A drive into the country--Pleasant road--Charming villa
--Children at play--Governess--Diversities of society--
Education in Louisiana--Visit to a sugar-house--Description
of sugar-making, &c.--A plantation scene--A planter's
grounds--Children--Trumpeter--Pointer--Return to the city.
This is the last day of my sojourn in the great emporium of the
south-west. To-morrow will find me threading the majestic sinuosities of
the Mississippi, the prisoner of one of its mammoth steamers, on my way
to the state whose broad fields and undulating hills are annually
whitened with the fleece-like cotton, and whose majestic forests glitter
with the magnificent and silvery magnolia--where the men are chivalrous,
generous, and social, and the women so lovely,
---- "that the same lips and eyes
They wear on earth will serve in Paradise."
A gentleman to whom I brought a letter of introduction called
yesterday--a strange thing for men so honoured to do--and invited me to
ride with him to his plantation, a few miles from the city. He drove his
own phaeton, which was drawn by two beautiful long-tailed bays. After a
drive of a mile and a half, we cleared the limits of the straggling, and
apparently interminable faubourgs, and, emerging through a long narrow
street upon the river road, bounded swiftly over its level surface,
which was as smooth as a bowling-green--saving a mud-hole now and then,
where a crevasse had let in upon it a portion of the Mississippi. An
hour's drive, after clearing the suburbs, past a succession of isolated
villas, encircled by slender columns and airy galleries, and surrounded
by richly foliaged gardens, whose fences were bursting with the
luxuriance which they could scarcely confine, brought us in front of a
charming residence situated at the head of a broad, gravelled avenue,
bordered by lemon and orange trees, forming in the heat of summer, by
arching naturally overhead, a cool and shady promenade. We drew up at
the massive gateway and alighted. As we entered the avenue, three or
four children were playing at its farther extremity, with noise enough
for Christmas holidays; two of them were trundling hoops in a race, and
a third sat astride of a non-locomotive wooden horse, waving a tin
sword, and charging at half a dozen young slaves, who were testifying
their bellicose feelings by dancing and shouting around him with the
noisiest merriment.
"Pa! pa!" shouted the hoop-drivers as they discovered our approach--"Oh,
there's pa!" re-echoed the pantalette dragoon, dismounting from his dull
steed, and making use of his own chubby legs as the most speedy way of
advancing, "oh, my papa!"--and, sword and hoops in hand, down they all
came upon the run to meet us, followed helter-skelter by their ebony
troop, who scattered the gravel around them like hail as they raced,
turning summersets over each other, without much diminution of their
speed. They came down upon us altogether with such momentum, that we
were like to be carried from our feet by this novel charge of _infantry_
and laid _hors du combat_, upon the ground. The playful and affectionate
congratulations over between the noble little fellows and their parent,
we walked toward the house, preceded by our trundlers, with the young
soldier hand-in-hand between us, followed close behind by the little
Africans, whose round shining eyes glistened wishfully--speaking as
plainly as eyes could speak the strong desire, with which their
half-naked limbs evidently sympathized by their restless motions, to
bound ahead, contrary to decorum, "wid de young massas!"
Around the semi-circular flight of steps, ascending to the piazza of the
dwelling,--the columns of which were festooned with the golden jasmine
and luxuriant multiflora,--stood, in large green vases, a variety of
flowers, among which I observed the tiny flowerets of the diamond
myrtle, sparkling like crystals of snow, scattered upon rich green
leaves--the dark foliaged Arabian jasmine silvered with its
opulently-leaved flowers redolent of the sweetest perfume,--and the
rose-geranium, breathing gales of fragrance upon the air. From this
point the main avenue branches to the right and left, into narrower, yet
not less beautiful walks, which, lined with evergreen and flowering
shrubs, completely encircled the cottage. At the head of the flight of
steps which led from this Hesperean spot to the portico, we were met by
a little golden-haired fairy, as light in her motion as a zephyr, and
with a cheek--not alabaster, indeed, for that is an exotic in the
south--but like a lily, shaded by a rose leaf, and an eye of the purest
hue, melting in its own light. With an exclamation of delight she sprang
into her father's arms. I was soon seated upon one of the settees in the
piazza,--whose front and sides were festooned by the folds of a green
curtain--in a high frolic with the trundlers, the dismounted dragoon and
my little winged zephyr. You know my _penchant_ for children's society.
I am seldom happier than when watching a group of intelligent and
beautiful little ones at play. For those who can in after life enter
_con amore_, into the sports of children, tumble with and be tumbled
about by them, it is like living their childhood over again. Every romp
with them is death to a score of gray hairs. Their games, moreover,
present such a contrast to the rougher contests of bearded children in
the game of life, where money, power, and ambition are the stake, that
it is refreshing to look at them and mingle with them, even were it only
to realize that human nature yet retains something of its divine
original.
The proprietor of the delightful spot which lay spread out around me--a
lake of foliage--fringed by majestic forest trees, and diversified with
labyrinthyne walks,--had, the preceding summer, consigned to the tomb
the mother of his "beautiful ones." They were under the care of a
dignified lady, his sister, and the widow of a gentleman formerly
distinguished as a lawyer in New-England. But like many other northern
ladies, whose names confer honour upon our literature, and whose talents
elevate and enrich our female seminaries of education, she had
independence enough to rise superior to her widowed indigence; and had
prepared to open a boarding school at the north, when the death of his
wife led her wealthier brother to invite her to supply a mother's place
to his children, to whom she was now both mother and governess. The
history of this lady is that of hundreds of her country-women. There
are, I am informed, many instances in the south-west, of New-England's
daughters having sought, with the genuine spirit of independence, thus
to repair their broken fortunes. The intelligent and very agreeable lady
of the late President H., of Lexington, resides in the capacity of
governess in a distinguished Louisianian family, not far from the city.
Mrs. Thayer, formerly an admired poet and an interesting writer of
fiction, is at the head of a seminary in an adjoining state. And in the
same, the widow of the late president of its college is a private
instructress in the family of a planter. And these are instances, to
which I can add many others, in a country where the occupation of
instructing, whether invested in the president of a college or in the
teacher of a country school, is degraded to a secondary rank. In
New-England, on the contrary, the lady of a living collegiate president
is of the elite, decidedly, if not at the head, of what is there termed
"good society." Here, the same lady, whether a visiter for the winter,
or a settled resident, must yield in rank--as the laws of southern
society have laid it down--to the lady of the planter. The southerners,
however, when they can secure one of our well-educated northern ladies
in their families, know well how to appreciate their good fortune.
Inmates of the family, they are treated with politeness and kindness;
but in the soiree, dinner party, or levee, the governess is thrown more
into the back-ground than she would be in a gentleman's family, even in
aristocratic England; and her title to an equality with the gay, and
fashionable, and wealthy circle by whom she is surrounded, and her
challenge to the right of _caste_, is less readily admitted. But this
illiberal jealousy is the natural consequence of the crude state of
American society, where the line of demarcation between its rapidly
forming classes is yet so uncertainly defined, that each individual who
is anxious to be, or even to be thought, of the better file, has to walk
circumspectly, lest he should inadvertently be found mingling with the
_canaille_. The more uncertain any individual is of his own true
standing, the more haughtily and suspiciously will he stand aloof, and
measure with his eye every stranger who advances within the limits of
the prescribed circle.
Education in this state has been and is still very much neglected.
Appropriations have been made for public schools; but, from the fund
established for the purpose, not much has as yet been effected. Many of
the males, after leaving the city-schools, or the care of tutors, are
sent, if destined for a professional career, to the northern colleges;
others to the Catholic institutions at St. Louis and Bardstown, and a
few of the wealthier young gentlemen to France. The females are
educated, either by governesses, at the convents, or at northern
boarding-schools. Many of them are sent to Paris when very young, and
there remain until they have completed their education. The majority of
the higher classes of the French population are brought up there. This
custom of foreign education--like that in the Atlantic states, under the
old regime, when, to be educated a gentleman, it was considered
necessary for American youth to enter at Eton, and graduate from Oxford
or Cambridge--must have a very natural tendency to preserve and cherish
an attachment for France, seriously detrimental to genuine
patriotism.--But all this is a digression.
After a kind of bachelor's dinner, in a hall open on two sides for
ventilation, even at this season of the year--sumptuous enough for
Epicurus, and served by two or three young slaves, who were drilled to a
glance of the eye--crowned by a luxurious dessert of fruits and
sweet-meats, and graced with wine, not of the _chasse-cousin vintage_,
so common in New England, but of the pure _outre-mer_--we proceeded to
the sugar-house or _sucrerie_, through a lawn which nearly surrounded
the ornamental grounds about the house, studded here and there with
lofty trees, which the good taste of the original proprietor of the
domain had left standing in their forest majesty. From this rich green
sward, on which two or three fine saddle-horses were grazing, we passed
through a turn-stile into a less lovely, but more domestic enclosure,
alive with young negroes, sheep, turkeys, hogs, and every variety of
domestic animal that could be attached to a plantation. From this
diversified collection, which afforded a tolerable idea of the interior
of Noah's ark, we entered the long street of a village of white
cottages, arranged on either side of it with great regularity. They were
all exactly alike, and separated by equal spaces; and to every one was
attached an enclosed piece of ground, apparently for a vegetable garden;
around the doors decrepit and superannuated negroes were basking in the
evening sun--mothers were nursing their naked babies, and one or two old
and blind negresses were spinning in their doors. In the centre of the
street, which was a hundred yards in width, rose to the height of fifty
feet a framed belfry, from whose summit was suspended a bell, to
regulate the hours of labour. At the foot of this tower, scattered over
the grass, lay half a score of black children, _in puris naturalibus_,
frolicking or sleeping in the warm sun, under the surveillance of an old
African matron, who sat knitting upon a camp-stool in the midst of them.
We soon arrived at the boiling-house, which was an extensive brick
building with tower-like chimneys, numerous flues, and a high, steep
roof, reminding me of a New England distillery. As we entered, after
scaling a barrier of sugar-casks with which the building was surrounded,
the slaves, who were dressed in coarse trowsers, some with and others
without shirts, were engaged in the several departments of their sweet
employment; whose fatigues some African Orpheus was lightening with a
loud chorus, which was instantly hushed, or rather modified, on our
entrance, to a half-assured whistling. A white man, with a very
unpleasing physiognomy, carelessly leaned against one of the brick
pillars, who raised his hat very respectfully as we passed, but did not
change his position. This was the overseer. He held in his hand a
short-handled whip, loaded in the butt, which had a lash four or five
times the length of the staff. Without noticing us, except when
addressed by his employer, he remained watching the motions of the
toiling slaves, quickening the steps of a loiterer by a word, or
threatening with his whip, those who, tempted by curiosity, turned to
gaze after us, as we walked through the building.
The process of sugar-making has been so often described by others, that
I can offer nothing new or interesting upon the subject. But since my
visit to this plantation, I have fallen in with an ultra-montane tourist
or sketcher, a fellow-townsman and successful practitioner of medicine
in Louisiana, who has kindly presented me with the sheet of an
unpublished MS. which I take pleasure in transcribing, for the very
graphic and accurate description it conveys of this interesting process.
"The season of sugar-making," says Dr. P. "is termed, by the planters of
the south, the 'rolling season;' and a merry and pleasant time it is
too--for verily, as Paulding says, the making of sugar and the making of
love are two of the sweetest occupations in this world. It
commences--the making of sugar I mean--about the middle or last of
October, and continues from three weeks to as many months, according to
the season and other circumstances; but more especially the force upon
the plantation, and the amount of sugar to be made. As the season
approaches, every thing assumes a new and more cheerful aspect. The
negroes are more animated, as their winter clothing is distributed,
their little crops are harvested, and their wood and other comforts
secured for that season; which, to them, if not the freest, is certainly
the gayest and happiest portion of the year. As soon as the corn crop
and fodder are harvested, every thing is put in motion for the grinding.
The horses and oxen are increased in number and better groomed; the
carts and other necessary utensils are overhauled and repaired, and some
hundred or thousand cords of wood are cut and ready piled for the
manufacture of the sugar. The _sucrerie_, or boiling house, is swept and
garnished--the mill and engine are polished--the kettles scoured--the
coolers caulked, and the _purgerie_, or draining-house, cleaned and put
in order, where the casks are arranged to receive the sugar.
The first labour in anticipation of grinding, is that of providing
plants for the coming year; and this is done by cutting the cane, and
putting it in _matelas_, or mattressing it, as it is commonly called.
The cane is cut and thrown into parcels in different parts of the field,
in quantities sufficient to plant several acres, and so arranged that
the tops of one layer may completely cover and protect the stalks of
another. After the quantity required is thus secured, the whole
plantation force, nearly, is employed in cutting cane, and conveying it
to the mill. The cane is divested of its tops, which are thrown aside,
unless they are needed for plants, which is often the case, when they
are thrown together in rows, and carefully protected from the
inclemencies of the weather. The stalks are then cut as near as may be
to the ground, and thrown into separate parcels or rows, to be taken to
the mill in carts, and expressed as soon as possible. The cane is
sometimes bound together in bundles, in the field, which facilitates its
transportation, and saves both time and trouble. As soon as it is
harvested, it is placed upon a cane-carrier, so called, which conveys it
to the mill, where it is twice expressed between iron rollers, and made
perfectly dry. The juice passes into vats, or receivers, and the
_baggasse_ or cane-trash, (called in the West Indies _migass_,) is
received into carts and conveyed to a distance from the sugar-house to
be burnt as soon as may be. Immediately after the juice is expressed, it
is distributed to the boilers, generally four in succession, ranged in
solid masonry along the sides of the boiling-room, where it is properly
tempered, and its purification and evaporation are progressively
advanced. The French have commonly five boilers, distinguished by the
fanciful names of _grande_--_propre_--_flambeau_--_sirop_, and
_batterie_.
In the first an alkali is generally put to temper the juice; lime is
commonly used, and the quantity is determined by the good judgment and
experience of the sugar-maker. In the last kettle--the _teach_ as it is
termed--the sugar is concentrated to the granulating point, and then
conveyed into coolers, which hold from two to three hogsheads. After
remaining here for twenty-four hours or more, it is removed to the
_purgerie_, or draining-house, and placed in hogsheads, which is
technically called _potting_. Here it undergoes the process of draining
for a few days or weeks, and is then ready for the market. The molasses
is received beneath in cisterns, and when they become filled, it is
taken out and conveyed into barrels or hogsheads and shipped. When all
the molasses is removed from the cistern, an inferior kind of sugar is
re-manufactured, which is called _cistern-sugar_, and sold at a lower
price. When the grinding has once commenced, there is no cessation of
labour till it is completed. From beginning to end, a busy and cheerful
scene continues. The negroes
"---- Whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week,"
work from eighteen to twenty hours,
"And make the night joint-labourer with the day."
Though to lighten the burden as much as possible, the gang is divided
into two watches, one taking the first, and the other the last part of
the night; and notwithstanding this continued labour, the negroes
improve in condition, and appear fat and flourishing. "They drink freely
of cane-juice, and the sickly among them revive and become robust and
healthy." After the grinding is finished, the negroes have several
holidays, when they are quite at liberty to dance and frolic as much as
they please; and the cane-song--which is improvised by one of the gang,
the rest all joining in a prolonged and unintelligible chorus--now
breaks night and day upon the ear, in notes "most musical, most
melancholy." This over, planting recommences, and the same routine of
labour is continued, with an intermission--except during the boiling
season, as above stated--upon most, if not all plantations, of twelve
hours in twenty-four, and of one day in seven throughout the year.
Leaving the sugar-house, after having examined some of the most
interesting parts of the process so well described by Dr. P., I returned
with my polite entertainer to the house. Lingering for a moment on the
gallery in the rear of the dwelling-house, I dwelt with pleasure upon
the scene which the domain presented.
The lawn, terminated by a snow-white paling, and ornamented here and
there by a venerable survivor of the aboriginal forest, was rolled out
before me like a carpet, and dotted with sleek cows, and fine horses,
peacefully grazing, or indolently reclining upon the thick grass,
chewing the cud of contentment. Beyond the lawn, and extending farther
into the plantation, lay a pasture containing a great number of horses
and cattle, playing together, reposing, feeding, or standing in social
clusters around a shaded pool. Beyond, the interminable cane-field, or
plantation proper, spread away without fence or swell, till lost in the
distant forests which bounded the horizon. On my left, a few hundred
yards from the house, and adjoining the pasture, stood the stables and
other plantation appurtenances, constituting a village in
themselves--for planters always have a separate building for everything.
To the right stood the humble yet picturesque village or "quarter" of
the slaves, embowered in trees, beyond which, farther toward the
interior of the plantation, arose the lofty walls and turreted chimneys
of the sugar-house, which, combined with the bell-tower, presented the
appearance of a country village with its church-tower and the walls of
some public edifice, lifting themselves above the trees. Some of the
sugar-houses are very lofty and extensive, with noble wings and handsome
fronts, resembling--aside from their lack of windows--college edifices.
I have seen two which bore a striking resemblance, as seen from the
river, to the Insane Hospital near Boston. It requires almost a fortune
to construct one. The whole scene before me was extremely animated.
Human figures were moving in all directions over the place. Some
labouring in the distant field, others driving the slow-moving oxen,
with a long, drawling cry--half naked negro boys shouting and yelling,
were galloping horses as wild as themselves--negresses of all sizes,
from one able to carry a tub to the minikin who could "tote" but a
pint-dipper, laughing and chattering as they went, were conveying water
from a spring to the wash-house, in vessels adroitly balanced upon their
heads. Slaves sinking under pieces of machinery, and other burdens,
were passing and repassing from the boiling-house and negro quarter.
Some were calling to others afar off, and the merry shouts of the black
children at their sports in their village, reminding me of a school just
let out, mingled with the lowing of cows, the cackling of geese, the
bleating of lambs, the loud and unmusical clamour of the guinea-hen,
agreeably varied by the barking of dogs, and the roaring of some young
African rebel under maternal castigation.
Passing from this plantation scene through the airy hall of the
dwelling, which opened from piazza to piazza through the house, to the
front gallery, whose light columns were wreathed with the delicately
leaved Cape-jasmine, rambling woodbine and honeysuckle, a lovelier and
more agreeable scene met my eye. I stood almost embowered in the foliage
of exotics and native plants, which stood upon the gallery in handsome
vases of marble and China-ware. The main avenue opened a vista to the
river through a paradise of althea, orange, lemon, and olive trees, and
groves and lawns extended on both sides of this lovely spot,
"Where Flora's brightest broidery shone,"
terminating at the villas of adjoining plantations. The
Mississippi--always majestic and lake-like in its breadth--rolled past
her turbid flood, dotted here and there by a market-lugger, with its
black crew and clumsy sails. By the Levee, on the opposite shore, lay a
brig, taking in a cargo of sugar from the plantation, whose noble
colonnaded mansion rose like a palace above its low, grove-lined
margin, and an English argosy of great size, with black spars and hull,
was moving under full sail down the middle of the river. As I was under
the necessity of returning to the city the same evening, I took leave of
the youthful family of my polite host, who clustered around us as we
walked along the avenue to the gateway, endeavouring to detain us till
the next morning. The young rogue of a dragoon, who was now
metamorphosed into a trumpeter--what a singular propensity little chubby
boys have for the weapons and apparel of war!--a most mischievous little
cupidon of but two or three summers' growth, was very desirous of
accompanying us to town, on seeing us seated in the carriage; but
finding that his eloquent appeals were unheeded, he took a fancy to a
noble pointer, spotted like a leopard, which accompanied me, and
clinging around the neck of the majestic and docile creature, as we
drove from the gate, said in a half playful, half pettish tone, "Me ride
dis pretty dog-horse, den." The sensible animal stood like a statue till
the little fellow relaxed his embrace, when he darted after the
carriage, then a quarter of a mile from the gate, bounding like a stag.
The cries of "Pa, bring me this," and "Pa, bring me that," were soon
lost in the distance, and rolling like the wind over the level road
along the banks of the river, we arrived in the city and alighted at
Bishop's a few minutes after seven.