After this the fishing season passed off without anything having
happened, worthy of being noticed here. When we left the fishery and
returned to the plantation, which was after the middle of April, the
corn and cotton had been planted, and the latter had been replanted. I
was set to plough, with two mules for my team; and having never been
accustomed to ploughing with these animals, I had much trouble with them
at first. My master owned more than forty mules, and at this season of
the year, they were all at work in the cotton field, used instead of
horses for drawing ploughs. Some of the largest were hitched single to a
plough; but the smallest were coupled together.
On the whole, the fishery had been a losing affair with me; for although
I had lived better at the landing than I usually did at the plantation,
yet I had been compelled to work all the time, by night and by day,
including Sunday, for my master; by which I had lost all that I could
have earned for my own benefit, had I been on the plantation. I had now
become so well acquainted with the rules of the plantation and the
customs of the country where I lived, that I experienced less distress
than I did at my first coming to the South.
We now received a shad every Sunday evening with our peck of corn. The
fish were those that I had caught in the spring, and were tolerably
preserved. In addition to all this, each one of the hands now received a
pint of vinegar every week. This vinegar was a great comfort to me. As
the weather became hot, I gathered lettuce and other salads, from my
garden in the woods; which, with the vinegar and bread, furnished me
many a cheerful meal. The vinegar had been furnished to us by our
master, more out of regard to our health than to our comfort, but it
greatly promoted both.
The affairs of the plantation now went on quietly, until after the
cotton had been ploughed and hoed the first time, after replanting. The
working of the cotton crop is not disagreeable labor--no more so than
the culture of corn--but we were called upon to perform a kind of labor,
than which none can be more toilsome to the body or dangerous to the
health.
I have elsewhere informed the reader that my master was a cultivator of
rice as well as of cotton. Whilst I was at the fishery in the spring,
thirty acres of swamp land had been cleared off, ploughed and planted in
rice. The water had now been turned off the plants, and the field was to
be ploughed and hoed. When we were taken to the rice field, the weather
was very hot, and the ground was yet muddy and wet. The ploughs were to
be dragged through the wet soil, and the young rice had to be cleaned of
weeds, by the hand, and hilled up with the hoe.
It is the common opinion, that no stranger can work a week in a rice
swamp, at this season of the year, without becoming sick; and all the
new hands, three in number, besides myself, were taken ill within the
first five days after we had entered this field. The other three were
removed to the sick room; but I did not go there, choosing rather to
remain at the quarter, where I was my own master, except that the
doctor, who called to see me, took a large quantity of blood from my
arm, and compelled me to take a dose of some sort of medicine that made
me very sick, and caused me to vomit violently. This happened on the
second day of my illness, and from this time I recovered slowly, but was
not able to go to the field again for more than a week. Here it is but
justice to my master to say, that during all the time of my illness,
some one came from the great house every day to inquire after me, and to
offer me some kind of light and cool refreshment. I might have gone to
the sick room at any time, if I had chosen to do so.
An opinion generally prevails among the people of both colors, that the
drug _copperas_ is very poisonous--and perhaps it may be so, if taken in
large quantities--but the circumstance, that it is used in medicine,
seems to forbid the notion of its poisonous qualities. I believe
copperas was mingled with the potion the doctor gave me. Some overseers
keep copperas by them, as a medicine, to be administered to the hands
whenever they become sick; but this I take to be a bad practice, for
although, in some cases, this drug may be very efficacious, it certainly
should be administered by a more skillful hand than that of an overseer.
It, however, has the effect of deterring the people from complaining of
illness, until they are no longer able to work; for it is the most
nauseous and sickening medicine that was ever taken into the stomach.
Ignorant, or malicious overseer may, and often do, misapply it, as was
the case with our overseer, when he compelled poor Lydia to take a
draught of its solution. After the restoration of my health, I resumed
my accustomed labor in the field, and continued it without intermission,
until I left this plantation.
We had this year, as a part of our crop, ten acres of indigo. This plant
is worked nearly after the manner of rice, except that it is planted on
high and dry ground, whilst the rice is always cultivated in low
swamps, where the ground may be inundated with water; but
notwithstanding its location on dry ground, the culture of indigo is not
less unpleasant than that of rice. When the rice is ripe, and ready for
the sickle, it is no longer disagreeable; but when the indigo is ripe
and ready to cut, the troubles attendant upon it have only commenced.
The indigo plant bears more resemblance to the weed called wild indigo,
which is common in the woods of Pennsylvania, than to any other herb
with which I am acquainted.
The root of the indigo plant is long and slender, and emits a scent
somewhat like that of parsley. From the root issues a single stem,
straight, hard, and slender, covered with a bark, a little cracked on
its surface, of a gray color towards the bottom, green in the middle,
reddish at the extremity, and without the appearance of pith in the
inside. The leaves ranged in pairs around the stalk, are of an oval
form--smooth, soft to the touch, furrowed above, and of a deep green on
the under side. The upper parts of the plant are loaded with small
flowers, destitute of smell. Each flower changes into a pod, enclosing
seed.
This plant thrives best in a rich, moist soil. The seeds are black, very
small, and sowed in straight drills. This crop requires very careful
culture, and must be kept free from every kind of weeds and grass. It
ripens within less than three months from the time it is sown. When it
begins to flower, the top is cut off, and, as new flowers appear, the
plant is again pruned, until the end of the season.
Indigo impoverishes land more rapidly than almost any other crop, and
the plant must be gathered in with great caution, for fear of shaking
off the valuable farina that lies in the leaves. When gathered, it is
thrown into the steeping vat--a large tub filled with water--here it
undergoes a fermentation, which, in twenty-four hours at farthest, is
completed. A cock is then turned to let the water run into the second
tub, called the mortar, or pounding tub: the steeping vat is then
cleaned out, that fresh plants may be thrown in, and thus the work is
continued without interruption. The water in the pounding tub is stirred
with wooden buckets, with holes in their bottoms, for several days; and,
after the sediment contained in the water has settled to the bottom of
the tub, the water is let off, and the sediment, which is the indigo of
commerce, is gathered into bags, and hung up to drain. It is afterwards
pressed, and laid away to dry in cakes, and then packed in chests for
market.
Washing at the tubs is exceedingly unpleasant, both on account of the
filth and the stench arising from the decomposition of the plants.
In the early part of June, our shad, that each one had been used to
receive, was withheld from us, and we no longer received any thing but
the peck of corn and pint of vinegar. This circumstance, in a community
less severely disciplined than ours, might have procured murmurs; but to
us it was only announced by the fact of the fish not being distributed
to us on Sunday evening.
This was considered a fortunate season by our people. There had been no
exemplary punishment inflicted amongst us for several months; we had
escaped entirely upon the occasion of the stolen bags of cotton, though
nothing less was to have been looked for, on that occurrence, than a
general whipping of the whole gang.
There was more or less of whipping amongst us every week; frequently one
was flogged every evening, over and above the punishments that followed
on each settlement day; but these chastisements, which seldom exceeded
ten or twenty lashes, were of little import. I was careful, for my own
part, to conform to all the regulations of the plantation.
When I no longer received my fish from the overseer, I found it
necessary again to resort to my own expedients for the purpose of
procuring something in the shape of animal food, to add to my bread and
greens.
I had, by this time, become well acquainted with the woods and swamps
for several miles round our plantation; and this being the season when
the turtles came upon the land, to deposit their eggs, I availed myself
of it, and going out one Sunday morning, caught, in the course of the
day, by traveling cautiously around the edges of the swamps, ten
snapping turtles, four of which were very large. As I caught these
creatures, I tied each one with hickory bark, and hung it up to the
bough of a tree, so that I could come and carry it home at my leisure.
I afterwards carried my turtles home, and put them into a hole that I
dug in the ground, four or five feet deep, and secured the sides by
driving small pieces of split timber into the ground, quite round the
circumference of the hole, the upper ends of the timber standing out
above the ground. Into this hole I poured water at pleasure, and kept my
turtles until I needed them.
On the next Sunday, I again went to the swamps to search for turtles;
but as the period of laying their eggs had nearly passed, I had poor
success to-day, only taking two turtles of the species called
skill-pots--a kind of large terrapin, with a speckled back and red
belly.
This day, when I was three or four miles from home, in a very solitary
part of the swamps, I heard the sound of bells, similar to those which
wagoners place on the shoulders of their horses. At first, the noise of
bells of this kind, in a place where they were so unexpected, alarmed
me, as I could not imagine who or what it was that was causing these
bells to ring. I was standing near a pond of water, and listening
attentively; I thought the bells were moving in the woods, and coming
toward me. I therefore crouched down upon the ground, under cover of a
cluster of small bushes that were near me, and lay, not free from
disquietude, to await the near approach of these mysterious bells.
Sometimes they were quite silent for a minute or more at a time, and
then again would jingle quick, but not loud. They were evidently
approaching me; and at length I heard footsteps distinctly in the
leaves, which lay dry upon the ground. A feeling of horror seized me at
this moment, for I now recollected that I was on the verge of the swamp,
near which the vultures and carrion crows had mangled the living bodies
of the two murderers; and my terror was not abated, when, a moment
after, I saw come from behind a large tree the form of a brawny,
famished-looking black man, entirely naked, with his hair matted and
shaggy, his eyes wild and rolling, and bearing over his head something
in the form of an arch, elevated three feet above his hair, beneath the
top of which were suspended the bells, three in number, whose sound had
first attracted my attention. Upon a closer examination of this
frightful figure, I perceived that it wore a collar of iron about its
neck, with a large padlock pendant from behind, and carried in its hand
a long staff, with an iron spear in one end. The staff, like every thing
else belonging to this strange spectre, was black. It slowly approached
within ten paces of me, and stood still.
The sun was now down, and the early twilight produced by the gloom of
the heavy forest, in the midst of which I was, added approaching
darkness to heighten my dismay. My heart was in my mouth; all the hairs
of my head started from their sockets; I seemed to be rising from my
hiding place into the open air in spite of myself, and I gasped for
breath.
The black apparition moved past me, went to the water and kneeled down.
The forest re-echoed with the sound of the bells, and their dreadful
peals filled the deepest recesses of the swamps, as their bearer drank
the water of the pond, in which I thought I heard his irons hiss, when
they came in contact with it. I felt confident that I was now in the
immediate presence of an inhabitant of a nether and fiery world, who had
been permitted to escape, for a time, from the place of torment, and
come to revisit the scenes of his former crimes. I now gave myself up
for lost, without other aid than my own, and began to pray aloud to
heaven to protect me. At the sound of my voice, the supposed evil one
appeared to be scarcely less alarmed than I was. He sprang to his feet,
and, at a single bound, rushed middeep into the water, then turning, he
besought me in a suppliant and piteous tone of voice, to have mercy upon
him, and not carry him back to his master.
The suddenness with which we pass from the extreme of one passion, to
the utmost bounds of another, is inconceivable, and must be assigned to
the catalogue of unknown causes and effects, unless we suppose the human
frame to be an involuntary machine, operated upon by surrounding objects
which give it different and contrary impulses, as a ball is driven to
and fro by the batons of boys, when they play in troops upon a common. I
had no sooner heard a human voice than all my fears fled, as a spark
that ascends from a heap of burning charcoal, and vanishes to nothing.
I at once perceived, that the object that had well nigh deprived me of
my reason, so far from having either the will or the power to injure me,
was only a poor destitute African negro, still more wretched and
helpless than myself.
Rising from the bushes, I now advanced to the water side, and desired
him to come out without fear, and to be assured that if I could render
him any assistance, I would do it most cheerfully. As to carrying him
back to his master, I was more ready to ask help to deliver me from my
own, than to give aid to any one in forcing him back to his.
We now went to a place in the forest, where the ground was, for some
distance, clear of trees, and where the light of the sun was yet so
strong, that every object could be seen. My new friend now desired me to
look at his back, which was seamed and ridged with scars of the whip,
and the hickory, from the pole of his neck to the lower extremity of the
spine. The natural color of the skin had disappeared, and was succeeded
by a streaked and speckled appearance of dusky white and pale
flesh-color, scarcely any of the original, black remaining. The skin of
this man's back had been again and again cut away by the thong, and
renewed by the hand of nature, until it was grown fast to the flesh, and
felt hard and turbid.
He told me his name was Paul; that he was a native of Congo, in Africa,
that he had left an aged mother, a widow, at home, as also a wife and
four children; that it had been his misfortune to fall into the hands of
a master, who was frequently drunk, and whose temper was so savage, that
his chief delight appeared to consist in whipping and torturing his
slaves, of whom he owned near twenty; but through some unaccountable
caprice, he had contracted a particular dislike against Paul, whose life
he now declared to me was insupportable. He had then been wandering in
the woods, more than three weeks, with no other subsistence than the
land tortoises, frogs, and other reptiles that he had taken in the
woods, and along the shores of the ponds, with the aid of his spear. He
had not been able to take any of the turtles in the laying season,
because the noise of his bells frightened them, and they always escaped
to the water before he could catch them. He had found many eggs, which
he had eaten raw, having no fire, nor any means of making fire, to cook
his food. He had been afraid to travel much in the middle of the day,
lest the sound of his bells should be heard by some one, who would make
his master acquainted with the place of his concealment. The only
periods when he ventured to go in search of food, were early in the
morning, before people could have time to leave their homes and reach
the swamp: or late in the evening, after those who were in pursuit of
him had gone to their dwellings for the night.
This man spoke our language imperfectly, but possessed a sound and
vigorous understanding, and reasoned with me upon the propriety of
destroying a life which was doomed to continual distress. He informed me
that he had first run away from his master more than two years ago,
after being whipped with long hickory switches until he fainted. That he
concealed himself in a swamp, at that time, ten or fifteen miles from
this place, for more than six months, but was finally betrayed by a
woman whom he sometimes visited; that when taken, he was again whipped
until he was not able to stand, and had a heavy block of wood chained to
one foot, which he was obliged to drag after him at his daily labor, for
more than three months, when he found an old file, with which he cut the
irons from his ancle, and again escaped to the woods, but was retaken
within little more than a week after his flight, by two men who were
looking after their cattle, and came upon him in the woods where he was
asleep.
On being returned to his master, he was again whipped, and then the iron
collar that he now wore, with the iron rod extending from one shoulder
over his head to the other, with the bells fastened at the top of the
arch, were put upon him. Of these irons he could not divest himself, and
wore them constantly from that time to the present.
I had no instruments with me to enable me to release Paul from his
manacles, and all I could do for him was to desire him to go with me to
the place where I had left my terrapins, which I gave to him, together
with all the eggs that I had found to-day. I also caused him to lie
down, and having furnished myself with a flint-stone, (many of which lay
in the sand near the edge of the pond) and a handful of dry moss, I
succeeded in striking fire from the iron collar, and made a fire of
sticks, upon which he could roast the terrapins and the eggs. It was
now quite dark, and I was full two miles from my road, with no path to
guide me towards home, but the small traces made in the woods by the
cattle.
I advised Paul to bear his misfortunes as well as he could, until the
next Sunday, when I would return and bring with me a file, and other
things necessary to the removal of his fetters.
I now set out alone, to make my way home, not without some little
feeling of trepidation, as I passed along in the dark shade of the pine
trees, and thought of the terrific deeds that had been done in these
woods.
This was the period of the full moon, which now rose and cast her
brilliant rays through the tops of the trees that overhung my way, and
enveloped my path in a gloom more cheerless than the obscurity of total
darkness. The path I traveled led by sinuosities around the margin of
the swamp, and finally ended at the extremity of the cart-road
terminating at the spot where David and Hardy had been given alive for
food to vultures; and over this ground I was now obliged to pass, unless
I chose to turn far to the left, through the pathless forest, and make
my way to the high road near the spot where the lady had been torn from
her horse. I hated the idea of acknowledging to my own heart, that I was
a coward, and dared not look upon the bones of a murderer at midnight;
and there was little less of awe attached to the notion of visiting the
ground where the ghost of the murdered woman was reported to wander in
the moonbeams, than in visiting the scene where diabolical crimes had
been visited by fiend-like punishment.
My opinion is, that there is no one who is not at times subject to a
sensation approaching fear, when placed in situations similar to that in
which I found myself this night. I did not believe that those who had
passed the dark line, which separates the living from the dead, could
again return to the earth, either for good or for evil; but that solemn
foreboding of the heart which directs the minds of all men to a
contemplation of the just judgment, which a superior, and unknown power,
holds in reservation for the deeds of this life, filled my soul with a
dread conception of the unutterable woes which a righteous and unerring
tribunal must award to the blood-stained spirits of the two men whose
lives had been closed in such unspeakable torment by the side of the
path I was now treading.
The moon had risen high above the trees and shone with a clear and
cloudless light; the whole firmament of heaven was radiant with the
lustre of a mild and balmy summer evening. Save only the droppings of
the early dew from the lofty branches of the trees into the water, which
lay in shallow pools on my right, and the light trampling of my own
footsteps, the stillness of night pervaded the lonely wastes around me.
But there is a deep melancholy in the sound of the heavy drop as it
meets the bosom of the wave in a dense forest at night, that revives in
the memory the recollection of the days of other years, and fills the
heart with sadness.
I was now approaching the unhallowed ground where lay the remains of the
remorseless and guilty dead, who had gone to their final account,
reeking in their sins, unatoned, unblest and unwept. Already I saw the
bones, whitened by the rain and bleached in the sun, lying scattered and
dispersed, a leg here and an arm there, while a scull with the under jaw
in its place, retaining all its teeth, grinned a ghastly laugh, with its
front full in the beams of the moon, which, falling into the vacant
sockets of the eye-balls, reflected a pale shadow from these deserted
caverns, and played in twinkling lustre upon the bald and skinless
forehead.
In a moment, the night-breeze agitated the leaves of the wood and moaned
in dreary sighs through the lofty pine tops; the gale shook the forest
in the depth of its solitudes: a cloud swept across the moon, and her
light disappeared; a flock of carrion crows disturbed in their roosts,
flapped their wings and fluttered over my head; and a wolf, who had been
knawing the dry bones, greeted the darkness with a long and dismal
howl.
I felt the blood chill in my veins, and all my joints shuddered, as if I
had been smitten by electricity. At least a minute elapsed before I
recovered the power of self-government. I hastened to fly from a place
devoted to crime, where an evil genius presided in darkness over a fell
assembly of howling wolves, and blood-snuffing vultures.
When I arrived at the quarter, all was quiet. The inhabitants of this
mock-village were wrapped in forgetfulness; and I stole silently into my
little loft and joined my neighbors in their repose. Experience had made
me so well acquainted with the dangers that beset the life of a slave,
that I determined, as a matter of prudence, to say nothing to any one of
the adventures of this Sunday, but went to work on Monday morning, at
the summons of the overseer's horn, as if nothing unusual had occurred.
In the course of the week I often thought of the forlorn and desponding
African, who had so terrified me in the woods, and who seemed so
grateful for the succor I gave him. I felt anxious to become better
acquainted with this man, who possessed knowledge superior to the common
race of slaves, and manifested a moral courage in the conversation that
I had with him, worthy of a better fate than that to which fortune had
consigned him. On the following Sunday, having provided myself with a
large file, which I procured from the blacksmith's shop, belonging to
the plantation, I again repaired to the place, at the side of the swamp,
where I had first seen the figure of this ill-fated man. I expected that
he would be in waiting for me at the appointed place, as I had promised
him that I would certainly come again, at this time: but on arriving at
the spot where I had left him, I saw no sign of any person. The remains
of the fire I had kindled were here, and it seemed that the fire had
been kept up for several days, by the quantity of ashes that lay in a
heap, surrounded by numerous small brands. The impressions of human feet
were thickly disposed around this decayed fire: and the bones of the
terrapins that I had given to Paul, as well as the skeletons of many
frogs, were scattered upon the ground, but there was nothing that showed
that any one had visited this spot, since the fall of the last rain,
which I now recollected had taken place on the previous Thursday. From
this circumstance I concluded, that Paul had relieved himself of his
irons and gone to seek concealment in some other place, or that his
master had discovered his retreat and carried him back to the
plantation.
Whilst standing at the ashes I heard the croaking of ravens at some
distance in the woods, and immediately afterwards a turkey-buzzard
passed over me pursued by an eagle, coming from the quarter in which I
had just heard the ravens. I knew that the eagle never pursued the
buzzard for the purpose of preying upon him, but only to compel him to
disgorge himself of his own prey for the benefit of the king of birds. I
therefore concluded that there was some dead animal in my neighborhood
that had called all these ravenous fowls together. It might be that Paul
had killed a cow by knocking her down with a pine knot, and that he had
removed his residence to this slaughtered animal. Curiosity was aroused
in me, and I proceeded to examine the woods.
I had not advanced more than two hundred yards when I felt oppressed by
a most sickening stench, and saw the trees swarming with birds of prey,
buzzards perched upon their branches, ravens sailing amongst their
boughs, and clouds of carrion crows flitting about, and poising
themselves in the air in a stationary position, after the manner of that
most nauseous of all birds, when it perceives, or thinks it perceives,
some object of prey. Proceeding onward, I came in view of a large
sassafras tree, around the top of which was congregated a cloud of
crows, some on the boughs and others on the wing, whilst numerous
buzzards were sailing low and nearly skimming the ground. This sassafras
tree had many low horizontal branches, attached to one of which I now
saw the cause of so vast an assembly of the obscene fowls of the air.
The lifeless and putrid body of the unhappy Paul hung suspended by a
cord made of twisted hickory bark, passed in the form of a halter round
the neck, and firmly bound to a limb of the tree.
It was manifest that he had climbed the tree, fastened the cord to the
branch, and then sprung off.--The smell that assailed my nostrils was
too overwhelming to permit me to remain long in view of the dead body,
which was much mangled and torn, though its identity was beyond
question, for the iron collar, and the bells with the arch that bore
them, were still in their place. The bells had preserved the corpse from
being devoured; for whilst I looked at it I observed a crow descend upon
it, and make a stroke at the face with its beak, but the motion that
this gave to the bells caused them to rattle, and the bird took to
flight.
Seeing that I could no longer render assistance to Paul, who was now
beyond the reach of his master's tyranny, as well as of my pity, I
returned without delay to my master's house, and going into the kitchen,
related to the household servants that I had found a black man hung in
the woods with bells upon him.--This intelligence was soon communicated
to my master, who sent for me to come into the house to relate the
circumstance to him. I was careful not to tell that I had seen Paul
before his death; and when I had finished my narrative, my master
observed to a gentleman who was with him, that this was a heavy loss to
the owner, and told me to go.
The body of Paul was never taken down, but remained hanging where I had
seen it until the flesh fell from the bones, or was torn off by the
birds. I saw the bones hanging in the sassafras tree more than two
months afterwards, and the last time that I was ever in these swamps.