these woods, the variety of the fresh new-born foliage, the fragrance of
the sweet wild perfumes that fill the air? Honeysuckles twine round every
tree; the ground is covered with a low white-blossomed shrub more fragrant
than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers
under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a
classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or
stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of
ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker
like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged
jewels, dart from the boughs,--and--and--a huge ground snake slid like a
dark ribbon, across the path while I was stopping to enjoy all this
deliciousness, and so I became less enthusiastic, and cantered on past
the little deserted churchyard, with the new-made grave beneath its grove
of noble oaks, and a little farther on reached Mrs. A----'s cottage, half
hidden in the midst of ruins and roses.
This Frederica is a very strange place; it was once a town, _the_ town,
the metropolis of the island. The English, when they landed on the coast
of Georgia in the war, destroyed this tiny place, and it has never been
built up again. Mrs. A----'s, and one other house, are the only dwellings
that remain in this curious wilderness of dismantled crumbling grey walls
compassionately cloaked with a thousand profuse and graceful creepers.
These are the only ruins properly so called, except those of Fort Putnam,
that I have ever seen in this land of contemptuous youth. I hailed these
picturesque groups and masses with the feelings of a European, to whom
ruins are like a sort of relations. In my country, ruins are like a minor
chord in music, here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of
time, but the results of violence; they recall no valuable memories of a
remote past, and are mere encumbrances to the busy present. Evidently they
are out of place in America, except on St. Simon's Island, between this
savage selvage of civilisation and the great Atlantic deep. These heaps of
rubbish and roses would have made the fortune of a sketcher; but I imagine
the snakes have it all to themselves here, and are undisturbed by camp
stools, white umbrellas, and ejaculatory young ladies.
I sat for a long time with Mrs. A----, and a friend of hers staying with
her, a Mrs. A----, lately from Florida. The latter seemed to me a
remarkable woman; her conversation was extremely interesting. She had been
stopping at Brunswick, at the hotel where Dr. H---- murdered young W----,
and said that the mingled ferocity and blackguardism of the men who
frequented the house had induced her to cut short her stay there, and come
on to her friend Mrs. A----'s. We spoke of that terrible crime which had
occurred only the day after she left Brunswick, and both ladies agreed
that there was not the slightest chance of Dr. H----'s being punished in
any way for the murder he had committed; that shooting down a man who had
offended you was part of the morals and manners of the southern gentry,
and that the circumstance was one of quite too frequent occurrence to
cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one
of the principal members of the society. If the accounts given by these
ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be
believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and
ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing
themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the people among
whom they live.
We had a long discussion on the subject of slavery, and they took as
usual the old ground of justifying the system, _where_ it was administered
with kindness and indulgence. It is not surprising that women should
regard the question from this point of view; they are very seldom _just_,
and are generally treated with more indulgence than justice by men. They
were very patient of my strong expressions of reprobation of the whole
system, and Mrs. A----, bidding me good-bye, said that, for aught she
could tell, I might be right, and might have been led down here by
Providence to be the means of some great change in the condition of the
poor coloured people.
I rode home pondering on the strange fate that has brought me to this
place so far from where I was born, this existence so different in all its
elements from that of my early years and former associations. If I
believed Mrs. A----'s parting words, I might perhaps verify them; perhaps
I may yet verify although I do not believe them. On my return home, I
found a most enchanting bundle of flowers, sent to me by Mrs. G----;
pomegranate blossoms, roses, honeysuckle, everything that blooms two
months later with us in Pennsylvania.
I told you I had a great desire to visit Little St. Simon's, and the day
before yesterday I determined to make an exploring expedition thither. I
took M---- and the children, little imagining what manner of day's work
was before me. Six men rowed us in the 'Lily,' and Israel brought the wood
wagon after us in a flat. Our navigation was a very intricate one, all
through sea swamps and marshes, mud-banks and sand-banks, with great white
shells and bleaching bones stuck upon sticks to mark the channel. We
landed on this forest in the sea by Quash's house, the only human
residence on the island. It was larger and better, and more substantial
than the negro huts in general, and he seemed proud and pleased to do the
honours to us. Thence we set off, by my desire, in the wagon through the
woods to the beach; road there was none, save the rough clearing that the
men cut with their axes before us as we went slowly on. Presently, we came
to a deep dry ditch, over which there was no visible means of proceeding.
Israel told me if we would sit still he would undertake to drive the wagon
into and out of it; and so, indeed, he did, but how he did it is more than
I can explain to you now, or could explain to myself then. A less powerful
creature than Montreal could never have dragged us through; and when we
presently came to a second rather worse edition of the same, I insisted
upon getting out and crossing it on foot. I walked half a mile while the
wagon was dragged up and down the deep gulley, and lifted bodily over some
huge trunks of fallen trees. The wood through which we now drove was all
on fire, smoking, flaming, crackling, and burning round us. The sun glared
upon us from the cloudless sky, and the air was one cloud of sand-flies
and mosquitoes. I covered both my children's faces with veils and
handkerchiefs, and repented not a little in my own breast of the rashness
of my undertaking. The back of Israel's coat was covered so thick with
mosquitoes that one could hardly see the cloth; and I felt as if we should
be stifled, if our way lay much longer through this terrible wood.
Presently we came to another impassable place, and again got out of the
wagon, leaving Israel to manage it as best he could. I walked with the
baby in my arms a quarter of a mile, and then was so overcome with the
heat that I sat down in the burning wood, on the floor of ashes, till the
wagon came up again. I put the children and M---- into it, and continued
to walk till we came to a ditch in a tract of salt marsh, over which
Israel drove triumphantly, and I partly jumped and was partly hauled over,
having declined the entreaties of several of the men to let them lie down
and make a bridge with their bodies for me to walk over. At length we
reached the skirt of that tremendous wood, to my unspeakable relief, and
came upon the white sand hillocks of the beach. The trees were all
strained crooked, from the constant influence of the sea-blast. The coast
was a fearful-looking stretch of dismal, trackless sand, and the ocean lay
boundless and awful beyond the wild and desolate beach, from which we were
now only divided by a patch of low coarse-looking bush, growing as thick
and tangled as heather, and so stiff and compact that it was hardly
possible to drive through it. Yet in spite of this several lads who had
joined our train rushed off into it in search of rabbits, though Israel
called repeatedly to them, warning them of the danger of rattlesnakes. We
drove at last down to the smooth sea sand; and here, outstripping our
guides, was barred farther progress by a deep gully, down which it was
impossible to take the wagon. Israel, not knowing the beach well, was
afraid to drive round the mouth of it; and so it was determined that from
this point we should walk home under his guidance. I sat in the wagon
while he constructed a rough foot-bridge of bits of wood and broken planks
for us, over the narrow chasm, and he then took Montreal out of the wagon
and tied him behind it, leaving him for the other men to take charge of
when they should arrive at this point. And so, having mightily desired to
see the coast of Little St. Simon's Island, I did see it thoroughly; for I
walked a mile and a half round it, over beds of sharp shells, through
swamps half knee deep, poor little S---- stumping along with dogged
heroism, and Israel carrying the baby, except at one deep _mal passo_,
when I took the baby and he carried S----; and so, through the wood round
Quash's house, where we arrived almost fainting with fatigue and heat, and
where we rested but a short time; for we had to start almost immediately
to save the tide home.
I called at Mr. C----'s on my way back, to return him his son's
manuscript, which I had in the boat for that purpose. I sent Jack, who
had come to meet me with the horses, home, being too tired to attempt
riding; and, covered with mud literally up to my knees I was obliged to
lie down ignominiously all the afternoon to rest. And now I will give you
a curious illustration of the utter subserviency of slaves. It seems that
by taking the tide in proper season, and going by boat, all that horrible
wood journey might have been avoided, and we could have reached the beach,
with perfect ease in half the time; but because, being of course
absolutely ignorant of this, I had expressed a desire to go through the
wood, not a syllable of remonstrance was uttered by any one; and the men
not only underwent the labour of cutting a path for the wagon and dragging
it through and over all the impediments we encountered, but allowed me and
the children to traverse that burning wood, rather than tell me that by
waiting and taking another way I could get to the sea. When I expressed my
astonishment at their not having remonstrated against my order, and
explained how I could best achieve the purpose I had in view, the sole
answer I got even from Israel was, 'Missis say so, so me do; missis say me
go through the wood, me no tell missis go another way.' You see, my dear
E----, one had need bethink oneself what orders one gives, when one has
the misfortune to be despotic.
How sorry I am that I have been obliged to return that narrative of Mr.
C----'s without asking permission to copy it, which I did not do because
I should not have been able to find the time to do it! We go away the day
after to-morrow. All the main incidents of the disaster the newspapers
have made you familiar with--the sudden and appalling loss of that fine
vessel laden with the very flower of the south. There seems hardly to be a
family in Georgia and South Carolina that had not some of its members on
board that ill-fated ship. You know it was a sort of party of pleasure
more than anything else; the usual annual trip to the north for change of
air and scene, for the gaieties of Newport and Saratoga, that all the
wealthy southern people invariably take every summer.
The weather had been calm and lovely; and dancing, talking, and laughing,
as if they were in their own drawing-rooms, they had passed the time away
till they all separated for the night. At the first sound of the exploding
boiler, Mr. C---- jumped up, and in his shirt and trousers ran on deck.
The scene was one of horrible confusion; women screaming, men swearing,
the deck strewn with broken fragments of all descriptions, the vessel
leaning frightfully to one side, and everybody running hither and thither
in the darkness in horror and dismay. He had left Georgia with Mrs. F----
and Mrs. N----, the two children, and one of the female servants of these
ladies under his charge. He went immediately to the door of the ladies'
cabin and called Mrs. F----; they were all there half-dressed; he bade
them dress as quickly as possible and be ready to follow and obey him. He
returned almost instantly, and led them to the side of the vessel, where,
into the boats, that had already been lowered, desperate men and women
were beginning to swarm, throwing themselves out of the sinking ship. He
bade Mrs. F---- jump down into one of these boats which was only in the
possession of two sailors; she instantly obeyed him, and he threw her
little boy to the men after her. He then ordered Mrs. N----, with the
negro woman, to throw themselves off the vessel into the boat, and, with
Mrs. N----'s baby in his arms, sprang after them. His foot touched the
gunwale of the boat, and he fell into the water; but recovering himself
instantly, he clambered into the boat, which he then peremptorily ordered
the men to set adrift, in spite of the shrieks, and cries, and commands,
and entreaties of the frantic crowds who were endeavouring to get into it.
The men obeyed him, and rowing while he steered, they presently fell
astern of the ship, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror.
Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the
heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with
mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating,
and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they
gradually pulled further and further out of the horrible chaos of despair,
and, with the other boat still consorting with them, rowed on. They
watched from a distance the piteous sight of the ill-fated steamer
settling down, the gay girdle of light that marked the line of her
beautiful saloons and cabins gradually sinking nearer and nearer to the
blackness, in which they were presently extinguished; and the ship, with
all its precious human freight engulfed--all but the handful left in those
two open boats, to brave the dangers of that terrible coast!
They were somewhere off the North Carolina shore, which, when the daylight
dawned, they could distinctly see, with its ominous line of breakers and
inhospitable perilous coast. The men had continued rowing all night, and
as the summer sun rose flaming over their heads, the task of pulling the
boat became dreadfully severe; still they followed the coast, Mr. C----
looking out for any opening, creek, or small inlet, that might give them a
chance of landing in safety. The other boat rowed on at some little
distance from them.
All the morning, and through the tremendous heat of the middle day, they
toiled on without a mouthful of food--without a drop of water. At length,
towards the afternoon, the men at the oars said they were utterly
exhausted and could row no longer, and that Mr. C---- must steer the boat
ashore. With wonderful power of command, he prevailed on them to continue
their afflicting labour. The terrible blazing sun pouring on all their
unsheltered heads had almost annihilated them; but still there lay
between them and the land those fearful foaming ridges, and the women and
children, if not the men themselves, seemed doomed to inevitable death in
the attempt to surmount them. Suddenly they perceived that the boat that
had kept them company was about to adventure itself in the perilous
experiment of landing. Mr. C---- kept his boat's head steady, the men
rested on their oars, and watched the result of the fearful risk they were
themselves about to run. They saw the boat enter the breakers--they saw
her whirled round and capsized, and then they watched, slowly emerging and
dragging themselves out of the foaming sea, _some_, and only some, of the
people that they knew the boat contained. Mr. C----, fortified with this
terrible illustration of the peril that awaited them, again besought them
to row yet for a little while further along the coast, in search of some
possible place to take the boat safely to the beach, promising at sunset
to give up the search; and again the poor men resumed their toil, but the
line of leaping breakers stretched along the coast as far as eye could
see, and at length the men declared they could labour no longer, and
insisted that Mr. C---- should steer them to shore. He then said that he
would do so, but they must take some rest before encountering the peril
which awaited them, and for which they might require whatever remaining
strength they could command. He made the men leave the oars and lie down
to sleep for a short time, and then, giving the helm to one of them, did
the same himself. When they were thus a little refreshed with this short
rest, he prepared to take the boat into the breakers.
He laid Mrs. N----'s baby on her breast, and wrapped a shawl round and
round her body so as to secure the child to it, and said, in the event of
the boat capsizing, he would endeavour to save her and her child. Mrs.
F---- and her boy he gave in charge to one of the sailors, and the
coloured woman who was with her to the other; and they promised solemnly,
in case of misadventure to the boat, to do their best to save these
helpless creatures; and so they turned, as the sun was going down, the
bows of the boat to the terrible shore. They rose two of the breakers
safely, but then the oar of one of the men was struck from his hand, and
in an instant the boat whirled round and turned over. Mr. C---- instantly
struck out to seize Mrs. N----, but she had sunk, and though he dived
twice he could not see her; at last, he felt her hair floating loose with
his foot, and seizing hold of it, grasped her securely and swam with her
to shore. While in the act of doing so, he saw the man who had promised to
save the coloured woman making alone for the beach; and even then, in that
extremity, he had power of command enough left to drive the fellow back to
seek her, which he did, and brought her safe to land. The other man kept
his word of taking care of Mrs. F----, and the latter never released her
grasp of her child's wrist, which bore the mark of her agony for weeks
after their escape. They reached the sands, and Mrs. N----'s shawl having
been unwound, her child was found laughing on her bosom. But hardly had
they had time to thank God for their deliverance when Mr. C---- fell
fainting on the beach; and Mrs. F----, who told me this, said that for one
dreadful moment they thought that the preserver of all their lives had
lost his own in the terrible exertion and anxiety that he had undergone.
He revived, however, and crawling a little further up the beach, they
burrowed for warmth and shelter as well as they could in the sand, and lay
there till the next morning, when they sought and found succour.
You cannot imagine, my dear E----, how strikingly throughout this whole
narrative the extraordinary power of Mr. C----'s character makes itself
felt,--the immediate obedience that he obtained from women whose terror
might have made them unmanageable, and men whose selfishness might have
defied his control; the wise though painful firmness, which enabled him to
order the boat away from the side of the perishing vessel, in spite of the
pity that he felt for the many, in attempting to succour whom he could
only have jeopardized the few whom he was bound to save; the wonderful
influence he exercised over the poor oarsmen, whose long protracted labour
postponed to the last possible moment the terrible risk of their landing.
The firmness, courage, humanity, wisdom, and presence of mind, of all his
preparations for their final tremendous risk, and the authority which he
was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own
life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who was
proving false to a similar sacred charge,--all these admirable traits are
most miserably transmitted to you by my imperfect account; and when I
assure you that his own narrative, full as it necessarily was of the
details of his own heroism, was as simple, modest, and unpretending, as it
was interesting and touching, I am sure you will agree with me that he
must be a very rare man. When I spoke with enthusiasm to his old father of
his son's noble conduct, and asked him if he was not proud of it, his sole
reply was,--'I am glad, madam, my son was not selfish.'
Now, E----, I have often spoken with you and written to you of the
disastrous effect of slavery upon the character of the white men
implicated in it; many, among themselves, feel and acknowledge it to the
fullest extent, and no one more than myself can deplore that any human
being I love should be subjected to such baneful influences; but the devil
must have his due, and men brought up in habits of peremptory command over
their fellow men, and under the constant apprehension of danger, and awful
necessity of immediate readiness to meet it, acquire qualities precious to
themselves and others in hours of supreme peril such as this man passed
through, saving by their exercise himself and all committed to his charge.
I know that the southern men are apt to deny the fact that they do live
under an habitual sense of danger; but a slave population, coerced into
obedience, though unarmed and half fed, _is_ a threatening source of
constant insecurity, and every southern _woman_ to whom I have spoken on
the subject, has admitted to me that they live in terror of their slaves.
Happy are such of them as have protectors like J---- C----. Such men will
best avoid and best encounter the perils that may assail them from the
abject subject, human element, in the control of which their noble
faculties are sadly and unworthily employed.
_Wednesday, 17th April._--I rode to-day after breakfast, to Mrs. D----'s,
another of my neighbours, who lives full twelve miles off. During the last
two miles of my expedition, I had the white sand hillocks and blue line of
the Atlantic in view. The house at which I called was a tumble-down
barrack of a dwelling in the woods, with a sort of poverty-stricken
pretentious air about it, like sundry 'proud planters' dwellings that I
have seen. I was received by the sons as well as the lady of the house,
and could not but admire the lordly rather than manly indifference, with
which these young gentlemen, in gay guard chains and fine attire, played
the gallants to me, while filthy, bare-footed half naked negro women
brought in refreshments, and stood all the while fanning the cake, and
sweetmeats, and their young masters, as if they had been all the same sort
of stuff. I felt ashamed for the lads. The conversation turned upon Dr.
H----'s trial; for there has been a trial as a matter of form, and an
acquittal as a matter of course; and the gentlemen said, upon my
expressing some surprise at the latter event, that there could not be
found in all Georgia a jury who would convict him, which says but little
for the moral sense of 'all Georgia.' From this most painful subject we
fell into the Brunswick canal, and thereafter I took my leave and rode
home. I met my babies in the wood-wagon, and took S---- up before me, and
gave her a good gallop home. Having reached the house with the appetite of
a twenty-four miles' ride, I found no preparation for dinner, and not so
much as a boiled potato to eat, and the sole reply to my famished and
disconsolate exclamations was--'Being that you order none, missis, I not
know.' I had forgotten to order my dinner, and my _slaves_, unauthorised,
had not ventured to prepare any. Wouldn't a Yankee have said, 'Wal now,
you went off so uncommon quick, I kinder guessed you forgot all about
dinner,' and have had it all ready for me? But my slaves durst not, and so
I fasted till some tea could be got for me.
* * * * *