Letters of a Traveller Part 4

De red-bird de soger.

John John Crow.

De mocking-bird de lawyer.

John John Crow.

De alligator sawyer.

John John Crow.

The alligator's back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge of a saw, which explains the last line.

When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a s.p.a.cious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling, and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility and perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks and had worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven miles to attend the corn-shucking.

From the dances a transition was made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were extremely ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called upon a huge black man named Toby to address the company in his stead. Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against the wall, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of "de majority of Sous Carolina," "de interests of de state," "de honor of ole Ba'nwell district," and these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. A length he began to falter, when the captain with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made an excellent speech.

The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is, of course, the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice. The result is a compromise in which each party yields something, and a good-natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other. I have been told by planters that the slave brought from Africa is much more serviceable, though more high-spirited and dangerous than the slave born in this country, and early trained to his condition.

I have been impatiently waiting the approach of spring, since I came to this state, but the weather here is still what the inhabitants call winter. The season, I am told, is more than three weeks later than usual.

Fields of Indian corn which were planted in the beginning of March, must be replanted, for the seed has perished in the ground, and the cotton planting is deferred for fine weather. The peach and plum trees have stood in blossom for weeks, and the forest trees, which at this time are usually in full foliage, are as bare as in December. Cattle are dying in the fields for want of pasture.

I have thus had a sample of the winter climate of South Carolina. If never more severe or stormy than I have already experienced, it must be an agreeable one. The custom of sitting with open doors, however, I found a little difficult to like at first. A door in South Carolina, except perhaps the outer door of a house, is not made to shut. It is merely a sort of flapper, an ornamental appendage to the opening by which you enter a room, a kind of moveable screen made to swing to and fro, but never to be secured by a latch, unless for some purpose of strict privacy. A door is the ventilator to the room; the windows are not raised except in warm weather, but the door is kept open at all seasons. On cold days you have a bright fire of pine-wood blazing before you, and a draught of cold air at your back. The reason given for this practice is, that fresh air is wholesome, and that close rooms occasion colds and consumptions.

Letter XII.

Savannah.

Picolata, East Florida, _April 7, 1843._

As I landed at this place, a few hours since, I stepped into the midst of summer. Yesterday morning when I left Savannah, people were complaining that the winter was not over. The temperature which, at this time of the year, is usually warm and genial, continued to be what they called chilly, though I found it agreeable enough, and the showy trees, called the _Pride of India_, which are planted all over the city, and are generally in bloom at this season, were still leafless. Here I find every thing green, fresh, and fragrant, trees and shrubs in full foliage, and wild roses in flower.

The dark waters of the St. John's, one of the n.o.blest streams of the country, in depth and width like the St. Lawrence, draining almost the whole extent of the peninsula, are flowing under my window. On the opposite sh.o.r.e are forests of tall trees, bright in the new verdure of the season. A hunter who has ranged them the whole day, has just arrived in a canoe, bringing with him a deer, which he has killed. I have this moment returned from a ramble with my host through a hammock, he looking for his cows, and I, unsuccessfully, for a thicket of orange-trees. He is something of a florist, and gathered for me, as we went, some of the forest plants, which were in bloom. "We have flowers here," said he, "every month in the year."

I have used the word hammock, which here, in Florida, has a peculiar meaning. A hammock is a spot covered with a growth of trees which require a richer soil than the pine, such as the oak, the mulberry, the gum-tree, the hickory, &c. The greater part of East Florida consists of pine barrens--a sandy level, producing the long leaved pine and the dwarf palmetto, a low plant, with fan-like leaves, and roots of a prodigious size. The hammock is a kind of oasis, a verdant and luxuriant island in the midst of these sterile sands, which make about nine-tenths of the soil of East Florida. In the hammocks grow the wild lime, the native orange, both sour and bitter-sweet, and the various vines and gigantic creepers of the country. The hammocks are chosen for plantations; here the cane is cultivated, and groves of the sweet orange planted. But I shall say more of Florida hereafter, when I have seen more of it. Meantime let me speak of my journey hither.

I left Charleston on the 30th of March, in one of the steamers which ply between that city and Savannah. These steamers are among the very best that float--quiet, commodious, clean, fresh as if just built, and furnished with civil and ready-handed waiters. We pa.s.sed along the narrow and winding channels which divide the broad islands of South Carolina from the main-land--islands famed for the rice culture, and particularly for the excellent cotton with long fibres, named the sea-island cotton. Our fellow-pa.s.sengers were mostly planters of these islands, and their families, persons of remarkably courteous, frank, and agreeable manners.

The sh.o.r.es on either side had little of the picturesque to show us.

Extensive marshes waving with coa.r.s.e water-gra.s.s, sometimes a cane-brake, sometimes a pine grove or a clump of cabbage-leaved palmettoes; here and there a pleasant bank bordered with live-oaks streaming with moss, and at wide intervals the distant habitation of a planter--these were the elements of the scenery. The next morning early we were pa.s.sing up the Savannah river, and the city was in sight, standing among its trees on a high bank of the stream.

Savannah is beautifully laid out; its broad streets are thickly planted with the Pride of India, and its frequent open squares shaded with trees of various kinds. Oglethorpe seems to have understood how a city should be built in a warm climate, and the people of the place are fond of reminding the stranger that the original plan of the founder has never been departed from. The town, so charmingly embowered, reminded me of New Haven, though the variety of trees is greater. In my walks about the place I pa.s.sed a large stuccoed building of a dull-yellow color, with broad arched windows, and a stately portico, on each side of which stood a stiff looking palmetto, as if keeping guard. The grim aspect of the building led me to ask what it was, and I was answered that it was "the old United States Bank," It was the building in which the Savannah branch of that bank transacted business, and is now shut up until the time shall come when that great inst.i.tution shall be revived. Meantime I was pained to see that there exists so little reverence for its memory, and so little grat.i.tude for its benefits, that the boys have taken to smashing the windows, so that those who have the care of the building have been obliged to cover them with plank. In another part of the city I was shown an African church, a neat, s.p.a.cious wooden building, railed in, and kept in excellent order, with a piazza extending along its entire front. It is one of the four places of worship for the blacks of the town, and was built by negro workmen with materials purchased by the contributions of the whites.

South of the town extends an uninclosed s.p.a.ce, on one side of which is a pleasant grove of pines, in the shade of which the members of a quoit-club practice their athletic sport. Here on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, for that is their stated time of a.s.sembling, I was introduced to some of the most distinguished citizens of Savannah, and witnessed the skill with which they threw the discus. No apprentices were they in the art; there was no striking far from the stake, no sending the discus rolling over the green; they heaped the quoits as snugly around the stakes as if the amus.e.m.e.nt had been their profession.

In the same neighborhood, just without the town, lies the public cemetery surrounded by an ancient wall, built before the revolution, which in some places shows the marks of shot fired against it in the skirmishes of that period. I entered it, hoping to find some monuments of those who founded the city a hundred and ten years ago, but the inscriptions are of comparatively recent date. Most of them commemorate the death of persons born in Europe, or the northern states. I was told that the remains of the early inhabitants lie in the brick tombs, of which there are many without any inscription whatever.

At a little distance, near a forest, lies the burial-place of the black population. A few trees, trailing with long moss, rise above hundreds of nameless graves, overgrown with weeds; but here and there are scattered memorials of the dead, some of a very humble kind, with a few of marble, and half a dozen s.p.a.cious brick tombs like those in the cemetery of the whites. Some of them are erected by masters and mistresses to the memory of favorite slaves. One of them commemorates the death of a young woman who perished in the catastrophe of the steamer Pulaski, of whom it is recorded, that during the whole time that she was in the service of her mistress, which was many years, she never committed a theft, nor uttered a falsehood. A brick monument, in the shape of a little tomb, with a marble slab inserted in front, has this inscription:

"In memory of Henrietta Gatlin, the infant stranger, born in East Florida, aged 1 year 3 months."

A graveyard is hardly the place to be merry in, but I could not help smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of powder. It closes with this curious sentence:

"This stone was erected by the members of the Axe Company, Coopers and Committee of the 2nd African Church of Savannah for the purpose of having a Herse for benevolent purposes, of which he was the first s.e.xton."

A poor fellow, who went to the other world by water, has a wooden slab to mark his grave, inscribed with these words:

"Sacred to the memory of Robert Spencer who came to his Death by A Boat, July 9th, 1840, aged 21 years.

Reader as you am now so once I And as I am now so Mus you be Shortly.

Amen."

Another monument, after giving the name of the dead, has this sentence:

"Go home Mother dry up your weeping tears. G.o.ds will be done."

Another, erected to Sarah Morel, aged six months, has this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n:

"Sweet withered lilly farewell."

One of the monuments is erected to Andrew Bryan, a black preacher, of the Baptist persuasion. A long inscription states that he was once imprisoned "for preaching the Gospel, and, without ceremony, severely whipped;" and that, while undergoing the punishment, "he told his persecutors that he not only rejoiced to be whipped, but was willing to suffer death for the cause of Christ." He died in 1812, at the age of ninety-six; his funeral, the inscription takes care to state, was attended by a large concourse of people, and adds:

"An address was delivered at his death by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, Dr.

Kollock, Thomas Williams, and Henry Cunningham."

While in Savannah, I paid a visit to Bonaventure, formerly a country seat of Governor Tatnall, but now abandoned. A pleasant drive of a mile or two, through a budding forest, took us to the place, which is now itself almost grown up into forest. Cedars and other shrubs hide the old terraces of the garden, which is finely situated on the high bank of a river. Trees of various kinds have also nearly filled the s.p.a.ce between the n.o.ble avenues of live-oaks which were planted around the mansion. But these oaks--never saw finer trees--certainly I never saw so many majestic and venerable trees together. I looked far down the immense arches that overshadowed the broad pa.s.sages, as high as the nave of a Gothic cathedral, apparently as old, and stretching to a greater distance. The huge boughs were clothed with gray moss, yards in length, which clung to them like mist, or hung in still festoons on every side, and gave them the appearance of the vault of a vast vapory cavern. The cawing of the crow and the scream of the jay, however, reminded us that we were in the forest. Of the mansion there are no remains; but in the thicket of magnolias and other trees, among rosebushes and creeping plants, we found a burial-place with monuments of some persons to whom the seat had belonged.

Savannah is more healthy of late years than it formerly was. An arrangement has been made with the owners of the plantations in the immediate vicinity by which the culture of rice has been abandoned, and the lands are no longer allowed to be overflowed within a mile from the city. The place has since become much less subject to fevers than in former years.

I left, with a feeling of regret, the agreeable society of Savannah. The steamboat took us to St. Mary's, through pa.s.sages between the sea-islands and the main-land, similar to those by which we had arrived at Savannah.

In the course of the day, we pa.s.sed a channel in which we saw several huge alligators basking on the bank. The grim creatures slid slowly into the water at our approach. We pa.s.sed St. Mary's in the night, and in the morning we were in the main ocean, approaching the St. John's, where we saw a row of pelicans standing, like creatures who had nothing to do, on the sand. We entered the majestic river, the vast current of which is dark with the infusion of the swamp turf, from which it is drained. We pa.s.sed Jacksonville, a little town of great activity, which has sprung up on the sandy bank within two or three years. Beyond, we swept by the mouth of the Black Creek, the water of which, probably from the color of the mud which forms the bed of its channel, has to the eye an ebony blackness, and reflects objects with all the distinctness of the kind of looking-gla.s.s called a black mirror. A few hours brought us to Picolata, lately a military station, but now a place with only two houses.

Letter XIII.

St. Augustine.

St. Augustine, East Florida, _April 2, 1843._

When we left Picolata, on the 8th of April, we found ourselves journeying through a vast forest. A road of eighteen miles in length, over the level sands, brings you to this place. Tall pines, a thin growth, stood wherever we turned our eyes, and the ground was covered with the dwarf palmetto, and the whortleberry, which is here an evergreen. Yet there were not wanting sights to interest us, even in this dreary and sterile region. As we pa.s.sed a clearing, in which we saw a young white woman and a boy dropping corn, and some negroes covering it with their hoes, we beheld a large flock of white cranes which rose in the air, and hovered over the forest, and wheeled, and wheeled again, their spotless plumage glistening in the sun like new-fallen snow. We crossed the track of a recent hurricane, which had broken off the huge pines midway from the ground, and whirled the summits to a distance from their trunks. From time to time we forded little streams of a deep-red color, flowing from the swamps, tinged, as we were told, with the roots of the red bay, a species of magnolia. As the horses waded into the transparent crimson, we thought of the butcheries committed by the Indians, on that road, and could almost fancy that the water was still colored with the blood they had shed.

The driver of our wagon told us many narratives of these murders, and pointed out the places where they were committed. He showed us where the father of this young woman was shot dead in his wagon as he was going from St. Augustine to his plantation, and the boy whom we had seen, was wounded and scalped by them, and left for dead. In another place he showed us the spot where a party of players, on their way to St. Augustine, were surprised and killed. The Indians took possession of the stage dresses, one of them arraying himself in the garb of Oth.e.l.lo, another in that of Richard the Third, and another taking the costume of Falstaff. I think it was Wild Cat's gang who engaged in this affair, and I was told that after the capture of this chief and some of his warriors, they recounted the circ.u.mstances with great glee. At another place we pa.s.sed a small thicket in which several armed Indians, as they afterward related, lay concealed while an officer of the United States army rode several times around it, without any suspicion of their presence. The same men committed, immediately afterward, several murders and robberies on the road.

At length we emerged upon a shrubby plain, and finally came in sight of this oldest city of the United States, seated among its trees on a sandy swell of land where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a distance, and could not help likening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch towns, though it wanted a windmill or two, to make the resemblance perfect. We drove into a green square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to commemorate the Spanish const.i.tution of 1812, and thence through the narrow streets of the city to our hotel.

I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to allow two carriages to pa.s.s abreast. I was told that they were not originally intended for carriages, and that in the time when the town belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone, composed of sh.e.l.ls and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was allowed to pa.s.s over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages, introduced by the new inhabitants. The old houses, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small sh.e.l.ls, overhang the streets with their wooden balconies, and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the pomegranate and of the orange-tree, now fragrant with flowers, and, rising yet higher, the leaning boughs of the fig, with its broad luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pa.s.s the ruins of houses--walls of stone, with arches and staircases of the same material, which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. You are told that these are the remains of those who inhabited the country under the Spanish dominion, and that the dialect you have heard is that of the island of Minorca.