A HUNTING PLANTER.
Notwithstanding my reluctance to leave the Tennessean plantation, the
event could no longer be delayed. I could bear the thought with greater
equanimity that I had hope soon again to see my fair instructress in
the statistics of cotton-planting.
"On my journey through the Mississippi State, I must call on her
brother Henry. His plantation was not much out of my way. He could give
me such sport, hunting bears and deer and panther, shooting swans,
egrets and eagles. She herself would be going down soon--perhaps Walter
too. Would I not stay till they came?"
Who would have declined such an invitation? Not I. My difficulty was to
conceal an eagerness in its acceptance. I promised to pay this visit
to the hunting brother; and provided with the proper credentials of
introduction, I bade adieu to my Tennesseean acquaintances, and once
more set my face for the South.
I had long since left behind me the region of turnpikes, and my
route lay over roads where the hoof struck only on the softly-turfed
surface of the earth. Now and then it coincided with the old "Natchez
trace"--that once much-traveled highway, on which Murrell had committed
many of his murders.
In due time--and with only those slight mischances which form
rather the charms of travel--I reached the Mississippi plantation,
and presented my letters of introduction to the proprietor. I was
received with all the warmth of Western hospitality. Indeed, by my
new host, Henry Woodley, credentials would scarce have been called
for. Sufficient for him to know that I was fond of hunting, to have
insured me a warm reception. With the addition of such introduction
as I carried, it was only made the warmer; and I was received with as
much zeal as if, instead of that pretty epistle from his sister, I
had brought one from the old squire containing a check for a thousand
dollars.
I was not long upon the plantation of Mr. Henry Woodley, till I could
tell that this last would not have been unwelcome. Here every thing was
different from the old homestead in Tennessee.
Instead of a handsome "frame house," well filled with furniture that
approached the fashionable, I was introduced to a dwelling of a less
pretentious kind. It was a large log-cabin, comfortable enough, but
with no claim to architectural style. It stood inside of an inclosure
of rude rail fence, overshadowed by trees and surrounded by a shrubbery
of magnolias, osage orange, and other fair forms of vegetation, just as
the forest had furnished them. At the back were the cooking quarters,
standing apart; beyond them the stabling, and to one side a group of
negro-cabins at some distance from the dwelling. Despite the primitive
rudeness of the place, there was that picturesqueness that is pleasing
to the eye.
There were, withal, sufficient signs to insure comfort, and a
kennel close by containing a score of stag-hounds--some of them
showing scars that could only have been made by the claws of bear or
panther--promised something more--that sport of which their proprietor
was so passionately fond--the grand chase.
It was for this, in truth, that Henry Woodley had selected his new
home; for this consented, year after year, to endure the summer heats,
and breathe the miasma of the Mississippi swamps--not to make a fortune
in the culture of cotton and tobacco. His corn-growing was intended
only to feed the horses in his stable, as well as the hogs required for
the sustenance of the negro-quarters and the kennel.
Henry Woodley was not the only man I had met who, under the pretense
of being a planter, passed three-fourths of his time in the chase--his
farming being only a pleasant fiction--a pretext, to escape from the
charge--even the self-accusation--of having nothing to do! Hundreds of
such characters there are in the Mississippi valley.
Inside, as without, you had evidence of the house being a true hunter's
home. In the vast open porch, with its adjoining gallery, you were
surrounded by trophies of the chase--horns, skins and claws, suspended
alongside a miscellaneous assortment of guns and riding-gear, nets,
traps, and fishing-tackle.
Soon after my arrival, my host commenced initiating me into the ways
of a Southern sportsman's life; and ere long I was introduced to the
different kinds of chase practiced upon the Mississippi.
In less than a month I had collected, on my own account, most of
those trophies that fall to the lot of a Mississippi hunter. Among
them were skins of the black bear, the red puma or "painter" of
the backwoodsmen, the spotted lynx--better known by the name of
"wild-cat"--wolves, black and gray, with raccoons, opossums, skunks,
swamp rabbits, and other four-footed "varmints." In my collection were
the antlers of the Virginia stag, the scaly skin of the alligator, as
also the singular gar-fish, or shark of the South-western waters.
Birds, too, figured among my trophies, including a fine specimen of the
wild turkey, whose weight, when shot, was thirty pounds in the scale.
I had obtained also the tall American crane, the trumpeter swan, the
curious snake-bird, the blue heron, the white egret, the scarlet ibis,
and many other beautiful birds, obtainable on the banks and bayous of
the lower Mississippi.
The king of all, however--the white-headed eagle--was still wanted
to complete my museum. Several times I had seen this splendid bird
soaring aloft, or winging his way across the river. But, like most of
the falcon tribe, the white-headed eagle is shy of the approach of man;
and I had never succeeded in getting a shot at one. All the more did I
desire to add the eagle to my collection.
My host, eager to gratify me, caused inquiries to be made.
It ended in our hearing of a "roost" upon one of the islands, some
twenty miles down the river, where a nest had been observed in the
spring, and afterward the brood of birds--a single brace, along with
their parents.
In the neighborhood of a nest where they have succeeded in bringing
forth their young, the eagles can more easily be approached. Where they
have been so long permitted to go undisturbed, their confidence becomes
established. Knowing this, I determined on making an excursion to the
island.
On this occasion I was to go without my host, accompanied only by one
of his negroes, named "Jake." I had made several excursions so attended
when the young planter was otherwise occupied--Jake and the skiff being
always placed at my disposal.
The darky knew the island in question, though he had never landed
upon it; and what I thought strange, did not seem to relish the idea
of guiding me to the place! At other times he had shown the greatest
eagerness to be my hunting companion, as it afforded him a pleasanter
time than any other employment upon the plantation.
It would be a two hours' pull down-stream, and might take us twice that
time to return--the river here running with a rapid current, especially
in proximity to the island.
Perhaps it was the prospect of so much toil under a hot sun that was
rendering Jake so reluctant; and with this explanation to myself, I
followed my unwilling conductor to the skiff.