"Oh! this is old Cudjo. He lives up Julington. He's an honest old
fellow."
Now, we had heard of this settlement up Julington some two or three
years before. A party of negroes from South Carolina and Georgia had
been induced to come into Florida, and take up a tract of government
land. Some white man in whom they all put confidence had undertaken for
them the task of getting their respective allotments surveyed and
entered for them, so that they should have a solid basis of land to work
upon. Here, then, they settled down; and finding, accidentally, that a
small central lot was not enclosed in any of the allotments, they took
it as an indication that _there_ was to be their church, and accordingly
erected there a prayer-booth, where they could hold those weekly
prayer-meetings which often seem with the negroes to take the place of
all other recreations. The neighboring farmers were not particularly
well disposed towards the little colony. The native Floridian farmer is
a quiet, peaceable being, not at all disposed to infringe the rights of
others, and mainly anxious for peace and quietness. But they supposed
that a stampede of negroes from Georgia and Carolina meant trouble for
them, meant depredations upon their cattle and poultry, and regarded it
with no friendly eye; yet, nevertheless, they made no demonstration
against it. Under these circumstances, the new colony had gone to work
with untiring industry. They had built log-cabins and barns; they had
split rails, and fenced in their land; they had planted orange-trees;
they had cleared acres of the scrub-palmetto: and any one that ever has
seen what it is to clear up an acre of scrub-palmetto will best
appreciate the meaning of that toil. Only those black men, with sinews
of steel and nerves of wire,--men who grow stronger and more vigorous
under those burning suns that wither the white men,--are competent to
the task.
But old Cudjo had at last brought his land from the wild embrace of the
snaky scrub-palmetto to the point of bearing a bale of cotton like the
one on the wharf. He had subdued the savage earth, brought her under,
and made her tributary to his will, and demonstrated what the soil of
East Florida might, could, and would do, the cotton-worm to the contrary
notwithstanding.
And yet this morning he stood by his cotton, drooping and dispossessed.
The white man that had engaged to take up land for these colonists had
done his work in such a slovenly, imperfect manner, that another
settler, a foreigner, had taken up a tract which passed right through
old Cudjo's farm, and taken the land on which he had spent four years of
hard work,--taken his log-cabin and barn and young trees, and the very
piece that he had just brought to bearing that bale of cotton. And there
he stood by it, mournful and patient. It was only a continuation of what
he had always experienced,--always oppressed, always robbed and cheated.
Old Cudjo was making the best of it in trying to ship his bale of
cotton, which was all that was left of four years' toil.
"What!" said the Professor to him, "are you the old man that has been
turned out by that foreigner?"
"Yes, sah!" he said, his little black eyes kindling, and quivering from
head to foot with excitement. "He take ebry t'ing, ebry t'ing,--my
house I built myself, my fences, and more'n t'ree t'ousand rails I split
myself: he take 'em all!"
There is always some bitter spot in a great loss that is sorer than the
rest. Those rails evidently cut Cudjo to the heart. The "t'ree t'ousand
rails" kept coming in in his narrative as the utter and unbearable
aggravation of injustice.
"I split 'em myself, sah; _ebry one_, t'ree t'ousand rails! and he take
'em all!"
"And won't he allow you any thing?"
"No, sah: he won't 'low me not'ing. He say, 'Get along wid you! don't
know not'ing 'bout _you_! dis yer land mine.' I tell him, '_You_ don't
know old Cudjo; but de Lord know him: and by'm by, when de angel Gabriel
come and put one foot on de sea, and t'odder on de land, and blow de
trumpet, he blow once for old Cudjo! You mind now!'"
This was not merely spoken, but acted. The old black kindled, and
stepped off in pantomime. He put, as it were, one foot on the sea, and
the other on the land; he raised his cane trumpetwise to his mouth. It
was all as vivid as reality to him.
None of the images of the Bible are more frequent, favorite, and
operative among the black race than this. You hear it over and over in
every prayer-meeting. It is sung in wild chorus in many a "spiritual."
The great angel Gabriel, the trumpet, the mighty pomp of a last
judgment, has been the appeal of thousands of wronged, crushed,
despairing hearts through ages of oppression. Faith in God's justice,
faith in a final triumph of right over wrong,--a practical faith,--such
had been the attainment of this poor, old, deformed black. That and his
bale of cotton were all he had to show for a life's labor. He had
learned two things in his world-lesson,--work and faith. He had learned
the power of practical industry in things possible to man: he had
learned the sublimer power of faith in God for things impossible.
* * * * *
Well, of course we were indignant enough about poor old Cudjo: but we
feared that the distant appeal of the angel, and the last trump, was all
that remained to him; and, to our lesser faith, that seemed a long way
to look for justice.
But redress was nearer than we imagined. Old Cudjo's patient industry
and honest work had wrought favor among his white neighbors. He had
lived down the prejudice with which the settlement had first been
regarded; for among quiet, honest people like the Floridians, it is
quite possible to live down prejudice. A neighboring justice of the
peace happened to have an acquaintance in Washington from this very
district, acquainted with all the land and land-titles. He wrote to
this man an account of the case; and he interested himself for old
Cudjo. He went to the land-office to investigate the matter. He found,
that, in both cases, certain formalities necessary to constitute a legal
entrance had been omitted; and he fulfilled for old Cudjo these
formalities, thus settling his title; and, moreover, he sent legal
papers by which the sheriff of the county was enabled to do him justice:
and so old Cudjo was re-instated in his rights.
The Professor met him, sparkling and jubilant, on the wharf once more.
"Well, Cudjo, 'de angel' blew for you quicker than you expected."
He laughed all over. "Ye', haw, haw! Yes, massa." Then, with his usual
histrionic vigor, he acted over the scene. "De sheriff, he come down
dere. He tell dat man, 'You go right off he'yr. Don't you touch none dem
rails. Don't you take one chip,--not one chip. Don't you take'--Haw,
haw, haw!" Then he added,--
"He come to me, sah: he say, 'Cudjo, what you take for your land?' He
say he gib me two hunder dollars. I tell him, 'Dat too cheap; dat all
too cheap.' He say, 'Cudjo, what will you take?' I say, 'I take ten
t'ousand million dollars! dat's what I take.' Haw, haw, haw!"
[Illustration]