of fishing-tackle, Jack and I betook ourselves to the river, and succeeded
in securing some immense cat-fish, of which, to tell you the truth, I am
most horribly afraid when I have caught them. The dexterity necessary for
taking them off the hook so as to avoid the spikes on their backs, and the
spikes on each side of their gills, the former having to be pressed down,
and the two others pressed up, before you can get any purchase on the
slimy beast (for it is smooth skinned and without scales, to add to the
difficulty)--these conditions, I say, make the catching of cat-fish
questionable sport. Then too, they hiss, and spit, and swear at one, and
are altogether devilish in their aspect and demeanour; nor are they good
for food, except, as Jack with much humility said this morning, for
coloured folks--'Good for coloured folks, missis; me 'spect not good
enough for white people.' That 'spect, meaning _ex_pect, has sometimes a
possible meaning of _sus_pect, which would give the sentence in which it
occurs a very humorous turn, and I always take the benefit of that
interpretation. After exhausting the charms of our occupation, finding
that cat-fish were likely to be our principal haul, I left the river and
went my rounds to the hospitals. On my way I encountered two batches of
small black fry, Hannah's children and poor Psyche's children, looking
really as neat and tidy as children of the bettermost class of artisans
among ourselves. These people are so quick and so imitative that it would
be the easiest thing in the world to improve their physical condition by
appealing to their emulative propensities. Their passion for what is
_genteel_ might be used most advantageously in the same direction; and
indeed, I think it would be difficult to find people who offered such a
fair purchase by so many of their characteristics to the hand of the
reformer.
Returning from the hospital I was accosted by poor old Teresa, the
wretched negress who had complained to me so grievously of her back being
broken by hard work and child-bearing. She was in a dreadful state of
excitement, which she partly presently communicated to me, because she
said Mr. O---- had ordered her to be flogged for having complained to me
as she did. It seems to me that I have come down here to be tortured, for
this punishing these wretched creatures for crying out to me for help is
really converting me into a source of increased misery to them. It is
almost more than I can endure to hear these horrid stories of lashings
inflicted because I have been invoked; and though I dare say Mr. ----,
thanks to my passionate appeals to him, gives me little credit for
prudence or self-command, I have some, and I exercise it too when I listen
to such tales as these with my teeth set fast and my lips closed. Whatever
I may do to the master, I hold my tongue to the slaves, and I wonder how I
do it.
In the afternoon I rowed with Mr. ---- to another island in the broad
waters of the Altamaha, called Tunno's Island, to return the visit of a
certain Dr. T----, the proprietor of the island, named after him, as our
rice swamp is after Major ----. I here saw growing in the open air the
most beautiful gardinias I ever beheld; the branches were as high and as
thick as the largest clumps of Kalmia, that grow in your woods, but
whereas the tough, stringy, fibrous branches of these gives them a
straggling appearance, these magnificent masses of dark shiny glossy green
leaves were quite compact; and I cannot conceive anything lovelier or more
delightful than they would be starred all over with their thick-leaved
cream-white odoriferous blossoms.
In the course of our visit a discussion arose as to the credibility of any
negro assertion, though, indeed, that could hardly be called a discussion
that was simply a chorus of assenting opinions. No negro was to be
believed on any occasion or any subject. No doubt they are habitual liars,
for they are slaves, but there are some thrice honourable exceptions who,
being slaves, are yet not liars; and certainly the vice results much more
from the circumstances in which they are placed than from any natural
tendency to untruth in their case. The truth is that they are always
considered as false and deceitful, and it is very seldom that any special
investigation of the facts of any particular case is resorted to in their
behalf. They are always prejudged on their supposed general
characteristics, and never judged after the fact on the merit of any
special instance.
A question which was discussed in the real sense of the term, was that of
ploughing the land instead of having it turned with the spade or hoe. I
listened to this with great interest, for Jack and I had had some talk
upon this subject, which began in his ardently expressed wish that massa
would allow his land to be ploughed, and his despairing conclusion that he
never would, ''cause horses more costly to keep than coloured folks,' and
ploughing, therefore, dearer than hoeing or digging. I had ventured to
suggest to Mr. ----- the possibility of ploughing some of the fields on
the island, and his reply was that the whole land was too moist and too
much interrupted with the huge masses of the Cypress yam roots, which
would turn the share of any plough. Yet there is land belonging to our
neighbour Mr. G----, on the other side of the river, where the conditions
of the soil must be precisely the same, and yet which is being ploughed
before our faces. On Mr. ----'s adjacent plantation the plough is also
used extensively and successfully.
On my return to our own island I visited another of the hospitals, and the
settlements to which it belonged. The condition of these places and of
their inhabitants is, of course, the same all over the plantation, and if
I were to describe them I should but weary you with a repetition of
identical phenomena: filthy, wretched, almost naked, always bare-legged
and bare-footed children; negligent, ignorant, wretched mothers, whose
apparent indifference to the plight of their offspring, and utter
incapacity to alter it, are the inevitable result of their slavery. It is
hopeless to attempt to reform their habits or improve their condition
while the women are condemned to field labour; nor is it possible to
overestimate the bad moral effect of the system as regards the women
entailing this enforced separation from their children and neglect of all
the cares and duties of mother, nurse, and even house-wife, which are all
merged in the mere physical toil of a human hoeing machine. It seems to me
too--but upon this point I cannot, of course, judge as well as the persons
accustomed to and acquainted with the physical capacities of their
slaves--that the labour is not judiciously distributed in many cases; at
least, not as far as the women are concerned. It is true that every
able-bodied woman is made the most of in being driven a-field as long as
under all and any circumstances she is able to wield a hoe; but on the
other hand, stout, hale, hearty girls and boys, of from eight to twelve
and older, are allowed to lounge about filthy and idle, with no pretence
of an occupation but what they call 'tend baby,' i.e. see to the life and
limbs of the little slave infants, to whose mothers, working in distant
fields, they carry them during the day to be suckled, and for the rest of
the time leave them to crawl and kick in the filthy cabins or on the
broiling sand which surrounds them, in which industry, excellent enough
for the poor babies, these big lazy youths and lasses emulate them. Again,
I find many women who have borne from five to ten children rated as
workers, precisely as young women in the prime of their strength who have
had none; this seems a cruel carelessness. To be sure, while the women are
pregnant their task is diminished, and this is one of the many indirect
inducements held out to reckless propagation, which has a sort of premium
offered to it in the consideration of less work and more food,
counterbalanced by none of the sacred responsibilities which hallow and
ennoble the relation of parent and child; in short, as their lives are for
the most part those of mere animals, their increase is literally mere
animal breeding, to which every encouragement is given, for it adds to
the master's live stock, and the value of his estate.
* * * * *
Dear E----. To-day, I have the pleasure of announcing to you a variety of
improvements about to be made in the infirmary of the island. There is to
be a third story--a mere loft indeed--added to the buildings, but by
affording more room for the least distressing cases of sickness to be
drafted off into, it will leave the ground-floor and room above it
comparatively free for the most miserable of these unfortunates. To my
unspeakable satisfaction these destitute apartments are to be furnished
with bedsteads, mattresses, pillows, and blankets; and I feel a little
comforted for the many heart-aches my life here inflicts upon me: at least
some of my twinges will have wrought this poor alleviation of their
wretchedness for the slaves, when prostrated by disease or pain.
I had hardly time to return from the hospital home this morning before one
of the most tremendous storms I ever saw burst over the island. Your
northern hills, with their solemn pine woods, and fresh streams and lakes,
telling of a cold rather than a warm climate, always seem to me as if
undergoing some strange and unnatural visitation, when one of your heavy
summer thunder-storms bursts over them. Snow and frost, hail and, above
all, wind, trailing rain clouds and brilliant northern lights, are your
appropriate sky phenomena; here, thunder and lightning seem as if they
might have been invented. Even in winter (remember, we are now in
February) they appear neither astonishing nor unseasonable, and I should
think in summer (but Heaven defend me from ever making good my
supposition) lightning must be as familiar to these sweltering lands and
slimy waters as sunlight itself.
The afternoon cleared off most beautifully, and Jack and I went out on the
river to catch what might be caught. Jack's joyful excitement was extreme
at my announcing to him the fact that Mr. ---- had consented to try
ploughing on some of the driest portions of the island instead of the slow
and laborious process of hoeing the fields; this is a disinterested
exultation on his part, for at any rate as long as I am here, he will
certainly be nothing but 'my boy Jack,' and I should think after my
departure will never be degraded to the rank of a field-hand or common
labourer. Indeed the delicacy of his health, to which his slight slender
figure and languid face bear witness, and which was one reason of his
appointment to the eminence of being 'my slave,' would, I should think,
prevent the poor fellow's ever being a very robust or useful working
animal.
On my return from the river I had a long and painful conversation with
Mr. ---- upon the subject of the flogging which had been inflicted on the
wretched Teresa. These discussions are terrible: they throw me into
perfect agonies of distress for the slaves, whose position is utterly
hopeless; for myself, whose intervention in their behalf sometimes seems
to me worse than useless; for Mr. ----, whose share in this horrible
system fills me by turns with indignation and pity. But, after all, what
can he do? how can he help it all? Moreover, born and bred in America,
how should he care or wish to help it? and of course he does not; and I
am in despair that he does not: et voilà, it is a happy and hopeful
plight for us both. He maintained that there had been neither hardship
nor injustice in the case of Teresa's flogging; and that, moreover, she
had not been flogged at all for complaining to me, but simply because her
allotted task was not done at the appointed time. Of course this was the
result of her having come to appeal to me, instead of going to her
labour; and as she knew perfectly well the penalty she was incurring, he
maintained that there was neither hardship nor injustice in the case; the
whole thing was a regularly established law, with which all the slaves
were perfectly well acquainted; and this case was no exception whatever.
The circumstance of my being on the island could not of course be allowed
to overthrow the whole system of discipline established to secure the
labour and obedience of the slaves; and if they chose to try experiments
as to that fact, they and I must take the consequences. At the end of the
day, the driver of the gang to which Teresa belongs reported her work
not done, and Mr. O---- ordered him to give her the usual number of
stripes; which order the driver of course obeyed, without knowing how
Teresa had employed her time instead of hoeing. But Mr. O---- knew well
enough, for the wretched woman told me that she had herself told him she
should appeal to me about her weakness and suffering and inability to do
the work exacted from her.
He did not, however, think proper to exceed in her punishment the usual
number of stripes allotted to the non-performance of the appointed daily
task, and Mr. ---- pronounced the whole transaction perfectly satisfactory
and _en règle_. The common drivers are limited in their powers of
chastisement, not being allowed to administer more than a certain number
of lashes to their fellow slaves. Head man Frank, as he is called, has
alone the privilege of exceeding this limit; and the overseer's latitude
of infliction is only curtailed by the necessity of avoiding injury to
life or limb. The master's irresponsible power has no such bound. When I
was thus silenced on the particular case under discussion, I resorted in
my distress and indignation to the abstract question, as I never can
refrain from doing; and to Mr. ----'s assertion of the justice of poor
Teresa's punishment, I retorted the manifest injustice of unpaid and
enforced labour; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man to strip and
lash a woman, the mother of ten children; to exact from her toil which was
to maintain in luxury two idle young men, the owners of the plantation. I
said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and
corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly
or humane man. Mr. ---- said he thought it was _disagreeable_, and left me
to my reflections with that concession. My letter has been interrupted for
the last three days; by nothing special, however. My occupations and
interests here of course know no change; but Mr. ---- has been anxious for
a little while past that we should go down to St. Simon's, the cotton
plantation.
We shall suffer less from the heat, which I am beginning to find
oppressive on this swamp island; and he himself wished to visit that part
of his property, whither he had not yet been since our arrival in Georgia.
So the day before yesterday he departed to make the necessary arrangements
for our removal thither; and my time in the meanwhile has been taken up in
fitting him out for his departure.
In the morning Jack and I took our usual paddle, and having the tackle on
board, tried fishing. I was absorbed in many sad and serious
considerations, and wonderful to relate (for you know ---- how keen an
angler I am), had lost all consciousness of my occupation, until after I
know not how long a time elapsing without the shadow of a nibble, I was
recalled to a most ludicrous perception of my ill-success by Jack's
sudden observation, 'Missis, fishing berry good fun when um fish bite.'
This settled the fishing for that morning, and I let Jack paddle me down
the broad turbid stream, endeavouring to answer in the most comprehensible
manner to his keen but utterly undeveloped intellects the innumerable
questions with which he plied me about Philadelphia, about England, about
the Atlantic, &c. He dilated much upon the charms of St. Simon's, to which
he appeared very glad that we were going; and among other items of
description mentioned, what I was very glad to hear, that it was a
beautiful place for riding, and that I should be able to indulge to my
heart's content in my favourite exercise, from which I have, of course,
been utterly debarred in this small dykeland of ours. He insinuated more
than once his hope and desire that he might be allowed to accompany me,
but as I knew nothing at all about his capacity for equestrian exercises,
or any of the arrangements that might or might not interfere with such a
plan, I was discreetly silent, and took no notice of his most comically
turned hints on the subject. In our row we started a quantity of wild
duck, and he told me that there was a great deal of game at St. Simon's,
but that the people did not contrive to catch much, though they laid traps
constantly for it. Of course their possessing firearms is quite out of
the question; but this abundance of what must be to them such especially
desirable prey, makes the fact a great hardship. I almost wonder they
don't learn to shoot like savages with bows and arrows, but these would be
weapons, and equally forbidden them.
In the afternoon I saw Mr. ---- off for St. Simon's; it is fifteen miles
lower down the river, and a large island at the very mouth of the
Altamaha.
The boat he went in was a large, broad, rather heavy, though well-built
craft, by no means as swift or elegant as the narrow eight-oared long boat
in which he generally takes his walks on the water, but well adapted for
the traffic between the two plantations, where it serves the purpose of a
sort of omnibus or stage-coach for the transfer of the people from one to
the other, and of a baggage waggon or cart for the conveyance of all sorts
of household goods, chattels, and necessaries. Mr. ---- sat in the middle
of a perfect chaos of such freight; and as the boat pushed off, and the
steersman took her into the stream, the men at the oars set up a chorus,
which they continued to chaunt in unison with each other, and in time with
their stroke, till the voices and oars were heard no more from the
distance. I believe I have mentioned to you before the peculiar
characteristics of this veritable negro minstrelsy--how they all sing in
unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard anything like
part-singing. Their voices seem oftener tenor than any other quality, and
the tune and time they keep something quite wonderful; such truth of
intonation and accent would make almost any music agreeable. That which I
have heard these people sing is often plaintive and pretty, but almost
always has some resemblance to tunes with which they must have become
acquainted through the instrumentality of white men; their overseers or
masters whistling Scotch or Irish airs, of which they have produced by ear
these _rifacciamenti_. The note for note reproduction of 'Ah! vous
dirai-je, maman?' in one of the most popular of the so-called Negro
melodies with which all America and England are familiar, is an example of
this very transparent plagiarism; and the tune with which Mr. ----'s
rowers started him down the Altamaha, as I stood at the steps to see him
off, was a very distinct descendant of 'Coming through the Rye.' The
words, however, were astonishingly primitive, especially the first line,
which, when it burst from their eight throats in high unison, sent me into
fits of laughter.
Jenny shake her toe at me,
Jenny gone away;
Jenny shake her toe at me,
Jenny gone away.
Hurrah! Miss Susy, oh!
Jenny gone away;
Hurrah! Miss Susy, oh!
Jenny gone away.
What the obnoxious Jenny meant by shaking her toe, whether defiance or
mere departure, I never could ascertain, but her going away was an
unmistakable subject of satisfaction; and the pause made on the last 'oh!'
before the final announcement of her departure, had really a good deal of
dramatic and musical effect. Except the extemporaneous chaunts in our
honour, of which I have written to you before, I have never heard the
negroes on Mr. ----'s plantation sing any words that could be said to have
any sense. To one, an extremely pretty, plaintive, and original air, there
was but one line, which was repeated with a sort of wailing chorus--
Oh! my massa told me, there's no grass in Georgia.
Upon enquiring the meaning of which, I was told it was supposed to be the
lamentation of a slave from one of the more northerly states, Virginia or
Carolina, where the labour of hoeing the weeds, or grass as they call it,
is not nearly so severe as here, in the rice and cotton lands of Georgia.
Another very pretty and pathetic tune began with words that seemed to
promise something sentimental--
Fare you well, and good-bye, oh, oh!
I'm goin' away to leave you, oh, oh!
but immediately went off into nonsense verses about gentlemen in the
parlour drinking wine and cordial, and ladies in the drawing-room drinking
tea and coffee, &c. I have heard that many of the masters and overseers on
these plantations prohibit melancholy tunes or words, and encourage
nothing but cheerful music and senseless words, deprecating the effect of
sadder strains upon the slaves, whose peculiar musical sensibility might
be expected to make them especially excitable by any songs of a plaintive
character, and having any reference to their particular hardships. If it
is true, I think it a judicious precaution enough--these poor slaves are
just the sort of people over whom a popular musical appeal to their
feelings and passions would have an immense power.