The Quadroon Part 3

"Provisions for her large establishment," soliloquised I.

Just then some packages of a different character were pushed upon the staging. These were leathern trunks, travelling bags, rosewood cases, bonnet-boxes, and the like.

"Ha! her personal luggage," I again reflected, and continued to puff my cigar. Regarding the transfer of the trunks, my eye was suddenly attracted to some lettering that appeared upon one of the packages--a leathern portmanteau. I sprang from my seat, and as the article was carried up the gangway stair I met it halfway. I glanced my eye over the lettering, and read--

"_Mademoiselle Eugenie Besancon_."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE STARTING.

The last bell rings--the "can't-get-away" folks rush ash.o.r.e--the staging-plank is drawn in--some heedless wight has to jump for it--the cable is pulled aboard and coiled--the engineer's bell tinkles--the great wheels revolve, lashing the brown water into foam--the steam "whistles" and screams at the boilers, and booms from the 'scape-pipe in regular repet.i.tions--neighbouring boats are pressed out of their places--their planks cringe and crackle--guards are broken, or the slight timbers of wheel-houses, causing a cross-fire of curses between the crews--and after some minutes of this pandemoniac confusion, the huge craft clears herself, and rides out upon the broad bosom of the river.

She heads up-stream; a few strokes of the revolving paddles and the current is mastered; and the n.o.ble boat yielding to the mighty propulsion, cleaves her liquid way, "walking the water like a thing of life!"

Perchance the boom of a cannon announces her departure; perchance it is animated by the harmonious swell of brazen instruments; or still more appropriate, some old "boatman's song," with its lively chorus, is heard issuing from the rude, though not unmusical throats of the "hands"

below.

Lafayette and Carrolton are soon pa.s.sed; the humbler roofs of stores and dwellings sink out of sight; and the n.o.ble dome of Saint Charles, the spires of churches, and the towers of the great cathedral, are all of the Crescent City that remain above the horizon. These, at length, go down; and the "floating palace" moves on in stately grandeur between the picturesque sh.o.r.es of the Mississippi.

I have said "picturesque." This word does not satisfy me, nor can I think of one that will delineate my idea. I must make use of a phrase, "picturesquely beautiful," to express my admiration of the scenery of those sh.o.r.es. I have no hesitation in p.r.o.nouncing it the finest in the world.

I am not gazing upon it with a mere cold eye-glance. I cannot separate scenery from its a.s.sociations--not its a.s.sociations of the past, but with the present. I look upon the ruined castles of the Rhine, and their story impresses me with a feeling of disgust for what _has been_.

I look upon its modern homes and their dwellers; I am equally filled with disgust for what _is_. In the Bay of Naples I experience a similar feeling, and roaming "around" the lordly parks of England, I see them through an enclosure of wretchedness and rags, till their loveliness seems an illusion!

Here alone, upon the banks of this majestic river, do I behold wealth widely diffused, intelligence broadcast, and comfort for all. Here, in almost every house, do I meet the refined taste of high civilisation-- the hospitality of generous hearts combined with the power to dispense it. Here can I converse with men by thousands, whose souls are free-- not politically alone, but free from vulgar error and fanatic superst.i.tion; here, in short, have I witnessed, not the perfectedness-- for that belongs to a far future time--but the most advanced stage of civilisation yet reached upon the globe.

A dark shadow crosses my eye-glance, and my heart is stung with sudden pain. It is the shadow of a human being with a black skin. _He is a slave_!

For a moment or two the scene looks black! What is there to admire here--in these fields of golden sugar-cane, of waving maize, of snow-white cotton? What to admire in those grand mansions, with their orangeries, their flowery gardens, their drooping shade-trees, and their soft arbours? All this is but the sweat of the slave!

For a while I behold without admiring. The scene has lost its _couleur de rose_; and a gloomy wilderness is before me! I reflect. Slowly and gradually the cloud pa.s.ses away, and the brightness returns. I reflect and compare.

True, he with the black skin is a slave--but not a _voluntary_ slave.

That is a difference in his favour at least.

In other lands--mine own among them--I see around me slaves as well, and far more numerous. Not the slaves of an individual, but of an a.s.sociation of individuals--a cla.s.s--an oligarchy. Not slaves of the corvee--serfs of the feud--but victims of its modern representative the tax, which is simply its commutation, and equally baneful in its effects.

On my soul, I hold that the slavery of the Louisiana black is less degrading than that of the white pleb of England. The poor, woolly-headed helot is the victim of conquest, and may claim to place himself in the honourable category of a prisoner of war. He has not willed his own bondage; while you, my grocer, and butcher, and baker-- ay, and you, my fine city merchant, who fondly fancy yourself a freeman--ye are voluntary in your serfdom; ye are loyal to a political juggle that annually robs ye of half your year's industry; that annually requires some hundred thousands of your cla.s.s to be sloughed off into exile, lest your whole body should gangrene and die. And all this without even a protest. Nay, worse--you are ever ready to cry "crucify"

to him who would attempt to counteract this condition--ever ready to glorify the man and the motion that would fix another rivet in your fetters!

Even while I write, the man who loves you least; he who for forty years--for all his life, in fact--has been your systematic enemy, is the most popular of your rulers! Even while I write the Roman wheel is revolving before your eyes, squibs and crackers sound sweetly in your ears, and you are screaming forth your rejoicings over the acts of a convention that had for its sole object the strengthening of your chains! But a short twelve months ago, you were just as enthusiastic for a war that was equally antagonistic to your interests, equally hostile to the liberties of your kind! Miserable delusion!

I repeat what I have uttered with a feeling of solemnity. On my soul, I hold that the slavery of the Louisiana black is less degrading than that of the white pleb of England.

True, this black man is a _slave_, and there are three millions of his race in the same condition. Painful thought! but less painful when accompanied by the reflection that the same broad land is trodden by _twenty millions of free and sovereign men_. Three millions of slaves to twenty millions of masters! In mine own land the proportion is exactly reversed!

The truth may be obscure. For all that, I dare say there are some who will understand it.

Ah! how pleasant to turn from these heart-stirring but painful thoughts to the calmer contemplation of themes furnished by science and nature.

How sweet was it to study the many novel forms that presented themselves to my eyes on the sh.o.r.es of that magnificent stream! There is a pleasaunce even in the retrospect; and as I now sit dreaming over them far away--perhaps never more to behold them with mortal eye--I am consoled by a fond and faithful memory, whose magic power enables me to recall them before the eye of my mind in all their vivid colouring of green and gold!

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE "COAST" OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

As soon as we had fairly started, I ascended to the "hurricane-deck," in order to obtain a better view of the scenery through which we were pa.s.sing. In this place I was alone; for the silent pilot, boxed up in his little tower of gla.s.s, could hardly be called a companion.

I make the following observations:

The breadth of the Mississippi river has been much exaggerated. It is here about half a mile wide. Sometimes more, occasionally less. (This average width it preserves for more than a thousand miles from its mouth.) Its waters run at the rate of three or four miles to the hour, and are of a yellowish cast, with a slight tincture of "red." The yellow colour it derives from the Missouri, while the deeper tint is obtained by the influx of the "Red."

Driftwood floats thickly upon its surface; here in single logs, there in raft-like cl.u.s.ters. To run a boat against one of these is attended with danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy b.u.mping against the bows shakes the boat, and startles the equanimity of the less experienced pa.s.sengers. The "snag" is most dreaded. That is a dead tree with heavy roots still adhering. These, from their weight, have settled upon the bottom, and the _debris_ gathering around holds them firmly imbedded.

The lighter top, riven of its branches, rises towards the surface; but the pressure of the current prevents it from attaining to the perpendicular, and it is held in a slanting position. When its top rises above the water, the danger is but trifling--unless in a very dark night--it is when the top is hidden a foot or two below the surface that the snag is feared. Then a boat running upon it up-stream, is lost to a certainty. The roots firmly imbedded in the bottom mud, prevent the pile from yielding; and the top, usually a spiky one, penetrates the bow timbers of the boat, sinking her almost instantly. A boat properly "snagged" will go down in a few minutes.

The "sawyer" is a log fixed in the water similarly to the snag, but kept bobbing up and down by the current, thus suggesting the idea of a sawyer engaged at his work--hence the name. A boat getting aground upon a sunken log _crosswise_, is sometimes snagged upon its branches, and sometimes broken into two pieces by the pressure of her own weight.

Among the drift, I notice odd matters that interest me. Stalks of sugar-cane that have been crushed in the press-mill (a hundred miles farther up I should not meet these), leaves and stems of the maize plant, corn-cobs, pieces of broken gourd-sh.e.l.l, tufts of raw cotton, split fence-rails, now and then the carcase of some animal, with a buzzard or black vulture (_Cathartes aura_ and _atratus_) perched upon it, or hovering above.

I am within the geographical range of the alligator but here the great Saurian is seldom seen. He prefers the more sluggish _bayous_, or the streams whose sh.o.r.es are still wild. In the rapid current of the Mississippi, and along its well-cultivated banks, he is but rarely observed by the pa.s.sing traveller.

Alternately the boat approaches both sh.o.r.es of the river ("coasts" they are called). The land is an alluvion of no very ancient formation. It is a mere strip of _terra firma_, varying in breadth from a few hundred yards to several miles, and gradually declining from the banks, so that the river is actually running along the top of a ridge! Beyond this strip commences the "Swamp," a tract that is annually inundated, and consists of a series of lagoons and marshes covered with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and reeds. This extends in some places for a score of miles, or even farther--a complete wilderness of mora.s.s. Some portions of this--where the inundation is only annual--are covered with dark and almost impenetrable forests. Between the cultivated strip on the immediate bank of the river, and the "Swamp" in the rear, runs a belt of this forest, which forms a kind of background to the picture, answering to the mountain-ranges in other lands. It is a high, dark forest, princ.i.p.ally composed of cypress-trees (_Cupressus disticka_). But there are other kinds peculiar to this soil, such as the sweet-gum (_Liquidambar styraciflua_), the live-oak (_Quercus vivens_), the tupelo (_Nyssa aquatica_), the water-locust (_Gleditschia aquatica_), the cotton-wood (_Populus angulata_), with _carya, celtis_, and various species of _acer, cornus, juglans, magnolia_, and oaks. Here an underwood of palmettoes (_Sabal_ palms), _smilax, llianes_, and various species of _vitis_; there thick brakes of cane (_Arundo gigantea_), grow among the trees; while from their branches is suspended in long festoons that singular parasite, the "Spanish moss" (_Tillandsia usneoides_), imparting a sombre character to the forest.

Between this dank forest and the river-banks lie the cultivated fields.

The river current is often several feet above their level; but they are protected by the "Levee," an artificial embankment which has been formed on both sides of the river, to a distance of several hundred miles from its mouth.

In these fields I observe the culture of the sugar-cane, of the rice-plant, of tobacco and cotton, of indigo and maize. I see the "gangs" of black slaves at their work, in their cotton dresses of striped and gaudy colours, in which sky-blue predominates. I see huge waggons drawn by mules or oxen returning from the cane-fields, or slowly toiling along the banks. I see the light-bodied Creole, in "cottonade"

jacket and trousers of bright blue, mounted upon his small Spanish horse, and galloping along the Levee road. I see the grand mansion of the planter, with its orange-groves and gardens, its green Venetians, cool verandahs, and pretty palings. I see the huge sugar-house, or tobacco-shed, or cotton "pickery;" and there, too, are the neat "cabins," cl.u.s.tering together or running in a row, like the bathing-boxes at a fashionable watering-place.

Now we are pa.s.sing a plantation where they are making merry--a _fete champetre_. Many horses stand under the trees, "hitched" in the shade with saddles on, not a few of which are "ladies' saddles." In the verandah, the lawn, and through the orange shrubbery, may be seen moving about gentlemen and ladies richly attired. Music is heard, and there is dancing in the open air. One cannot help envying these happy Creoles the enjoyment of their Arcadian life.

Scenes varied and lovely were pa.s.sing panorama-like before my eyes.

Lost in admiration of them, I had for the moment forgotten _Eugenie Besancon_.

CHAPTER NINE.

EUGENIE BESANCON.

No, Eugenie Besancon was not forgotten. Every now and then her sylph-like form flitted before my imagination, and I could not help a.s.sociating it with the scenery through which we were pa.s.sing, and amidst which, no doubt, she was born and nurtured--its fair _indigene_.

The glimpse of the _fete champetre_, where several Creole-like girls were conspicuous, brought her more forcibly into my thoughts; and, descending from the hurricane-deck, I entered the cabin with some curiosity, once more to look upon this interesting lady.

For some time I dreaded disappointment. The great gla.s.s folding-door of the ladies' cabin was closed; and although there were several ladies outside in the main saloon, the Creole was not among the number. The ladies' cabin, which occupies the after-part of the boat, is a sacred precinct, into which bachelors are admitted only when they enjoy the privilege of having a friend inside--then only at certain hours.