uninterrupted _tête-à-tête_ with his crosseyed overseer, and I
endeavoured, as I generally do, to atone by my conversibleness and
civility for the additional trouble which, no doubt, all my outlandish
ways and notions are causing the worthy man. So suggestive (to use the
new-fangled jargon about books) a woman as myself is, I suspect, an
intolerable nuisance in these parts; and poor Mr. O---- cannot very well
desire Mr. ---- to send me away, however much he may wish that he would;
so that figuratively, as well as literally, I fear the worthy master _me
voit d'un mauvais oeil_, as the French say. I asked him several questions
about some of the slaves who had managed to learn to read, and by what
means they had been able to do so. As teaching them is strictly prohibited
by the laws, they who instructed them, and such of them as acquired the
knowledge, must have been not a little determined and persevering. This
was my view of the case, of course, and of course it was not the
overseer's. I asked him if many of Mr. ----'s slaves could read. He said
'No; very few, he was happy to say, but those few were just so many too
many.' 'Why, had he observed any insubordination in those who did?' And I
reminded him of Cooper London, the methodist preacher, whose performance
of the burial service had struck me so much some time ago--to whose
exemplary conduct and character there is but one concurrent testimony all
over the plantation. No; he had no special complaint to bring against the
lettered members of his subject community, but he spoke by anticipation.
Every step they take towards intelligence and enlightenment lessens the
probability of their acquiescing in their condition. Their condition is
not to be changed--ergo, they had better not learn to read; a very
succinct and satisfactory argument as far as it goes, no doubt, and one to
which I had not a word to reply, at any rate, to Mr. O----, as I did not
feel called upon to discuss the abstract justice or equity of the matter
with him; indeed he, to a certain degree, gave up that part of the
position, starting with 'I don't say whether it's right or wrong;' and in
all conversations that I have had with the southerners upon these
subjects, whether out of civility to what may be supposed to be an
Englishwoman's prejudices, or a forlorn respect to their own convictions,
the question of the fundamental wrong of slavery is generally admitted, or
at any rate certainly never denied. That part of the subject is summarily
dismissed, and all its other aspects vindicated, excused, and even lauded,
with untiring eloquence. Of course, of the abstract question I could judge
before I came here, but I confess I had not the remotest idea how
absolutely my observation of every detail of the system, as a practical
iniquity, would go to confirm my opinion of its abomination. Mr. O----
went on to condemn and utterly denounce all the preaching and teaching and
moral instruction upon religious subjects, which people in the south,
pressed upon by northern opinion, are endeavouring to give their slaves.
The kinder and the more cowardly masters are anxious to evade the charge
of keeping their negroes in brutish ignorance, and so they crumble what
they suppose and hope may prove a little harmless, religious
enlightenment, which, mixed up with much religious authority on the
subject of submission and fidelity to masters, they trust their slaves may
swallow without its doing them any harm--i.e., that they may be better
Christians and better slaves--and so, indeed, no doubt they are; but it is
a very dangerous experiment, and from Mr. O----'s point of view I quite
agree with him. The letting out of water, or the letting in of light, in
infinitesimal quantities, is not always easy. The half-wicked of the earth
are the leaks through which wickedness is eventually swamped; compromises
forerun absolute surrender in most matters, and fools and cowards are, in
such cases, the instruments of Providence for their own defeat. Mr. O----
stated unequivocally his opinion that free labour would be more profitable
on the plantations than the work of slaves, which, being compulsory, was
of the worst possible quality and the smallest possible quantity; then the
charge of them before and after they are able to work is onerous, the cost
of feeding and clothing them very considerable, and upon the whole he, a
southern overseer, pronounced himself decidedly in favour of free labour,
upon grounds of expediency. Having at the beginning of our conversation
declined discussing the moral aspect of slavery, evidently not thinking
that position tenable, I thought I had every right to consider Mr. ----'s
slave-driver a decided abolitionist.
I had been anxious to enlist his sympathies on behalf of my extreme
desire, to have some sort of garden, but did not succeed in inspiring him
with my enthusiasm on the subject; he said there was but one garden that
he knew of in the whole neighbourhood of Darien, and that was our
neighbour, old Mr. C----'s, a Scotchman on St. Simon's. I remembered the
splendid gardinias on Tunno's Island, and referred to them as a proof of
the material for ornamental gardening. He laughed, and said rice and
cotton crops were the ornamental gardening principally admired by the
planters, and that, to the best of his belief, there was not another
decent kitchen or flower garden in the State, but the one he had
mentioned.
The next day after this conversation, I walked with my horticultural
zeal much damped, and wandered along the dyke by the broad river,
looking at some pretty peach trees in blossom, and thinking what a curse
of utter stagnation this slavery produces, and how intolerable to me a
life passed within its stifling influence would be. Think of peach trees
in blossom in the middle of February! It does seem cruel, with such a
sun and soil, to be told that a garden is worth nobody's while here;
however, Mr. O---- said that he believed the wife of the former overseer
had made a 'sort of a garden' at St. Simon's. We shall see 'what sort'
it turns out to be. While I was standing on the dyke, ruminating above
the river, I saw a beautiful white bird of the crane species alight not
far from me. I do not think a little knowledge of natural history would
diminish the surprise and admiration with which I regard the, to me,
unwonted specimens of animal existence that I encounter every day, and
of which I do not even know the names. Ignorance is an odious thing. The
birds here are especially beautiful, I think. I saw one the other day,
of what species of course I do not know, of a warm and rich brown, with
a scarlet hood and crest--a lovely creature, about the size of your
northern robin, but more elegantly shaped.
This morning, instead of my usual visit to the infirmary, I went to look
at the work and workers in the threshing mill--all was going on actively
and orderly under the superintendence of head-man Frank, with whom, and a
very sagacious clever fellow, who manages the steam power of the mill,
and is honourably distinguished as Engineer Ned, I had a small chat.
There is one among various drawbacks to the comfort and pleasure of our
intercourse with these coloured 'men and brethren,' at least in their
slave condition, which certainly exercises my fortitude not a
little,--the swarms of fleas that cohabit with these sable dependants of
ours are--well--incredible; moreover they are by no means the only or
most objectionable companions one borrows from them, and I never go to
the infirmary, where I not unfrequently am requested to look at very
dirty limbs and bodies in very dirty draperies, without coming away with
a strong inclination to throw myself into the water, and my clothes into
the fire, which last would be expensive. I do not suppose that these
hateful consequences of dirt and disorder are worse here than among the
poor and neglected human creatures who swarm in the lower parts of
European cities; but my call to visit them has never been such as that
which constrains me to go daily among these poor people, and although on
one or two occasions I have penetrated into fearfully foul and filthy
abodes of misery in London, I have never rendered the same personal
services to their inhabitants that I do to Mr. ----'s slaves, and so
have not incurred the same amount of entomological inconvenience.
After leaving the mill, I prolonged my walk, and came, for the first time,
upon one of the 'gangs,' as they are called, in full field work. Upon my
appearance and approach there was a momentary suspension of labour, and
the usual chorus of screams and ejaculations of welcome, affection, and
infinite desires for infinite small indulgences. I was afraid to stop
their work, not feeling at all sure that urging a conversation with me
would be accepted as any excuse for an uncompleted task, or avert the
fatal infliction of the usual award of stripes; so I hurried off and left
them to their hoeing.
On my way home I was encountered by London, our Methodist preacher, who
accosted me with a request for a prayer-book and Bible, and expressed his
regret at hearing that we were so soon going to St. Simon's. I promised
him his holy books, and asked him how he had learned to read, but found it
impossible to get him to tell me. I wonder if he thought he should be
putting his teacher, whoever he was, in danger of the penalty of the law
against instructing the slaves, if he told me who he was; it was
impossible to make him do so, so that, besides his other good qualities,
he appears to have that most unusual one of all in an uneducated
person--discretion. He certainly is a most remarkable man.
After parting with him, I was assailed by a small gang of children,
clamouring for the indulgence of some meat, which they besought me to
give them. Animal food is only allowed to certain of the harder working
men, hedgers and ditchers, and to them only occasionally, and in very
moderate rations. My small cannibals clamoured round me for flesh, as if I
had had a butcher's cart in my pocket, till I began to laugh and then to
run, and away they came, like a pack of little black wolves, at my heels,
shrieking, 'Missis, you gib me piece meat, missis, you gib me meat,' till
I got home. At the door I found another petitioner, a young woman named
Maria, who brought a fine child in her arms, and demanded a present of a
piece of flannel. Upon my asking her who her husband was, she replied,
without much hesitation, that she did not possess any such appendage. I
gave another look at her bonny baby, and went into the house to get the
flannel for her. I afterwards heard from Mr. ---- that she and two other
girls of her age, about seventeen, were the only instances on the island
of women with illegitimate children.
After I had been in the house a little while, I was summoned out again to
receive the petition of certain poor women in the family-way to have their
work lightened. I was, of course, obliged to tell them that I could not
interfere in the matter, that their master was away, and that, when he
came back, they must present their request to him: they said they had
already begged 'massa,' and he had refused, and they thought, perhaps, if
'missis' begged 'massa' for them, he would lighten their task. Poor
'missis,' poor 'massa,' poor woman, that I am to have such prayers
addressed to me! I had to tell them, that if they had already spoken to
their master, I was afraid my doing so would be of no use, but that when
he came back I would try; so, choking with crying, I turned away from
them, and re-entered the house, to the chorus of 'Oh, thank you, missis!
God bless you, missis!' E----, I think an improvement might be made upon
that caricature published a short time ago, called the 'Chivalry of the
South.' I think an elegant young Carolinian, or Georgian gentleman, whip
in hand, driving a gang of 'lusty women,' as they are called here, would
be a pretty version of the 'Chivalry of the South'--a little coarse, I am
afraid you will say. Oh! quite horribly coarse, but then so true--a great
matter in works of art, which, now-a-days, appear to be thought excellent
only in proportion to their lack of ideal elevation. That would be a
subject, and a treatment of it, which could not be accused of imaginative
exaggeration, at any rate.
In the evening I mentioned the petitions of these poor women to Mr. O----,
thinking that perhaps he had the power to lessen their tasks. He seemed
evidently annoyed at their having appealed to me; said that their work was
not a bit too much for them, and that constantly they were _shamming_
themselves in the family-way, in order to obtain a diminution of their
labour. Poor creatures! I suppose some of them do; but again, it must be
a hard matter for those who do not, not to obtain the mitigation of their
toil which their condition requires; for their assertion and their
evidence are never received--they can't be believed, even if they were
upon oath, say their white taskmasters; why? because they have never been
taught the obligations of an oath, to whom made, or wherefore binding; and
they are punished both directly and indirectly for their moral ignorance,
as if it were a natural and incorrigible element of their character,
instead of the inevitable result of their miserable position. The oath of
any and every scoundrelly fellow with a white skin is received, but not
that of such a man as Frank, Ned, old Jacob, or Cooper London.
* * * * *
Dearest E----. I think it right to begin this letter with an account of a
most prosperous fishing expedition Jack and I achieved the other morning.
It is true we still occasionally drew up huge cat-fish, with their
detestable beards and spikes, but we also captivated some magnificent
perch, and the Altamaha perch are worth one's while both to catch and to
eat. On a visit I had to make on the mainland, the same day, I saw a tiny
strip of garden ground, rescued from the sandy road, called the street,
perfectly filled with hyacinths, double jonquils, and snowdrops, a
charming nosegay for February 11. After leaving the boat on my return
home, I encountered a curious creature walking all sideways, a small cross
between a lobster and a crab. One of the negroes to whom I applied for its
denomination informed me that it was a land crab, with which general
description of this very peculiar multipede you must be satisfied, for I
can tell you no more. I went a little further, as the nursery rhyme says,
and met with a snake, and not being able to determine, at ignorant first
sight, whether it was a malignant serpent or not, I ingloriously took to
my heels, and came home on the full run. It is the first of these
exceedingly displeasing animals I have encountered here; but Jack, for my
consolation, tells me that they abound on St. Simon's, whither we are
going--'rattlesnakes, and all kinds,' says he, with an affluence of
promise in his tone that is quite agreeable. Rattlesnakes will be quite
enough of a treat, without the vague horrors that may be comprised in the
additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is
really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I
were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck
abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His
account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the
mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the
people, if they are not meddled with, but that they steal the corn from
the fields when it is ripe, and actually swim the river to commit their
depredations on the islands. It seems difficult to believe this, looking
at this wide and heavy stream--though, to be sure, I did once see a young
horse swim across the St. Lawrence, between Montreal and Quebec; a feat of
natation which much enlarged my belief in what quadrupeds may accomplish
when they have no choice between swimming and sinking.
You cannot imagine how great a triumph the virtue next to godliness is
making under my auspices and a judicious system of small bribery. I can
hardly stir now without being assailed with cries of 'Missis, missis me
mind chile, me bery clean,' or the additional gratifying fact, 'and chile
too, him bery clean.' This virtue, however, if painful to the practisers,
as no doubt it is, is expensive, too, to me, and I shall have to try some
moral influence equivalent in value to a cent current coin of the realm.
What a poor chance, indeed, the poor abstract idea runs! however, it is
really a comfort to see the poor little woolly heads, now in most
instances stripped of their additional filthy artificial envelopes.
In my afternoon's row to-day I passed a huge dead alligator, lying half in
and half out of the muddy slime of the river bank--a most hideous object
it was, and I was glad to turn my eyes to the beautiful surface of the mid
stream, all burnished with sunset glories, and broken with the vivacious
gambols of a school of porpoises. It is curious, I think, that these
creatures should come fifteen miles from the sea to enliven the waters
round our little rice swamp.
While rowing this evening, I was led by my conversation with Jack to some
of those reflections with which my mind is naturally incessantly filled
here, but which I am obliged to be very careful not to give any utterance
to. The testimony of no negro is received in a southern court of law, and
the reason commonly adduced for this is, that the state of ignorance in
which the negroes are necessarily kept, renders them incapable of
comprehending the obligations of an oath, and yet with an inconsistency
which might be said to border on effrontery, these same people are
admitted to the most holy sacrament of the Church, and are certainly
thereby supposed to be capable of assuming the highest Christian
obligations, and the entire fulfilment of God's commandments--including,
of course, the duty of speaking the truth at all times.
As we were proceeding down the river, we met the flat, as it is called,
a huge sort of clumsy boat, more like a raft than any other species
of craft, coming up from St. Simon's with its usual swarthy freight
of Mr. ----'s dependants from that place. I made Jack turn our canoe,
because the universal outcries and exclamations very distinctly intimated
that I should be expected to be at home to receive the homage of this
cargo of 'massa's people.' No sooner, indeed, had I disembarked and
reached the house, than a dark cloud of black life filled the piazza
and swarmed up the steps, and I had to shake hands, like a popular
president, till my arm ached at the shoulder-joint.
When this tribe had dispersed itself, a very old woman with a remarkably
intelligent, nice-looking young girl, came forward and claimed my
attention. The old woman, who must, I think, by her appearance, have been
near seventy, had been one of the house servants on St. Simon's Island in
Major ----'s time, and retained a certain dignified courtesy and
respectfulness of manner which is by no means an uncommon attribute of the
better class of slaves, whose intercourse with their masters, while
tending to expand their intelligence, cultivates, at the same time, the
natural turn for good manners which is, I think, a distinctive peculiarity
of negroes, if not in the kingdom of Dahomey, certainly in the United
States of America. If it can be for a moment attributed to the beneficent
influence of slavery on their natures (and I think slaveowners are quite
likely to imagine so), it is curious enough that there is hardly any alloy
whatever of cringing servility, or even humility, in the good manners of
the blacks, but a rather courtly and affable condescension which, combined
with their affection for, and misapplication of, long words, produces an
exceedingly comical effect. Old-house Molly, after congratulating herself,
with many thanks to heaven, for having spared her to see 'massa's' wife
and children, drew forward her young companion, and informed me she was
one of her numerous grandchildren. The damsel, ycleped Louisa, made rather
a shame-faced obeisance, and her old grandmother went on to inform me that
she had only lately been forgiven by the overseer for an attempt to run
away from the plantation. I enquired the cause of her desire to do so--a
'thrashing' she had got for an unfinished task--'but lor, missis,'
explained the old woman, 'taint no use--what use nigger run away?--de
swamp all round; dey get in dar, an dey starve to def, or de snakes eat em
up--massa's nigger, dey don't neber run away;' and if the good lady's
account of their prospects in doing so is correct (which, substituting
biting for eating, on the part of the snakes, it undoubtedly is), one does
not see exactly what particular merit the institution of slavery as
practised on Mr. ----'s plantation derives from the fact that his 'nigger
don't neber run away.'
After dismissing Molly and her grand-daughter, I was about to re-enter the
house, when I was stopped by Betty, head-man Frank's wife, who came with a
petition that she might be baptised. As usual with all requests involving
anything more than an immediate physical indulgence, I promised to refer
the matter to Mr. ----, but expressed some surprise that Betty, now by no
means a young woman, should have postponed a ceremony which the religious
among the slaves are apt to attach much importance to. She told me she
had more than once applied for this permission to Massa K---- (the former
overseer), but had never been able to obtain it, but that now she thought
she would ask 'de missis.'[2]
[Footnote 2: Of this woman's life on the plantation, I subsequently
learned the following circumstances:--She was the wife of head-man Frank,
the most intelligent and trustworthy of Mr. ----'s slaves; the head
driver--second in command to the overseer, and indeed second to none
during the pestilential season, when the rice swamps cannot with impunity
be inhabited by any white man, and when, therefore, the whole force
employed in its cultivation on the island remains entirely under his
authority and control. His wife--a tidy, trim, intelligent woman, with a
pretty figure, but a decidedly negro face--was taken from him by the
overseer left in charge of the plantation by the Messrs. ----, the
all-efficient and all-satisfactory Mr. K----, and she had a son by him,
whose straight features and diluted colour, no less than his troublesome,
discontented and insubmissive disposition, bear witness to his Yankee
descent. I do not know how long Mr. K----'s occupation of Frank's wife
continued, or how the latter endured the wrong done to him. When I visited
the island, Betty was again living with her husband--a grave, sad,
thoughtful-looking man, whose admirable moral and mental qualities were
extolled to me by no worse a judge of such matters than Mr. K---- himself,
during the few days he spent with Mr. ----, while we were on the
plantation. This outrage upon this man's rights was perfectly notorious
among all the slaves; and his hopeful offspring, Renty, alluding very
unmistakably to his superior birth on one occasion when he applied for
permission to have a gun, observed that, though the people in general on
the plantation were not allowed firearms, he thought he might, _on
account of his colour_, and added that he thought Mr. K---- might have
left him his. This precious sample of the mode in which the vices of the
whites procure the intellectual progress of the blacks to their own
endangerment, was, as you will easily believe, a significant chapter to me
in the black history of oppression which is laid before my eyes in this
place.]
Yesterday afternoon I received a visit from the wife of our neighbour Dr.
T----. As usual, she exclaimed at my good fortune in having a white woman
with my children when she saw M----, and, as usual, went on to expatiate
on the utter impossibility of finding a trustworthy nurse anywhere in the
South, to whom your children could be safely confided for a day or even an
hour; as usual too, the causes of this unworthiness or incapacity for a
confidential servant's occupation were ignored, and the fact laid to the
natural defects of the negro race. I am sick and weary of this cruel and
ignorant folly. This afternoon I went out to refresh myself with a row on
the broad Altamaha and the conversation of my slave Jack, which is, I
assure you, by no means devoid of interest of various kinds, pathetic and
humorous. I do not know that Jack's scientific information is the most
valuable in the world, and I sometimes marvel with perhaps unjust
incredulity at the facts in natural history which he imparts to me; for
instance, to-day he told me as we rowed past certain mud islands, very
like children's mud puddings on a rather larger scale than usual, that
they were inaccessible, and that it would be quite impossible to land on
one of them even for the shortest time. Not understanding why people who
did not mind being up to their knees in mud should not land there if they
pleased, I demurred to his assertion, when he followed it up by assuring
me that there were what he called sand-sinks under the mud, and that
whatever was placed on the surface would not only sink through the mud,
but also into a mysterious quicksand of unknown depth and extent below it.
This may be true, but sounds very strange, although I remember that the
frequent occurrence of large patches of quicksand was found to be one of
the principal impediments in the way of the canal speculators at
Brunswick. I did not, however, hear that these sinks, as Jack called them,
were found below a thick stratum of heavy mud.
In remonstrating with him upon the want of decent cleanliness generally
among the people, and citing to him one among the many evils resulting
from it, the intolerable quantity of fleas in all the houses, he met me
full with another fact in natural history which, if it be fact and not
fiction, certainly gave him the best of the argument: he declared, with
the utmost vehemence, that the sand of the pine woods on the mainland
across the river literally swarmed with fleas--that in the uninhabited
places the sand itself was full of them, and that so far from being a
result of human habitation, they were found in less numbers round the
negro huts on the mainland than in the lonely woods around them.
The ploughing is at length fairly inaugurated, and there is a regular
jubilee among the negroes thereat. After discoursing fluently on the
improvements likely to result from the measure, Jack wound up by saying he
had been afraid it would not be tried on account of the greater scarcity,
and consequently greater value, of horses over men in these parts--a
modest and slave-like conclusion.
* * * * *
Dearest E----. I walked up to-day, _February 14th_, to see that land of
promise the ploughed field: it did not look to me anything like as heavy
soil as the cold wet sour stiff clay I have seen turned up in some of the
swampy fields round Lenox; and as for the cypress roots which were urged
as so serious an impediment, they are not much more frequent, and
certainly not as resisting, as the granite knees and elbows that stick out
through the scanty covering of the said clay, which mother earth allows
herself as sole garment for her old bones in many a Berkshire patch of
corn. After my survey, as I walked home, I came upon a gang of lusty
women, as the phrase is here for women in the family-way; they were
engaged in burning stubble, and I was nearly choked while receiving the
multitudinous complaints and compliments with which they overwhelmed me.
After leaving them, I wandered along the river side on the dyke homeward,
rejoicing in the buds and green things putting forth their tender shoots
on every spray, in the early bees and even the less amiable wasps busy in
the sunshine with flowers--(weeds I suppose they should be called),
already opening their sweet temptations to them, and giving the earth a
spring aspect, such as it does not wear with you in Massachusetts till
late in May.