I know, can read. What followed I shall never forget. He began by giving all sorts of childish unmeaning excuses and reasons for never having tried to learn--became confused and quite incoherent,--and then, suddenly stopping, and pulling up his horse, said, with a look and manner that went to my very heart; 'Missis, what for me learn to read? me have no prospect!' I rode on without venturing to speak to him again for a little while. When I had recovered from that remark of his, I explained to him that, though indeed 'without prospect'

in some respects, yet reading might avail him much to better his condition, moral, mental, and physical. He listened very attentively, and was silent for a minute; after which he said:--'All you say very true, missis, and me sorry now me let de time pa.s.s; but you know what de white man dat goberns de estate him seem to like and favour, dat de people find out bery soon and do it; now, Ma.s.sa K----, him neber favour our reading, him not like it; likely as not he lick you if he find you reading, or if you wish to teach your children, him always say, "Pooh, teach 'em to read--teach 'em to work." According to dat, we neber paid much attention to it, but now it will be different; it was different in former times. De old folks of my father and mother's time could read more than we can, and I expect de people will dare to give some thought to it again now.'

There's a precious sample of what one man's influence may do in his own sphere, dear E----! This man Israel is a remarkably fine fellow in every way, with a frank, open, and most intelligent countenance, which rises before me with its look of quiet sadness whenever I think of those words (and they haunt me), 'I have no prospect.'

On my arrival at home, I found that a number of the people, not knowing I had gone to church, had come up to the house, hoping that I would read prayers to them, and had not gone back to their homes, but waited to see me. I could not bear to disappoint them, for many of them had come from the farthest settlements on the estate; and so, though my hot ride had tired me a good deal, and my talk with Israel troubled me profoundly, I took off my habit, and had them all in, and read the afternoon service to them. When it was over, two of the women--Venus and Trussa--asked if they might be permitted to go to the nursery and see the children. Their account of the former condition of the estate was a corroboration of Israel's. They said that the older slaves on the plantation had been far better off than the younger ones of the present day; that Major ---- was considerate and humane to his people; and that the women were especially carefully treated. But they said Mr. K---- had ruined all the young women with working them too soon after their confinements; and as for the elder ones, he would kick them, curse them, turn their clothes over their heads, flog them unmercifully himself, and abuse them shamefully, no matter what condition they were in. They both ended with fervent thanks to G.o.d that he had left the estate, and rejoicing that we had come, and, above all, that we 'had made young missis for them.' Venus went down on her knees, exclaiming, 'Oh, missis, I glad now; and when I am dead, I glad in my grave that you come to us and bring us little missis.'

Dear E----. I still go on exploring, or rather surveying, the estate, the aspect of which is changing every day with the unfolding of the leaves and the wonderful profusion of wild flowers. The cleared ground all round the new building is one sheet of blooming blue of various tints; it is perfectly exquisite. But in the midst of my delight at these new blossoms, I am most sorrowfully bidding adieu to that paragon of parasites, the yellow jasmine; I think I must have gathered the very last blossoms of it to-day. Nothing can be more lovely, nothing so exquisitely fragrant. I was surprised to recognise by their foliage, to-day, some fine mulberry trees, by Jones's Creek; perhaps they are the remains of the silk-worm experiment that Mr. C---- persuaded Major ---- to try so ineffectually.

While I was looking at some wild plum and cherry trees that were already swarming with blight in the shape of mult.i.tudinous caterpillars' nests, an ingenuous darkie, by name Cudgie, asked me if I could explain to him why the trees blossomed out so fair, and then all 'went off into a kind of dying.' Having directed his vision and attention to the horrid white glistening webs, all lined with their brood of black devourers, I left him to draw his own conclusions.

The afternoon was rainy, in spite of which I drove to Busson Hill, and had a talk with Bran about the vile caterpillar blights on the wild plum trees, and asked him if it would not be possible to get some sweet grafts from Mr. C---- for some of the wild fruit trees, of which there are such quant.i.ties. Perhaps, however, they are not worth grafting. Bran promised me that the people should not be allowed to enc.u.mber the paths and the front of their houses with unsightly and untidy heaps of oyster sh.e.l.ls. He promised all sorts of things. I wonder how soon after I am gone they will all return into the condition of brutal filth and disorder in which I found them.

The men and women had done their work here by half-past three. The chief labour in the cotton fields, however, is both earlier and later in the season. At present they have little to do but let the crop grow. In the evening I had a visit from the son of a very remarkable man, who had been one of the chief drivers on the estate in Major ----'s time, and his son brought me a silver cup which Major ---- had given his father as a testimonial of approbation, with an inscription on it recording his fidelity and trustworthiness at the time of the invasion of the coast of Georgia by the English troops. Was not that a curious reward for a slave who was supposed not to be able to read his own praises? And yet, from the honourable pride with which his son regarded this relic, I am sure the master did well so to reward his servant, though it seemed hard that the son of such a man should be a slave. Maurice himself came with his father's precious silver cup in his hand, to beg for a small pittance of sugar, and for a prayer-book, and also to know if the privilege of a milch cow for the support of his family, which was among the favours Major ---- allowed his father, might not be continued to him. He told me he had ten children 'working for ma.s.sa,' and I promised to mention his pet.i.tion to Mr. ----.

On Sunday last, I rode round the woods near St. Annie's and met with a monstrous snake, which Jack called a chicken snake; but whether because it particularly affected poultry as its diet, or for what other reason, he could not tell me. Nearer home, I encountered another gliding creature, that stopped a moment just in front of my horse's feet, as if it was too much afraid of being trampled upon to get out of the way; it was the only snake animal I ever saw that I did not think hideous. It was of a perfectly pure apple green colour, with a delicate line of black like a collar round its throat; it really was an exquisite worm, and Jack said it was harmless. I did not, however, think it expedient to bring it home in my bosom, though if ever I have a pet snake, it shall be such an one.

In the afternoon, I drove to Jones's with several supplies of flannel for the rheumatic women and old men. We have ridden over to Hamilton again, to pay another visit to the F----s, and on our way pa.s.sed an enormous rattlesnake, hanging dead on the bough of a tree. Dead as it was, it turned me perfectly sick with horror, and I wished very much to come back to the north immediately, where these are not the sort of blackberries that grow on every bush. The evening air now, after the heat of the day, is exquisitely mild, and the nights dry and wholesome, the whole atmosphere indescribably fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and as I stood, before going to bed last night, watching the slow revolving light on Sapelo Island, that warns the ships from the dangerous bar at the river's mouth, and heard the measured pulse of the great Atlantic waters on the beach, I thought no more of rattlesnakes--no more, for one short while, of slavery. How still, and sweet, and solemn, it was!

We have been paying more friendly and neighbourly visits, or rather returning them; and the recipients of these civilised courtesies on our last calling expedition were the family one member of which was a party concerned in that barbarous challenge I wrote you word about. Hitherto that very brutal and bloodthirsty cartel appears to have had no result.

You must not on that account imagine that it will have none. At the north, were it possible for a duel intended to be conducted on such savage terms to be matter of notoriety, the very horror of the thing would create a feeling of grotesqueness, and the antagonists in such a proposed encounter would simply incur an immense amount of ridicule and obloquy. But here n.o.body is astonished and n.o.body ashamed of such preliminaries to a mortal combat between two gentlemen, who propose firing at marks over each other's hearts, and cutting off each other's heads; and though this agreeable party of pleasure has not come off yet, there seems to be no reason why it should not at the first convenient season. Reflecting upon all which, I rode not without trepidation through Colonel H----'s grounds, and up to his house. Mr. W----'s head was not stuck upon a pole anywhere within sight, however, and as soon as I became pretty sure of this, I began to look about me, and saw instead a trellis tapestried with the most beautiful roses I ever beheld, another of these exquisite southern flowers--the Cherokee rose. The blossom is very large, composed of four or five pure white petals, as white and as large as those of the finest Camellia with a bright golden eye for a focus; the buds and leaves are long and elegantly slender, like those of some tea roses, and the green of the foliage is dark and at the same time vivid and l.u.s.trous; it grew in ma.s.ses so as to form almost a hedge, all starred with these wonderful white blossoms, which, unfortunately, have no perfume.

We rode home through the pine land to Jones's, looked at the new house which is coming on hideously, saw two beautiful kinds of trumpet honeysuckle already lighting up the woods in every direction with gleams of scarlet, and when we reached home found a splendid donation of vegetables, flowers, and mutton from our kind neighbour Mrs. F----, who is a perfect Lady Bountiful to us. This same mutton, however--my heart bleeds to say it--disappeared the day after it was sent to us. Abraham the cook declares that he locked the door of the safe upon it, which I think may be true, but I also think he unlocked it again. I am sorry; but, after all, it is very natural these people should steal a little of our meat from us occasionally, who steal almost all their bread from them habitually.

I rode yesterday to St. Annie's with Mr. ----. We found a whole tract of marsh had been set on fire by the facetious negro called Pun, who had helped me out of it some time ago. As he was set to work in it, perhaps it was with a view of making it less damp; at any rate, it was crackling, blazing, and smoking cheerily, and I should think would be insupportable for the snakes. While stopping to look at the conflagration, Mr. ---- was accosted by a three parts naked and one part tattered little she slave--black as ebony, where her skin was discoverable through its perfect incrustation of dirt--with a thick mat of frizzly wool upon her skull, which made the sole request she preferred to him irresistibly ludicrous:--'Ma.s.sa, ma.s.sa, you please to buy me a comb to tick in my head?' Mr. ---- promised her this necessary of life, and I promised myself to give her the luxury of one whole garment. Mrs. ---- has sent me the best possible consolation for the lost mutton, some lovely flowers, and these will not be stolen.

_Sat.u.r.day, the 13th._--Dear E----, I rode to-day through all my woodpaths for the last time with Jack, and I think I should have felt quite melancholy at taking leave of them and him, but for the apparition of a large black snake, which filled me with disgust and nipped my other sentiments in the bud. Not a day pa.s.ses now that I do not encounter one or more of these hateful reptiles; it is curious how much more odious they are to me than the alligators that haunt the mud banks of the river round the rice plantation. It is true that there is something very dreadful in the thick shapeless ma.s.s, uniform in colour almost to the black slime on which it lies basking, and which you hardly detect till it begins to move. But even those ungainly crocodiles never sickened me as those rapid, lithe, and sinuous serpents do. Did I ever tell you that the people at the rice plantation caught a young alligator and brought it to the house, and it was kept for some time in a tub of water? It was an ill-tempered little monster; it used to set up its back like a cat when it was angry, and open its long jaws in a most vicious manner.

After looking at my new path in the pine land, I crossed Pike Bluff, and breaking my way all through the burnt district, returned home by Jones's.

In the afternoon, we paid a long visit to Mr. C----. It is extremely interesting to me to talk with him about the negroes; he has spent so much of his life among them, has managed them so humanely, and apparently so successfully, that his experience is worthy of all attention. And yet it seems to me that it is impossible, or rather, perhaps, for those very reasons it is impossible, for him ever to contemplate them in any condition but that of slavery. He thinks them very like the Irish, and instanced their subserviency, their flattering, their lying, and pilfering, as traits common to the character of both peoples. But I cannot persuade myself that in both cases, and certainly in that of the negroes, these qualities are not in great measure the result of their condition. He says that he considers the extremely low diet of the negroes one reason for the absence of crimes of a savage nature among them; most of them do not touch meat the year round. But in this respect they certainly do not resemble the Irish, who contrive upon about as low a national diet as civilisation is acquainted with, to commit the bloodiest and most frequent outrages with which civilisation has to deal. His statement that it is impossible to bribe the negroes to work on their own account with any steadiness may be generally true, but admits of quite exceptions enough to throw doubt upon its being natural supineness in the race rather than the inevitable consequence of denying them the entire right to labour for their own profit. Their laziness seems to me the necessary result of their primary wants being supplied, and all progress denied them. Of course, if the natural spur to exertion, necessity, is removed, you do away with the will to work of a vast proportion of all who do work in the world. It is the law of progress that a man's necessities grow with his exertions to satisfy them, and labour and improvement thus continually act and react upon each other to raise the scale of desire and achievement; and I do not believe that, in the majority of instances among any people on the face of the earth, the will to labour for small indulgences would survive the loss of freedom and the security of food enough to exist upon. Mr. ---- said that he had offered a bribe of twenty dollars apiece, and the use of a pair of oxen, for the clearing of a certain piece of land, to the men on his estate, and found the offer quite ineffectual to procure the desired result; the land was subsequently cleared as usual task work under the lash. Now, certainly, we have among Mr. ----'s people instances of men who have made very considerable sums of money by boat-building in their leisure hours, and the instances of almost life-long persevering stringent labour by which slaves have at length purchased their own freedom and that of their wives and children, are on record in numbers sufficient to prove that they are capable of severe sustained effort of the most patient and heroic kind for that great object, liberty. For my own part, I know no people who doat upon labour for its own sake; and it seems to me quite natural to any absolutely ignorant and nearly brutish man, if you say to him, 'No effort of your own can make you free, but no absence of effort shall starve you,' to decline to work for anything less than mastery over his whole life, and to take up with his mess of porridge as the alternative. One thing that Mr. ---- said seemed to me to prove rather too much. He declared that his son, objecting to the folks on his plantation going about bare-headed, had at one time offered a reward of a dollar to those who should habitually wear hats without being able to induce them to do so, which he attributed to sheer careless indolence; but I think it was merely the force of the habit of going uncovered rather than absolute laziness. The universal testimony of all present at this conversation was in favour of the sweetness of temper and natural gentleness of disposition of the negroes; but these characteristics they seemed to think less inherent than the result of diet and the other lowering influences of their condition; and it must not be forgotten that on the estate of this wise and kind master a formidable conspiracy was organised among his slaves.

We rowed home through a world of stars, the stedfast ones set in the still blue sky, and the flashing swathes of phosphoric light turned up by our oars and keel in the smooth blue water. It was lovely.