steamers proceeding up the Mississippi, along that fertile but
uninteresting region of reclaimed swamp lands called “the Coast,” which
extends along both banks for one hundred and twenty miles above the
city. It is so called from the name given to it, “La Cote,” by the early
French settlers. Here is the favored land--alas! it is a fever-land
too--of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent
conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical
computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be
astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial
for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the
waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised
embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from
overflowing the swamps, now drained and green with wealth-producing
crops. At the present moment the surface of the river is several feet
higher than the land at each side, and the steamer moves on a level with
the upper stories, or even the roofs of the houses, reminding one of
such scenery as could be witnessed in the old days of treckshuyt in
Holland. The river is not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, and is
quite as richly colored. But then it is one hundred and eighty feet
deep, and for hundreds of miles it has not less than one hundred feet of
water. Thus deeply has it scooped out the rich clay and marl in its
course, but as it flows out to join the sea it throws down the vast
precipitates which render the bars so shifting and difficult, and bring
the mighty river to such a poor exit. A few miles above the wharves and
large levees of the city the country really appears to be a sea of light
green, with shores of forest in the distance, about two miles away from
the bank. This forest is the uncleared land, extending for a
considerable way back, which each planter hopes to take into culture one
day or other, and which he now uses to provide timber for his farm. Near
the banks are houses of wood, with porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and
sun-shades, generally painted white and green. There is a great
uniformity of style, but the idea aimed at seems to be that of the old
French chateau, with the addition of a colonnade round the ground story.
These dwellings are generally in the midst of small gardens, rich in
semi-tropical vegetation, with glorious magnolias, now in full bloom,
rising in their midst, and groves of live-oak interspersed. The levee is
as hard and dry as the bank of a canal. Here and there it is propped up
by wooden revelments. Between it and the uniform line of palings which
guards the river face of the plantations there is a carriage-road. In
the enclosure near each residence there is a row of small wooden huts,
whitewashed, in which live the negroes attached to the service of the
family. Outside the negroes who labor in the fields are quartered in
similar constructions, which are like the small single huts, called
“Maltese,” which were plentiful in the Crimea. They are rarely furnished
with windows; a wooden slide or a grated space admits such light and air
as they want. One of the most striking features of the landscape is its
utter want of life. There were a few horsemen exercising in a field,
some gigs and buggies along the levee roads, and little groups at the
numerous landing-places, generally containing a few children in tom-fool
costumes, as Zouaves, Chasseurs, or some sort of infantry, but the
slaves who were there had come down to look after luggage or their
masters. There were no merry, laughing, chattering gatherings of black
faces and white teeth, such as we hear about. Indeed, the negroes are
not allowed hereabouts to stir out of their respective plantations, or
to go along the road without passes from their owners. The steamer J. L.
Cotten, which was not the less popular, perhaps, because she had the
words “Low pressure” conspicuous on her paddle-boxes, carried a fair
load of passengers, most of whom were members of Creole families living
on the coast. The proper meaning of the word “Creole” is very different
from that which we attach to it. It signifies a person of Spanish or
French descent born in Louisiana or in the Southern and tropical
countries. The great majority of the planters here are French Creoles,
and it is said they are kinder and better masters than Americans or
Scotch, the latter being considered the most severe. Intelligent on most
subjects, they are resolute in the belief that England must take their
cotton or perish. Even the keenest of their financiers, Mr. Forstall, an
Irish Creole, who is representative of the house of Baring, seems
inclined to this faith, though he is prepared with many ingenious
propositions, which would rejoice Mr. Gladstone’s inmost heart, to raise
money for the Southern Confederacy, and make them rich exceedingly. One
thing has rather puzzled him. M. Baroche, who is in New Orleans, either
as a looker-on or as an accredited _employé_ of his father or of the
French Government, suggested to him that it would not be possible for
all the disposable mercantile marine of England and France together to
carry the cotton crop, which hitherto gave employment to a great number
of American vessels, now tabooed by the South, and the calculations seem
to bear out the truth of the remark. Be that as it may, Mr. Forstall is
quite prepared to show that the South can raise a prodigious revenue by
a small direct taxation, for which the machinery already exists in every
parish of the State, and that the North must be prodigiously damaged in
the struggle, if not ruined outright. One great source of strength in
the South is its readiness--at least, its professed alacrity--to yield
anything that it is asked. There is unbounded confidence in Mr.
Jefferson Davis. Wherever I go, the same question is asked: “Well, Sir,
what do you think of our President? Does he not strike you as being a
very able man?” In finance he is trusted as much as in war. When he sent
orders to the New Orleans Banks, some time ago, to suspend specie
payment, he exercised a power which could not be justified by any
reading of the Southern Constitution. All men applauded. The President
of the United States is far from receiving any such support or
confidence, and it need not be said any act of his of the same nature as
that of Mr. Davis would have created an immense outcry against him. But
the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy, and its unanimity is
not greater than its confidence. One is rather tired of endless
questions, “Who can conquer such men?” But the question should be, “Can
the North conquer us?” Of the fustian about dying in their tracks and
fighting till every man, woman and child is exterminated, there is a
great deal too much, but they really believe that the fate which Poland
could not avert, to which France as well as the nations she overran
bowed the head, can never reach them. With their faithful negroes to
raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they are at the wars, and
England and France to take the latter and pay them for it, they believe
they can meet the American world in arms. A glorious future opens before
them. Illimitable fields tilled by multitudinous negroes open on their
vision, and prostrate at the base of the mountain of cotton from which
they rule the kings of the earth, the empires of Europe shall lie, with
all their gold, their manufactures, and their industry, crying out,
“Pray give us more cotton! All we ask is more!” But here is the boat
stopping opposite Mr. Roman’s--Ex-Governor of the State of Louisiana,
and Ex-Commissioner from the Confederate Government at Montgomery to the
Government of the United States at Washington. Not very long ago he
could boast of a very handsome garden--the French Creoles love
gardens--Americans and English do not much affect them; when the
Mississippi was low one fine day, levee and all slid down the bank into
the maw of the river, and were carried off. This is what is called the
“caving in” of a bank; when the levee is broken through at high water it
is said that a “crevasse” has taken place. The Governor, as he is
called--once a captain always a captain--has still a handsome garden,
however, though his house has been brought unpleasantly near the river.
His mansion and the out-offices stand in the shade of magnolias, green
oaks, and other Southern trees. To the last Governor Roman was a
Unionist, but when his State went he followed her, and now he is a
Secessionist for life and for death, not extravagant in his hopes, but
calm and resolute, and fully persuaded that in the end the South must
win. As he does not raise any cotton, the consequences for him will be
extremely serious should sugar be greatly depreciated; but the
consumption of that article in America is very large, and, though the
markets in the North and West are cut off, it is hoped, as no imported
sugar can find its way into the States, that the South will consume all
its own produce at a fair rate. The Governor is a very good type of the
race, which is giving way a little before the encroachments of the
Anglo-Saxons, and he possesses all the ease, candid manner, and suavity
of the old French gentleman--of that school in which there are now few
masters or scholars. He invited me to visit the negro quarters. “Go
where you like, do what you please, ask any questions. There is nothing
we desire to conceal.” As we passed the house, two or three young women
flitted past in snow-white dresses with pink sashes, and no doubtful
crinolines, but their head-dresses were not _en règle_--handkerchiefs of
a gay color. They were slaves going off to a dance at the sugar-house;
but they were in-door servants, and therefore better off in the way of
clothes than their fellow slaves who labor in the field. On approaching
a high paling at the rear of the house the scraping of fiddles was
audible. It was Sunday, and Mr. Roman informed me that he gave his
negroes leave to have a dance on that day. The planters who are not
Catholics rarely give any such indulgence to their slaves, though they
do not always make them work on that day, and sometimes let them enjoy
themselves on the Saturday afternoon. Entering a wicket gate, a
quadrangular enclosure, lined with negro huts, lay before us. The bare
ground was covered with litter of various kinds, amid which pigs and
poultry were pasturing. Dogs, puppies, and curs of low degree scampered
about on all sides; and deep in a pond, swinking in the sun, stood some
thirty or forty mules, enjoying their day of rest. The huts of the
negroes, belonging to the personal service of the house, were separated
from the negroes engaged in field labor by a close wooden paling; but
there was no difference in the shape and size of their dwellings, which
consisted generally of one large room, divided by a partition
occasionally into two bed-rooms. Outside the whitewash gave them a
cleanly appearance; inside they were dingy and squalid--no glass in the
windows, swarms of flies, some clothes hanging on nails in the boards,
dressers with broken crockery, a bedstead of rough carpentry; a
fireplace in which, hot as was the day, a log lay in embers; a couple of
tin cooking utensils; in the obscure, the occupant, male or female,
awkward and shy before strangers, and silent till spoken to. Of course
there were no books, for the slaves do not read. They all seemed
respectful to their master. We saw very old men and very old women, who
were the canker-worms of the estate, and were dozing away into eternity
mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were
working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd
of little children were listening to the music, and a few grown-up
persons of color--some of them from the adjoining plantations. The
children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which
answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean. It might
be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who
follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant
negro, or of the child up to six or seven years of age, is generally a
fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull
ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not
less happy than free-born children, although much more valuable--for
once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance towards nine or ten
years of age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the
market is low and money is scarce. The women were not very well-favored,
except one yellow girl, whose child was quite white, with fair hair and
light eyes; and the men were disguised in such strangely cut clothes,
their hats and shoes and coats were so wonderfully made, that one could
not tell what they were like. On all faces there was a gravity which
must be the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort, for those
who ought to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world.
It struck me more and more, as I examined the expression of the faces of
the slaves all over the South, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if
not universal, characteristic of the race. Let a physiognomist go and
see. Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated, for
they had good clothing of its kind, good food, and a master who
wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of
it. Still, they all looked exceedingly sad, and even the old woman who
boasted that she had held her old master in her arms when he was an
infant, did not look cheerful, as the nurse at home would have done, at
the sight of her ancient charge. The precincts of the huts were not
clean, and the enclosure was full of weeds, in which poultry--the
perquisites of the slaves--were in full possession. The negroes rear
domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters.
The money they spend in purchasing tobacco, molasses, clothes and
flour--whiskey, their great delight, they must not have. Some seventy
or eighty hands were quartered in this part of the estate. The silence
which reigned in the huts as soon as the fiddlers had gone off to the
sugar-house was profound. Before leaving the quarter I was taken to the
hospital, which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms
contained several flock beds on rough stands, and five patients, three
of whom were women. They sat listlessly on the beds, looking out into
space; no books to amuse them, no conversation--nothing but their own
dull thoughts, if they had any. They were suffering from pneumonia and
swellings of the glands of the neck; one man had fever. Their medical
attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a practitioner,
who is engaged by the term for his services. Negroes have now only a
nominal value in the market--that the price of a good field hand is as
high as ever, but there is no one to buy him at present, and no money to
pay for him, and the trade of the slave-dealers is very bad. The
menageries of the “Virginia negroes constantly on sale. Money advanced
on all descriptions of property,” &c., must be full--their pockets
empty. This question of price is introduced incidentally in reference to
the treatment of negroes. It has often been said to me that no one will
ill-use a creature worth £300 or £400, but that is not a universal rule.
Much depends on temper, and many a hunting-field could show that if
value be a guarantee for good usage, the slave is more fortunate than
his fellow chattel, the horse. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton and
corn, be the great end of man’s mission on earth, and if all masters
were like Governor Roman, Slavery might be defended as a natural and
innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are, assuredly, two great
agencies in this latter world. The older got on well enough without
them.
The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, a large
brick building with a factory-looking chimney, where the juice of the
cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refiner. In
a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as
many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish
jig to the music of the negro musicians--a double shuffle and thumping
ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads
thrown back, and backs arched inwards--a glazed eye, intense solemnity
of mien, worthy of the minuet in _Don Giovanni_. At this time of year
there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crushing and
boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in
gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the
temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but
“involuntary servitude” could go through the toil and suffering required
to produce sugar for us. This is not the place for an account of the
processes and machinery used in the manufacture, which is a scientific
operation, greatly improved by recent discoveries and apparatus.
In the afternoon the Governor’s son came in from the company which he
commands. He has been camping out with them to accustom them to the
duties of actual war, and he told me that all his men were most zealous
and exceedingly proficient. They are all of the best families
around,--planters, large and small, their sons and relatives, and a few
of the Creole population, who are engaged as hoopers and stavemakers.
One of the latter had just stained his hands with blood. He had reason
to believe a culpable intimacy existed between his wife and his foreman.
A circumstance occurred which appeared to confirm his worst suspicions.
He took out his fire-lock, and, meeting the man, he shot him without
uttering a word, and then delivered himself up to the authorities. It is
probable his punishment will be exceedingly light, as divorce suits and
actions for damages are not in favor in this part of the world. Although
the people are Roman Catholics, it is by no means unusual to permit
relations within the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the Church to
intermarry, and the elastic nature of the rules which are laid down by
the priesthood in that respect would greatly astonish the orthodox in
Ireland or Bavaria. The whole of the planters and their dependents along
“the coast” are in arms. There is but one sentiment, as far as I can
see, among them, and that is, “We will never submit to the North.” In
the evening, several officers of M. Alfred Roman’s company and neighbors
came in, and out under the shade of the trees, in the twilight,
illuminated by the flashing fireflies, politics were discussed--all on
one side, of course, with general conversation of a more agreeable
character. The customary language of the Creoles is French, and several
newspapers in French are published in the districts around us; but they
speak English fluently.
Next morning, early, the Governor was in the saddle and took me round to
see his plantation. We rode through alleys formed by the tall stalks of
the maze out to the wide, unbroken fields--hedgeless, unwalled, where
the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind.
Along the margin in the distance there is an unbroken boundary of forest
extending all along the swamp lands, and two miles in depth. From the
river to the forest there is about one mile and a half or more of land
of the very highest quality--unfathomable, and producing from one to one
and a half hogshead an acre. Away in the midst of the crops were
white-looking masses, reminding me of the sepoys and sowars as seen in
Indian fields in the morning sun on many a march. As we rode towards
them we overtook a cart with a large cask, a number of tin vessels, a
bucket of molasses, a pail of milk, and a tub full of hominy or boiled
Indian corn. The cask contained water for the use of the negroes, and
the other vessel held the materials for their breakfast, in addition to
which they generally have each a dried fish. The food looked ample and
wholesome, such as any laboring man would be well content with every
day. There were three gangs at work in the fields. One of them with
twenty mules and plows, was engaged in running through the furrows
between the canes, cutting up the weeds and clearing away the grass,
which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large,
good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the
drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hand on the plantation.
The overseer, a sharp-looking Creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand,
superintended their labors, and, after a few directions and a salutation
to the governor, rode off to another part of the farm. The negroes when
spoken to saluted us and came forward to shake hands--a civility which
must not be refused. With the exception of crying to their mules,
however, they kept silence when at work. Another gang consisted of forty
men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn--easy work enough. The
third gang was of thirty-six or thirty-seven women, who were engaged in
hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate, their
shoes ponderous and ill-made, so as to wear away the feet of their thick
stockings. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected
their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to
prevailed among these gangs also--not a sound could be heard but the
blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a
black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If
“Alcibiadev” or “Pompée” were called out, he came with outstretched hand
to ask “how do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies
were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping _chapeaux de
paille_ at their visitors. Those who are mothers leave their children in
the charge of certain old women, unfit for anything else, and “suckers,”
as they are called, are permitted to go home to give their infants the
breast at appointed periods in the day. I returned home _multa mecum
revolens_. After breakfast, in spite of a very fine sun, which was not
unworthy of a January noon in Cawnpore, we drove forth to visit some
planter friends of M. Roman, a few miles down the river. The levee road
is dusty, but the gardens, white railings, and neat houses of the
planters looked fresh and clean enough. There is a great difference in
the appearance of the slaves’ quarters. Some are neat, others are
dilapidated and mean. As a general rule, it might be said that the
goodness of the cottages was in proportion to the frontage of each
plantation towards the river, which is a fair index to the size of the
estate wherever the river bank is straight. The lines of the estate are
drawn perpendicularly to the banks, so that the convexity or concavity
of the bends determines the frontage of the plantation.
The absence of human beings in the fields and on the roads was
remarkable. The gangs at work were hidden in the deep corn, and not a
soul met us on the road for many miles except one planter in his gig. At
one place we visited a very handsome garden, laid out with hot-houses
and conservatories, ponds full of magnificent Victoria Regia in flower,
orange trees, and many other tropical plants, native and foreign, date
and other palms. The proprietor owns an extensive sugar refinery. We
visited his factory and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which
seemed too much even for all but naked negroes who were at work, did not
tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and
polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as
they toiled over boiler, vat and centrifugal driers. The good refiner
was not gaining much at present, for sugar has been falling rapidly in
New Orleans, and the three hundred thousand barrels produced annually in
the South will fall short in the yield of profit, which, on an average,
may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses for the
planter. All the planters hereabouts have sown an unusual quantity of
Indian Corn, so as to have food for the negroes if the war lasts,
without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of
supposing that blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a
favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is
no contemptible means of warfare. At night, after our return, a large
bonfire was lighted on the bank to attract the steamer to call for my
luggage, which she was to leave at a point on the opposite shore,
fourteen miles higher up, and I perceived that there are regular patrols
and watchmen at night who look after levees and the negroes; a number of
dogs are also loosed, but I am assured by a gentleman, who has written
me a long letter on the subject from Montgomery, that these dogs do not
tear the negroes; they are taught merely to catch and mumble them, to
treat them as a retriever well broken uses a wild duck. Next day I left
the hospitable house of Governor Roman, full of regard for his personal
character and of wishes for his happiness and prosperity, but assuredly
in no degree satisfied that even with his care and kindness even the
“domestic institution” can be rendered tolerable or defensible, if it be
once conceded that the negro is a human being with a soul--or with the
feelings of a man. On those points there are ingenious hypotheses and
subtle argumentations in print “down South,” which do much to comfort
the consciences of the anthropoproprietors. The negro skull won’t hold
as many ounces as that of the white man’s. Can there be a more potent
proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own a creature who
carries a smaller charge of snipe dust in his head? He is plantigrade
and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made
expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibia’d Caucasian. He
has a _rete mucosum_ and a colored pigment. Surely he cannot have a soul
of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a
flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus--in
sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that
nature was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides the
Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in
the rice swamps, sugar canes, and maize-fields of the Southern
Confederation. It’s flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our
Saviour sanctions Slavery because he does not say a word against it, and
it’s very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar
been known, he might have been a planter! Besides, the negro is
civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of
idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the
African races except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans,
Mobile, or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such
vehemence, and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the
“Jawdam?” If these high, physical, metaphysical, moral and religious
reasonings do not satisfy you, and you venture to be unconvinced and to
say so, then I advise you not to come within reach of a mass meeting of
our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the
neighborhood.
As we jog along in an easy-rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout
horses, a number of white people met us coming from the Catholic chapel
of the parish, where they had been attending a service for the repose of
the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people
are supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr.
Shandy’s homuncule was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to
find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case,
although they may have been very good--or where it would be most
desirable--very bad Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable,
accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow weighing down his young
life, that softened him to almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these
things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone by--of Paris and
poetry, of England and London hotels, of the great _Carême_, and of poor
Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics--_de omne scibili_. The storm
gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents--the Mississippi flowed
lifelessly by--not a boat on its broad surface. The road passed by
plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen belonging to small
planters, with only some ten or twelve slaves, all told. The houses were
poor and ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning’s place, and drove
to the overseer’s--a large, heavy-eyed old man, who asked us into his
house from out of the rain till the boat was ready--and the river did
not look inviting--full of drift trees, swirls, and mighty eddies. In
the plain room in which we sat there was a volume of Spurgeon’s Sermons
and Baxter’s works. “This rain will do good to our corn,” said the
overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin’ to do leetly, as they
’eve clearied out the fields pretty well.” We drove down to a poor shed
on the levee called the Ferry-house, attended by one stout, young slave
who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The
negro groped under the shed, and pulled out a piece of wood like a large
spatula, some four feet long, and a small, round pole a little longer.
“What are those?” quoth I, “Dem’s oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman’s
brisk reply. “I’m very sure they are not; if they were spliced they
might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat’s the trute, Massa.”
“There, go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we
entered the shed for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman
sitting” smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed,
low-browed, and morose--young as she was. She never said a word nor
moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes
at chickens about the size of sparrows, and at a cat no larger than a
rat, which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four years
of age, not over-dressed--indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a
point upon it”--crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our
approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the uses of a small
piece of silver presented to her--having no precise ideas on coinage or
toffy--her parent took the obolus in charge with unmistakable decision;
but, still, she would not stir a step to aid our Charon, who now
insisted on the “key ov de oar-house.” The little thing sidled off and
hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit
the company of the silent woman in black. Charon pushed his skiff into
the water--there was a good deal of rain in it--in shape a snuffer-dish,
some ten feet long and a foot deep. I got in and the conscious waters
immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding
wherewith the craft was caulked. Had we gone out into the stream we
should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is
the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world.
“Why, deuce take you” (I said at least that, in my wrath), “don’t you
see that the boat is leaky?" “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to
tell dat till Massa get in, tho’.” Another skiff proved to be stanch. I
bade good-bye to my friend, and sat down in my boat, which was soon
forced up along the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good
start across to the other side. The view, from my lonely position, was
curious, but not at all picturesque. The landscape had disappeared at
once. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was
constituted by a broad river--just as if one were sailing down an open
sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the
tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A row of a quarter
of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the
bank and directly in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage
gateway, and wickets of wood, painted white, in a line of park palings
of the same material, which extended up and down the road as far as the
eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and
sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close set, drooping and
overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of
which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering
flowers, rose, jessamine, and creepers clinging to the pillars
supporting the verandah. The proprietor, who had espied my approach,
issued forth with a section of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me
a hearty welcome. The house was larger and better than the residences
even of the richest planters, though it was in need of some little
repair, and had been built perhaps fifty years ago, but it had belonged
to a wealthy family, who lived in the good old Irish fashion, and who
built well, ate well, drank well, and--finally, paid very well. The view
from the Belvedere was one of the most striking of its kind in the
world. If an English agriculturist could see 6,000 acres of the finest
land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the
most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting
sugar-cane, as level as a billiard table, he would surely doubt his
senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better
tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath
pastures, which can be cultivated for a hundred years to come without
requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an
average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre at the old
prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure
are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and
sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And
who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and
Orange-grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on
the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful
business.