congregation of the people into my big sitting-room, and reading prayers
to them. I had been wishing very much to do this for some time past, and
obtained Mr. ----'s leave while I was with him at the Rice Island, and it
was a great pleasure to me. Some of the people are allowed to go up to
Darien once a month to church; but, with that exception, they have no
religious service on Sunday whatever for them. There is a church on the
Island of St. Simon, but they are forbidden to frequent it, as it leads
them off their own through neighbouring plantations, and gives
opportunities for meetings between the negroes of the different estates,
and very likely was made the occasion of abuses and objectionable
practices of various kinds; at any rate, Mr. K---- forbade the Hampton
slaves resorting to the St. Simon's church; and so, for three Sundays in
the month they are utterly without Christian worship or teaching, or any
religious observance of God's day whatever.
I was very anxious that it should not be thought that I _ordered_ any of
the people to come to prayers, as I particularly desired to see if they
themselves felt the want of any Sabbath service, and would of their own
accord join in any such ceremony; I therefore merely told the house
servants that if they would come to the sitting-room at eleven o'clock, I
would read prayers to them, and that they might tell any of their friends
or any of the people that I should be very glad to see them if they liked
to come. Accordingly, most of those who live at the Point, i.e. in the
immediate neighbourhood of the house, came, and it was encouraging to see
the very decided efforts at cleanliness and decorum of attire which they
had all made. I was very much affected and impressed myself by what I was
doing, and I suppose must have communicated some of my own feeling to
those who heard me. It is an extremely solemn thing to me to read the
Scriptures aloud to any one, and there was something in my relation to the
poor people by whom I was surrounded that touched me so deeply while thus
attempting to share with them the best of my possessions, that I found it
difficult to command my voice, and had to stop several times in order to
do so. When I had done, they all with one accord uttered the simple words,
'We thank you, missis,' and instead of overwhelming me as usual with
petitions and complaints, they rose silently and quietly, in a manner that
would have become the most orderly of Christian congregations accustomed
to all the impressive decorum of civilised church privileges. Poor people!
They are said to have what a very irreligious young English clergyman once
informed me I had--a '_turn_ for religion.' They seem to me to have a
'turn' for instinctive good manners too; and certainly their mode of
withdrawing from my room after our prayers bespoke either a strong feeling
of their own or a keen appreciation of mine.
I have resumed my explorations in the woods with renewed enthusiasm, for
during my week's absence they have become more lovely and enticing than
ever: unluckily, however, Jack seems to think that fresh rattlesnakes have
budded together with the tender spring foliage, and I see that I shall
either have to give up my wood walks and rides, or go without a guide.
Lovely blossoms are springing up everywhere, weeds, of course, wild
things, impertinently so called. Nothing is cultivated here but cotton;
but in some of the cotton fields, beautiful creatures are peeping into
blossom, which I suppose will all be duly hoed off the surface of the
soil in proper season: meantime I rejoice in them, and in the splendid
magnificent thistles, which would be in flower-gardens in other parts of
the world, and in the wonderful, strange, beautiful butterflies that seem
to me almost as big as birds, that go zig-zagging in the sun. I saw
yesterday a lovely monster, who thought proper, for my greater
delectation, to alight on a thistle I was admiring, and as the flower was
purple, and he was all black velvet, fringed with gold, I was exceedingly
pleased with his good inspiration.
This morning I drove up to the settlement at St. Annie's, having various
bundles of benefaction to carry in the only equipage my estate here
affords,--an exceedingly small, rough, and uncomfortable cart, called the
sick house waggon, inasmuch as it is used to convey to the hospital such
of the poor people as are too ill to walk there. Its tender mercies must
be terrible indeed for the sick, for I who am sound could very hardly
abide them; however, I suppose Montreal's pace is moderated for them:
to-day he went rollicking along with us behind him, shaking his fine head
and mane, as if he thought the more we were jolted the better we should
like it. We found, on trying to go on to Cartwright's Point, that the
state of the tide would not admit of our getting thither, and so had to
return, leaving it unvisited. It seems to me strange that where the labour
of so many hands might be commanded, piers, and wharves, and causeways,
are not thrown out (wooden ones, of course, I mean), wherever the common
traffic to or from different parts of the plantation is thus impeded by
the daily rise and fall of the river; the trouble and expense would be
nothing, and the gain in convenience very considerable. However, perhaps
the nature of the tides, and of the banks and shores themselves, may not
be propitious for such constructions, and I rather incline upon reflection
to think this may be so, because to go from Hampton to our neighbour Mr.
C----'s plantation, it is necessary to consult the tide in order to land
conveniently. Driving home to-day by Jones' Creek, we saw an immovable row
of white cranes, all standing with imperturbable gravity upon one leg. I
thought of Boccaccio's cook, and had a mind to say, Ha! at them to try if
they had two. I have been over to Mr. C----, and was very much pleased
with my visit, but will tell you of it in my next.
* * * * *
Dear E----. I promised to tell you of my visit to my neighbour Mr. C----,
which pleased and interested me very much. He is an old Glasgow man, who
has been settled here many years. It is curious how many of the people
round this neighbourhood have Scotch names; it seems strange to find them
thus gathered in the vicinity of a new Darien; but those in our immediate
neighbourhood seem to have found it a far less fatal region than their
countrymen did its namesake of the Isthmus. Mr. C----'s house is a roomy,
comfortable, handsomely laid out mansion, to which he received me with
very cordial kindness, and where I spent part of a very pleasant morning,
talking with him, hearing all he could tell me of the former history of
Mr. ----'s plantation. His description of its former master, old
Major ----, and of his agent and overseer Mr. K----, and of that
gentleman's worthy son and successor the late overseer, interested me very
much; of the two latter functionaries his account was terrible, and much
what I had supposed any impartial account of them would be; because, let
the propensity to lying of the poor wretched slaves be what it will, they
could not invent, with a common consent, the things that they one and all
tell me with reference to the manner in which they have been treated by
the man who has just left the estate, and his father, who for the last
nineteen years have been sole sovereigns of their bodies and souls. The
crops have satisfied the demands of the owners, who, living in
Philadelphia, have been perfectly contented to receive a large income
from their estate without apparently caring how it was earned. The
stories that the poor people tell me of the cruel tyranny under which
they have lived are not complaints, for they are of things past and gone,
and very often, horridly as they shock and affect me, they themselves
seem hardly more than half conscious of the misery their condition
exhibits to me, and they speak of things which I shudder to hear of,
almost as if they had been matters of course with them.
Old Mr. C---- spoke with extreme kindness of his own people, and had
evidently bestowed much humane and benevolent pains upon endeavours to
better their condition. I asked him if he did not think the soil and
climate of this part of Georgia admirably suited to the cultivation of the
mulberry and the rearing of the silk-worm; for it has appeared to me that
hereafter, silk may be made one of the most profitable products of this
whole region: he said that that had long been his opinion, and he had at
one time had it much at heart to try the experiment, and had proposed to
Major ---- to join him in it, on a scale large enough to test it
satisfactorily; but he said Mr. K---- opposed the scheme so persistently
that of course it was impossible to carry it out, as his agency and
cooperation were indispensable; and that in like manner he had suggested
sowing turnip crops, and planting peach trees for the benefit and use of
the people on the Hampton estate, experiments which he had tried with
excellent success on his own; but all these plans for the amelioration and
progress of the people's physical condition had been obstructed and
finally put entirely aside by old Mr. K---- and his son, who, as Mr. C----
said, appeared to give satisfaction to their employers, so it was not his
business to find fault with them; he said, however, that the whole
condition and treatment of the slaves had changed from the time of
Major ----'s death, and that he thought it providential for the poor
people that Mr. K---- should have left the estate, and the young
gentleman, the present owner, come down to look after the people.
He showed me his garden, from whence come the beautiful vegetables he had
more than once supplied me with; in the midst of it was a very fine and
flourishing date palm tree, which he said bore its fruit as prosperously
here as it would in Asia. After the garden, we visited a charming
nicely-kept poultry yard, and I returned home much delighted with my visit
and the kind good humour of my host.
In the afternoon, I sat as usual at the receipt of custom, hearing of
aches and pains, till I ached myself sympathetically from head to foot.
Yesterday morning, dear E----, I went on horseback to St. Annie's,
exploring on my way some beautiful woods, and in the afternoon I returned
thither in a wood waggon with Jack to drive and a mule to draw me,
Montreal being quite beyond his management; and then and there, the
hatchet and saw being in company, I compelled my slave Jack, all the
rattlesnakes in creation to the contrary notwithstanding, to cut and clear
a way for my chariot through the charming copse.
My letter has been lying unfinished for the last three days. I have been
extraordinarily busy, having emancipated myself from the trammels of Jack
and all his terror, and as I fear no serpents on horseback, have been
daily riding through new patches of woodland without any guide, taking my
chance of what I might come to in the shape of impediments. Last Tuesday,
I rode through a whole wood, of burned and charred trees, cypresses and
oaks, that looked as if they had been each of them blasted by a special
thunderbolt, and whole thickets of young trees and shrubs perfectly black
and brittle from the effect of fire, I suppose the result of some
carelessness of the slaves. As this charcoal woodland extended for some
distance, I turned out of it, and round the main road through the
plantation, as I could not ride through the blackened boughs and branches
without getting begrimed. It had a strange wild desolate effect, not
without a certain gloomy picturesqueness.
In the afternoon, I made Israel drive me through Jack's new-made path to
break it down and open it still more, and Montreal's powerful trampling
did good service to that effect, though he did not seem to relish the
narrow wood road with its grass path by any means as much as the open way
of what may be called the high road. After this operation, I went on to
visit the people at the Busson Hill settlement. I here found, among other
noteworthy individuals, a female named Judy, whose two children belong to
an individual called (not Punch) but Joe, who has another wife, called
Mary, at the Rice Island. In one of the huts I went to leave some flannel
and rice and sugar for a poor old creature called Nancy, to whom I had
promised such indulgences: she is exceedingly infirm and miserable,
suffering from sore limbs and an ulcerated leg so cruelly that she can
hardly find rest in any position from the constant pain she endures, and
is quite unable to lie on her hard bed at night. As I bent over her
to-day, trying to prop her into some posture where she might find some
ease, she took hold of my hand, and with the tears streaming over her
face, said, 'I have worked every day through dew and damp, and sand and
heat, and done good work; but oh, missis, me old and broken now, no tongue
can tell how much I suffer.' In spite of their curious thick utterance and
comical jargon, these people sometimes use wonderfully striking and
pathetic forms of speech. In the next cabin, which consisted of an
enclosure, called by courtesy a room, certainly not ten feet square, and
owned by a woman called Dice--that is, not owned, of course, but inhabited
by her--three grown up human beings and eight children stow themselves by
day and night, which may be called close packing, I think. I presume that
they must take turns to be inside and outside the house, but they did not
make any complaint about it, though I should think the aspect of my
countenance, as I surveyed their abode and heard their numbers, might have
given them a hint to that effect; but I really do find these poor
creatures patient of so much misery, that it inclines me the more to heed
as well as hear their petitions and complaints, when they bring them to
me.
After my return home, I had my usual evening reception, and, among other
pleasant incidents of plantation life, heard the following agreeable
anecdote from a woman named Sophy, who came to beg for some rice. In
asking her about her husband and children, she said she had never had any
husband, that she had had two children by a white man of the name of
Walker, who was employed at the mill on the rice island; she was in the
hospital after the birth of the second child she bore this man, and at the
same time two women, Judy and Sylla, of whose children Mr. K---- was the
father, were recovering from their confinements. It was not a month since
any of them had been delivered, when Mrs. K---- came to the hospital, had
them all three severely flogged, a process which _she_ personally
superintended, and then sent them to Five Pound--the swamp Botany Bay of
the plantation, of which I have told you--with further orders to the
drivers to flog them every day for a week. Now, E----, if I make you sick
with these disgusting stories, I cannot help it--they are the life itself
here; hitherto I have thought these details intolerable enough, but this
apparition of a female fiend in the middle of this hell I confess adds an
element of cruelty which seems to me to surpass all the rest. Jealousy is
not an uncommon quality in the feminine temperament; and just conceive the
fate of these unfortunate women between the passions of their masters and
mistresses, each alike armed with power to oppress and torture them. Sophy
went on to say that Isaac was her son by driver Morris, who had forced
her while she was in her miserable exile at Five Pound. Almost beyond my
patience with this string of detestable details, I exclaimed--foolishly
enough, heaven knows--'Ah, but don't you know, did nobody ever tell or
teach any of you, that it is a sin to live with men who are not your
husbands?' Alas, E----, what could the poor creature answer but what she
did, seizing me at the same time vehemently by the wrist: 'Oh yes, missis,
we know--we know all about dat well enough; but we do anything to get our
poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de
bush, what use me tell him no? he have strength to make me.' I have
written down the woman's words; I wish I could write down the voice and
look of abject misery with which they were spoken. Now, you will observe
that the story was not told to me as a complaint; it was a thing long past
and over, of which she only spoke in the natural course of accounting for
her children to me. I make no comment; what need, or can I add, to such
stories? But how is such a state of things to endure?--and again, how is
it to end? While I was pondering, as it seemed to me, at the very bottom
of the Slough of Despond, on this miserable creature's story, another
woman came in (Tema), carrying in her arms a child the image of the
mulatto Bran; she came to beg for flannel. I asked her who was her
husband. She said she was not married. Her child is the child of
bricklayer Temple, who has a wife at the rice island. By this time, what
do you think of the moralities, as well as the amenities, of slave life?
These are the conditions which can only be known to one who lives among
them; flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but this ineffable state of
utter degradation, this really _beastly_ existence, is the normal
condition of these men and women, and of that no one seems to take heed,
nor have I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception
of it, till I found myself plunged into it;--where and how is one to begin
the cleansing of this horrid pestilential immondezzio of an existence?
It is Wednesday, the 20th of March; we cannot stay here much longer; I
wonder if I shall come back again! and whether, when I do, I shall find
the trace of one idea of a better life left in these poor people's minds
by my sojourn among them.
One of my industries this morning has been cutting out another dress for
one of our women, who had heard of my tailoring prowess at the rice
island. The material, as usual, was a miserable cotton, many-coloured like
the scarf of Iris. While shaping it for my client, I ventured to suggest
the idea of the possibility of a change of the nethermost as well as the
uppermost garment. This, I imagine, is a conception that has never dawned
upon the female slave mind on this plantation. They receive twice a year a
certain supply of clothing, and wear them (as I have heard some nasty fine
ladies do their stays, for fear they should get out of shape), without
washing, till they receive the next suit. Under these circumstances I
think it is unphilosophical, to say the least of it, to speak of the
negroes as a race whose unfragrance is heaven-ordained, and the result of
special organisation.
I must tell you that I have been delighted, surprised, and the very least
perplexed, by the sudden petition on the part of our young waiter, Aleck,
that I will teach him to read. He is a very intelligent lad of about
sixteen, and preferred his request with an urgent humility that was very
touching. I told him I would think about it. I mean to do it. I will do
it,--and yet, it is simply breaking the laws of the government under which
I am living. Unrighteous laws are made to be broken,--_perhaps_,--but
then, you see, I am a woman, and Mr. ---- stands between me and the
penalty. If I were a man, I would do that and many a thing besides, and
doubtless should be shot some fine day from behind a tree by some good
neighbour, who would do the community a service by quietly getting rid of
a mischievous incendiary; and I promise you in such a case no questions
would be asked, and my lessons would come to a speedy and silent end; but
teaching slaves to read is a fineable offence, and I am _feme couverte_,
and my fines must be paid by my legal owner, and the first offence of the
sort is heavily fined, and the second more heavily fined, and for the
third, one is sent to prison. What a pity it is I can't begin with
Aleck's third lesson, because going to prison can't be done by proxy, and
that penalty would light upon the right shoulders! I certainly intend to
teach Aleck to read. I certainly won't tell Mr. ---- anything about it.
I'll leave him to find it out, as slaves, and servants and children, and
all oppressed, and ignorant, and uneducated and unprincipled people do;
then, if he forbids me I can stop--perhaps before then the lad may have
learnt his letters. I begin to perceive one most admirable circumstance in
this slavery: you are absolute on your own plantation. No slaves'
testimony avails against you, and no white testimony exists but such as
you choose to admit. Some owners have a fancy for maiming their slaves,
some brand them, some pull out their teeth, some shoot them a little here
and there (all details gathered from advertisements of runaway slaves in
southern papers); now they do all this on their plantations, where nobody
comes to see, and I'll teach Aleck to read, for nobody is here to see, at
least nobody whose seeing I mind; and I'll teach every other creature that
wants to learn. I haven't much more than a week to remain in this blessed
purgatory, in that last week perhaps I may teach the boy enough to go on
alone when I am gone.
_Thursday, 21st._--I took a long ride to-day all through some new woods
and fields, and finally came upon a large space sown with corn for the
people. Here I was accosted by such a shape as I never beheld in the worst
of my dreams; it looked at first, as it came screaming towards me, like a
live specimen of the arms of the Isle of Man, which, as you may or may not
know, are three legs joined together, and kicking in different directions.
This uncouth device is not an invention of the Manxmen, for it is found on
some very ancient coins,--Greek, I believe; but at any rate it is now the
device of our subject Island of Man, and, like that set in motion, and
nothing else, was the object that approached me, only it had a head where
the three legs were joined, and a voice came out of the head to this
effect, 'Oh missis, you hab to take me out of dis here bird field, me no
able to run after birds, and ebery night me lick because me no run after
dem.' When this apparition reached me and stood as still as it could, I
perceived it consisted of a boy who said his name was 'Jack de bird
driver.' I suppose some vague idea of the fitness of things had induced
them to send this living scarecrow into the cornfield, and if he had been
set up in the midst of it, nobody, I am sure, would have imagined he was
anything else; but it seems he was expected to run after the feathered
fowl who alighted on the grain field, and I do not wonder that he did not
fulfil this expectation. His feet, legs, and knees were all maimed and
distorted, his legs were nowhere thicker than my wrist, his feet were a
yard apart from each other, and his knees swollen and knocking together.
What a creature to ran after birds! He implored me to give him some meat,
and have him sent back to Little St. Simon's Island, from which he came,
and where he said his poor limbs were stronger and better.
Riding home, I passed some sassafras trees, which are putting forth
deliciously fragrant tassels of small leaves and blossoms, and other
exquisite flowering shrubs, which are new to me, and enchant me perhaps
all the more for their strangeness. Before reaching the house, I was
stopped by one of our multitudinous Jennies, with a request for some meat,
and that I would help her with some clothes for Ben and Daphne, of whom
she had the sole charge; these are two extremely pretty and
interesting-looking mulatto children, whose resemblance to Mr. K---- had
induced me to ask Mr. ----, when first I saw them, if he did not think
they must be his children? He said they were certainly like him, but Mr.
K---- did not acknowledge the relationship. I asked Jenny who their mother
was. 'Minda.' 'Who their father?' 'Mr. K----.' 'What! old Mr. K----?' 'No,
Mr. R. K----.' 'Who told you so?' 'Minda, who ought to know.' 'Mr. K----
denies it.' 'That's because he never has looked upon them, nor done a
thing for them.' 'Well, but he acknowledged Renty as his son, why should
he deny these?' 'Because old master was here then, when Renty was born,
and he made Betty tell all about it, and Mr. K---- had to own it; but
nobody knows anything about this, and so he denies it'--with which
information I rode home. I always give you an exact report of any
conversation I may have with any of the people, and you see from this that
the people on the plantation themselves are much of my worthy neighbour
Mr. C----'s mind, that the death of Major ---- was a great misfortune for
the slaves on his estate.