Having been provided by a kind friend with an excellent saddle horse, I rode out one fine morning to see the district in which the sea-island cotton is cultivated, and visit a rice plantation.

Passing a mere belt of “vacant lots” about the town, I again entered the great pine forest that, with only small and widely separated dots of corn and cotton fields and broader blots of malarious marshes, covers the whole country one hundred miles in width from Baltimore to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of the fine silvery, silicious powder, which, south of Virginia, constitutes most of the surface, the soil here bordering the coast varies from a dark brown, sandy loam to a coarse, clean, yellow sand. The long-leafed pine is displaced by a shorter leafed variety, less resinous and close grained, and of more rapid growth, showing that the land has nearly all at some time been under culture, and it thus lost its primeval fertility. At intervals, there are comfortable cabins with small corn or cotton patches in their vicinity, but not more than one mile in twenty of the road is bordered by land that had recently been under tillage.

A stage-coach whirled along in a suffocating cloud of dust, drawn rapidly through the heavy sand by six horses; long teams of mules, driven by a negro on the back of one of them, toiled slowly towards the town with waggons laden with cotton or rice, and twice I met stylish turn-outs that would not have seemed out of place in the Bois de Boulogne, with stiff and primly-dressed black servants in the rumble—gentlemen rice planters heavily bearded and fashionably clad driving in from their country estates; the only other vehicles were the carts of the “crackers”—the poor and uneducated peasantry. I was surprised at the number of these until I learned that my road was a great thoroughfare, in which all the travel and inland commerce of some hundred miles was collected.

Many of the carts had been two days on the road; these generally came several together, a small caravan, for mutual assistance on the way. Women and children—often whole households—traveled with them, camping at night. Once I met two women without any man, one riding in the cart ’tending two babies, the other mounted (not astride as you see women in Italy) on the horse which drew it. Some of the carts coming in had in them a single bale of cotton, but generally they were loaded with corn, sweet potatoes, poultry, game, hides and poultry, with a few bundles of “shucks” to feed the horse, always thrown on top. A low semi-circular cover of white cotton is stretched over the cart on hoops or twigs to protect the load from sun and rain, the wheels are purchased, being made at the North for this market, the rest of the cart seems generally to have been made by the owner in the woods, with no better tools than an ax and a jack-knife; very little iron is used in its construction—pins of wood and thongs [157] of hide holding it together. The harness matches the vehicle, a large part of it commonly being made of ropes and undressed hides; but there is always a riding saddle, high-peaked in the Mexican style, made at the North, in which the driver commonly sits—more commonly he walks by the side of the horse, proceeding at a smart walk, but never trotting. From the axletree of some of the carts there hung a gourd of grease for the wheels, and a kettle for the camp-cooking. One man carried a rifle on the pommel of his saddle, ready to drop any deer or turkey that should chance within range while he was on the road. It is said that turkeys, though the shyest of game to a man approaching on foot, will often allow a cart to be driven very near them.

The household markets of most of the Southern towns seem to be mainly supplied by the poor country people, who, driving in this style bring all sorts of produce to exchange for such small stores and articles of apparel as they must needs obtain from the shops. Sometimes, owing to the great extent of the back country from which the supplies are gathered, they are offered in great abundance and variety; at other times, from the want of regular market men, there will be a scarcity, and prices will be very high.

A stranger can not but express surprise and amusement at the appearance and language of these country traffickers in the market-places. The “wild Irish” hardly differ more from the English gentry than these rustics from the better class of planters and towns-people with whom the traveler more commonly comes in contact. One figure I shall never forget. I was riding into a village with a gentleman who resided in it, when we met a little low cart or truck, having no body, but a few boards nailed into the axle-tree, on which sat

[158] bolt upright, her legs rectangular with her trunk, her feet straight before her, a little brown woman with an old hat on her head and a pipe in her mouth, who turned and bowed to us very elegantly and with the most amiable and self-satisfied expression of face imaginable. She was driving a little black dwarf of a bull, who was buckled between shafts, with a bit in his mouth, and driven with reins like a horse. My companion said that she had been in the habit of coming to town for twenty years, and until lately always on foot, toting in half a bushel of potatoes or a peck of meal, a fowl or two, or half a dozen eggs: she often stopped at his house to light her pipe after she had sold out, and always seemed to be as contented and cheerful, and since she had got the bull and cart, as proud and rich, as it was possible for mortal woman to be.

The women commonly smoke, and I have seen one while nursing a baby, sitting three rods from a fire, repeatedly take a pipe from her mouth and spit upon a particular brand with a precision and force which was truly wonderful. I am happy to say that I never saw a woman put tobacco in her mouth, but the practice of chewing among men of all classes is nearly universal. I shall never be able to say again that Englishmen exaggerate in their strictures upon this filthy American habit: being much more common, the nuisance it occasions is even less restricted by regard to decency at the South than at the North. No elegance or careful neatness and no conventional sacredness restrains the nauseating expectoration.

The people with the carts were generally dressed in long-skirted homespun coals, heavy boots over the pantaloons and slouched hats. They were thin and gaunt, with very sallow complexion, sunken eyes, sharp high cheek bones, and were of less than the usual stature of the Anglo-Saxon race. The hair of the children was generally white or yellowish, growing darker as they grow older, always remaining dry and towy and commonly allowed to grow so as to cover the neck. Usually they bowed to me as we met, and often made a remark about the weather in a bold but courteous manner, frankly and distinctly, which gave one a good impression of their character and at all events showed that they were free from the servility and self-degradation which speaks in every action of the European peasant to a well-dressed stranger.

I rode slowly, occasionally stopping to sketch, or to satisfy my curiosity with regard to some vegetable novelty, or my admiration of the noble magnolias that stood here and there among the pines. Twice during the day I crossed streams with broad reedy Savannahs and Cypress swamps on their margins some miles in width. At one point on these there were large rice fields; and negroes, men and women, were engaged in burning off the woods and making ditches and dykes, to extend them: on their dryer borders were fields covered with the large black stalks of the sea-island cotton plant.

The feathered inhabitants of these low fields and Savannahs were interesting and wonderfully numerous. Immense clouds of the red-winged black-birds would float down, covering half an acre at once of the rice stubble, as with a black pall. Jackdaws, the first I have seen in this country, and crows [159] occupied by hundreds the top of the trees that had grown upon the causeway, croaking and cawing incessantly. Clear and cheerful through the clamor you would hear the piping of the dapper Mocking-bird, and then he would spring out from the bushes, and with grisette-like vivacity and grace, dance along on the ground before you. The Blue-bird flutters from bush to bush and greets you with his Spring-time notes, and the gay Cardinal flashes in his flaming jacket through the lights and shadows of the foliage. Pearl white cranes lift their heads inquiringly above the rushes and rise with long sweeps of their wings, their plumage glistening in the sun light, as if there were silver in it. Gulls and ospreys with active flight follow the river’s course, and over them poises a watchful, keen-eyed eagle; at a higher elevation, far up, dim and dreary in the upper sky, slow and majestic sail great hawks and buzzards.

Mark the close of the day. I reached a district of rich, dark, fine soil, much of it reclaimed from the swamp, cultivated with rather more than usual care for corn and sea-island cotton. At a distance from the road, white houses could be seen with dark trees about them, and long rows of negro-cabins and large barns, beyond these, in one direction, uninterrupted to the horizon, were flat Holland-like rice-lands, with a silver thread of glistening water winding through them.

After passing several gates and lanes, I entered one, and rode through a narrow grove bordered by cultivated ground. At the end of the grove, a quarter of a mile from the road, was a negro “settlement,” as what is in Virginia termed the “quarters,” and in England would be the laborers’ hamlet. It was an avenue of the Pride of China trees, fifty feet wide, with the approach road to the proprietor’s mansion running through the midst, and thirty neat white-washed cottages on the outside, in the shade of the trees. The cottages were framed buildings, boarded on the exterior, with shingle roofs and brick chimneys; they stood fifty feet apart, with gardens and pig-yards enclosed by palings between them. At one of them, which I knew to be the “sick house” or hospital, there were several negroes of both sexes, wrapped in blankets, and reclining on the door steps or lying on the ground basking in the sunshine. Some of them were evidently ill, but they were all chatting and laughing as I rode up to make an enquiry. I learned from them that this was not the plantation I was intending to visit, and received a direction, as usual so indistinct and incorrect that it led me wrong.

At the next plantation I entered I found the “settlement” arranged the same way, the cabins being only a slightly different form. In the middle of one row was a well-house and opposite it, on the other row was a mill-house, with stones, at which the negroes grind their corn. It is a kind of pestle and mortar, and I learned afterwards that the negroes prefer to take their allowance of corn and “crack” it for themselves, rather than to receive meal, because they think the mill-ground meal does not make as sweet bread.

At the head of the settlements, in a garden looking down the street, was an overseer’s house, and here the road divided, running each way at right [160]

angles; on one side to the barns and the landing on the river, on the other toward the mansion of the proprietor. A negro boy opened the gate of this and I entered.

On the other side, at fifty feet distant were rows of old live oak trees, their branches and twigs slightly hung with a delicate fringe of grey moss, and their dark, shining, green foliage meeting and intermingling naturally but densely overhead. The sunlight streamed through and played aslant the lustrous leaves and waving, fluttering, quivering, palpitating, pendulous moss: the arch was low and broad; the trunks were huge and gnarled, and there was a heavy groining of strong, dark, rough, knotty branches. I stopped my horse, bowed my head, and held my breath. I have hardly in all my life seen anything so impressively grand and beautiful: “Light, shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, dew, and dreams dropping through their unbrageous twilight—dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, and restorative from heaven.”

Alas! there were no fairies, only little black babies toddling about with an older child or two to watch them. At the upper end of the avenue was the house, with a circular court-yard around it, and surrounded by an irregular plantation of great trees, one of the oaks, as I afterwards learned, seven feet in diameter of trunk, and covering with its branches a circle of one hundred and twenty feet in diameter. As I approached it, a servant came out to take my horse. I obtained from him a direction to the residence of the gentleman I was searching for, and rode away, thankful that I had stumbled into so charming a place.

At the next plantation I entered I reached my destination. The approach [161] to the house was a quarter of a mile long, and very broad, with the pine forest on either side lined with a dense screen of water oaks, wild olives and cedars. This led to a grove of large evergreen oaks and magnolias, in the middle of which, surrounded by a little court of japonicas, oranges, wild olives and roses, stood the mansion. It was a structure of wood, with double roof, dormers and belvedere gallery; the principal apartments on the second floor, with the doors and windows opening upon broad piazzas. In a rear court was a detached kitchen, servants’ house and other offices, of brick, and behind this a garden. A little way one side were the stables. The negro settlement was at no great distance, at the end of a cedar avenue, but could not be seen from the house.

About a quarter of a mile from the house, but entirely hidden from it by the grove, were rice-fields, subject to be irrigated from a large sewer, which, a few miles below, mingled its waters with those of the ocean.

It was the residence of a gentleman who was born and bred on a New-England farm, and who had been a very successful merchant, and was still largely interested in manufactures at the North. His wife was a Southern lady, and this plantation had been for several generations the property of her family. She had inherited with it the slaves upon it; her children had been born

[162] and brought up with them; so that all the happy influences which attend early domestic association existed between them. The gentleman brought to the management of the estate all the keen talent for organization and administration, and the exact business habits of a man trained in the rugged fields of New-Hampshire, among the looms of Lowell and in the counting rooms of Boston. He was also a religious, generous and humane-minded man. As was to be anticipated, I here found Slavery under its most favorable circumstances, and the agriculture with which it was conducted under the most economical and profitable management.