Camping among the Tombs
_October 9_. After going again to the express office and post office,
and wandering about the streets, I found a road which led me to the
Bonaventure graveyard. If that burying-ground across the Sea of
Galilee, mentioned in Scripture, was half as beautiful as Bonaventure,
I do not wonder that a man should dwell among the tombs. It is only
three or four miles from Savannah, and is reached by a smooth white
shell road.
There is but little to be seen on the way in land, water, or sky, that
would lead one to hope for the glories of Bonaventure. The ragged
desolate fields, on both sides of the road, are overrun with coarse
rank weeds, and show scarce a trace of cultivation. But soon all is
changed. Rickety log huts, broken fences, and the last patch of weedy
rice-stubble are left behind. You come to beds of purple liatris and
living wild-wood trees. You hear the song of birds, cross a small
stream, and are with Nature in the grand old forest graveyard, so
beautiful that almost any sensible person would choose to dwell here
with the dead rather than with the lazy, disorderly living.
Part of the grounds was cultivated and planted with live-oak, about a
hundred years ago, by a wealthy gentleman who had his country residence
here. But much the greater part is undisturbed. Even those spots which
are disordered by art, Nature is ever at work to reclaim, and to make
them look as if the foot of man had never known them. Only a small plot
of ground is occupied with graves and the old mansion is in ruins.
The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure is its noble avenue of
live-oaks. They are the most magnificent planted trees I have ever
seen, about fifty feet high and perhaps three or four feet in diameter,
with broad spreading leafy heads. The main branches reach out
horizontally until they come together over the driveway, embowering it
throughout its entire length, while each branch is adorned like a
garden with ferns, flowers, grasses, and dwarf palmettos.
But of all the plants of these curious tree-gardens the most striking
and characteristic is the so-called Long Moss (_Tillandsia usneoides_).
It drapes all the branches from top to bottom, hanging in long
silvery-gray skeins, reaching a length of not less than eight or ten
feet, and when slowly waving in the wind they produce a solemn funereal
effect singularly impressive.
There are also thousands of smaller trees and clustered bushes, covered
almost from sight in the glorious brightness of their own light. The
place is half surrounded by the salt marshes and islands of the river,
their reeds and sedges making a delightful fringe. Many bald eagles
roost among the trees along the side of the marsh. Their screams are
heard every morning, joined with the noise of crows and the songs of
countless warblers, hidden deep in their dwellings of leafy bowers.
Large flocks of butterflies, flies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to
be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. The whole place
seems like a center of life. The dead do not reign there alone.
Bonaventure to me is one of the most impressive assemblages of animal
and plant creatures I ever met. I was fresh from the Western prairies,
the garden-like openings of Wisconsin, the beech and maple and oak
woods of Indiana and Kentucky, the dark mysterious Savannah cypress
forests; but never since I was allowed to walk the woods have I found
so impressive a company of trees as the tillandsia-draped oaks of
Bonaventure.
I gazed awe-stricken as one new-arrived from another world. Bonaventure
is called a graveyard, a town of the dead, but the few graves are
powerless in such a depth of life. The rippling of living waters, the
song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm,
undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of
the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light.
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death.
Instead of the sympathy, the friendly union, of life and death so
apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a
deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc.
Town children, especially, are steeped in this death orthodoxy, for the
natural beauties of death are seldom seen or taught in towns.
Of death among our own species, to say nothing of the thousand styles
and modes of murder, our best memories, even among happy deaths, yield
groans and tears, mingled with morbid exultation; burial companies,
black in cloth and countenance; and, last of all, a black box burial in
an ill-omened place, haunted by imaginary glooms and ghosts of every
degree. Thus death becomes fearful, and the most notable and incredible
thing heard around a death-bed is, “I fear not to die.”
But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings
and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as
taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our
blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and
as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never
fights. All is divine harmony.
Most of the few graves of Bonaventure are planted with flowers. There
is generally a magnolia at the head, near the strictly erect marble, a
rose-bush or two at the foot, and some violets and showy exotics along
the sides or on the tops. All is enclosed by a black iron railing,
composed of rigid bars that might have been spears or bludgeons from a
battlefield in Pandemonium.
It is interesting to observe how assiduously Nature seeks to remedy
these labored art blunders. She corrodes the iron and marble, and
gradually levels the hill which is always heaped up, as if a
sufficiently heavy quantity of clods could not be laid on the dead.
Arching grasses come one by one; seeds come flying on downy wings,
silent as fate, to give life’s dearest beauty for the ashes of art; and
strong evergreen arms laden with ferns and tillandsia drapery are
spread over all—Life at work everywhere, obliterating all memory of the
confusion of man.
In Georgia many graves are covered with a common shingle roof,
supported on four posts as the corner of a well, as if rain and
sunshine were not regarded as blessings. Perhaps, in this hot and
insalubrious climate, moisture and sun-heat are considered necessary
evils to which they do not wish to expose their dead.
The money package that I was expecting did not arrive until the
following week. After stopping the first night at the cheap,
disreputable-looking hotel, I had only about a dollar and a half left
in my purse, and so was compelled to camp out to make it last in buying
only bread. I went out of the noisy town to seek a sleeping-place that
was not marshy. After gaining the outskirts of the town toward the sea,
I found some low sand dunes, yellow with flowering solidagoes.
I wandered wearily from dune to dune sinking ankle-deep in the sand,
searching for a place to sleep beneath the tall flowers, free from
insects and snakes, and above all from my fellow man. But idle negroes
were prowling about everywhere, and I was afraid. The wind had strange
sounds, waving the heavy panicles over my head, and I feared sickness
from malaria so prevalent here, when I suddenly thought of the
graveyard.
“There,” thought I, “is an ideal place for a penniless wanderer. There
no superstitious prowling mischief maker dares venture for fear of
haunting ghosts, while for me there will be God’s rest and peace. And
then, if I am to be exposed to unhealthy vapors, I shall have capital
compensation in seeing those grand oaks in the moonlight, with all the
impressive and nameless influences of this lonely beautiful place.”
By this time it was near sunset, and I hastened across the common to
the road and set off for Bonaventure, delighted with my choice, and
almost glad to find that necessity had furnished me with so good an
excuse for doing what I knew my mother would censure; for she made me
promise I would not lie out of doors if I could possibly avoid it. The
sun was set ere I was past the negroes’ huts and rice fields, and I
arrived near the graves in the silent hour of the gloaming.
I was very thirsty after walking so long in the muggy heat, a distance
of three or four miles from the city, to get to this graveyard. A dull,
sluggish, coffee-colored stream flows under the road just outside the
graveyard garden park, from which I managed to get a drink after
breaking a way down to the water through a dense fringe of bushes,
daring the snakes and alligators in the dark. Thus refreshed I entered
the weird and beautiful abode of the dead.
All the avenue where I walked was in shadow, but an exposed tombstone
frequently shone out in startling whiteness on either hand, and
thickets of sparkleberry bushes gleamed like heaps of crystals. Not a
breath of air moved the gray moss, and the great black arms of the
trees met overhead and covered the avenue. But the canopy was fissured
by many a netted seam and leafy-edged opening, through which the
moonlight sifted in auroral rays, broidering the blackness in silvery
light. Though tired, I sauntered a while enchanted, then lay down under
one of the great oaks. I found a little mound that served for a pillow,
placed my plant press and bag beside me and rested fairly well, though
somewhat disturbed by large prickly-footed beetles creeping across my
hands and face, and by a lot of hungry stinging mosquitoes.
When I awoke, the sun was up and all Nature was rejoicing. Some birds
had discovered me as an intruder, and were making a great ado in
interesting language and gestures. I heard the screaming of the bald
eagles, and of some strange waders in the rushes. I heard the hum of
Savannah with the long jarring hallos of negroes far away. On rising I
found that my head had been resting on a grave, and though my sleep had
not been quite so sound as that of the person below, I arose refreshed,
and looking about me, the morning sunbeams pouring through the oaks and
gardens dripping with dew, the beauty displayed was so glorious and
exhilarating that hunger and care seemed only a dream.
Eating a breakfast cracker or two and watching for a few hours the
beautiful light, birds, squirrels, and insects, I returned to Savannah,
to find that my money package had not yet arrived. I then decided to go
early to the graveyard and make a nest with a roof to keep off the dew,
as there was no way of finding out how long I might have to stay. I
chose a hidden spot in a dense thicket of sparkleberry bushes, near the
right bank of the Savannah River, where the bald eagles and a multitude
of singing birds roosted. It was so well hidden that I had to carefully
fix its compass bearing in my mind from a mark I made on the side of
the main avenue, that I might be able to find it at bedtime.
I used four of the bushes as corner posts for my little hut, which was
about four or five feet long by about three or four in width, tied
little branches across from forks in the bushes to support a roof of
rushes, and spread a thick mattress of Long Moss over the floor for a
bed. My whole establishment was on so small a scale that I could have
taken up, not only my bed, but my whole house, and walked. There I lay
that night, eating a few crackers.
Next day I returned to the town and was disappointed as usual in
obtaining money. So after spending the day looking at the plants in the
gardens of the fine residences and town squares, I returned to my
graveyard home. That I might not be observed and suspected of hiding,
as if I had committed a crime, I always went home after dark, and one
night, as I lay down in my moss nest, I felt some cold-blooded creature
in it; whether a snake or simply a frog or toad I do not know, but
instinctively, instead of drawing back my hand, I grasped the poor
creature and threw it over the tops of the bushes. That was the only
significant disturbance or fright that I got.
In the morning everything seemed divine. Only squirrels, sunbeams, and
birds came about me. I was awakened every morning by these little
singers after they discovered my nest. Instead of serenely singing
their morning songs they at first came within two or three feet of the
hut, and, looking in at me through the leaves, chattered and scolded in
half-angry, half-wondering tones. The crowd constantly increased,
attracted by the disturbance. Thus I began to get acquainted with my
bird neighbors in this blessed wilderness, and after they learned that
I meant them no ill they scolded less and sang more.
After five days of this graveyard life I saw that even with living on
three or four cents a day my last twenty-five cents would soon be
spent, and after trying again and again unsuccessfully to find some
employment began to think that I must strike farther out into the
country, but still within reach of town, until I came to some grain or
rice field that had not yet been harvested, trusting that I could live
indefinitely on toasted or raw corn, or rice.
By this time I was becoming faint, and in making the journey to the
town was alarmed to find myself growing staggery and giddy. The ground
ahead seemed to be rising up in front of me, and the little streams in
the ditches on the sides of the road seemed to be flowing up hill. Then
I realized that I was becoming dangerously hungry and became more than
ever anxious to receive that money package.
To my delight this fifth or sixth morning, when I inquired if the money
package had come, the clerk replied that it had, but that he could not
deliver it without my being identified. I said, “Well, here! read my
brother’s letter,” handing it to him. “It states the amount in the
package, where it came from, the day it was put into the office at
Portage City, and I should think that would be enough.” He said, “No,
that is not enough. How do I know that this letter is yours? You may
have stolen it. How do I know that you are John Muir?”
I said, “Well, don’t you see that this letter indicates that I am a
botanist? For in it my brother says, ‘I hope you are having a good time
and finding many new plants.’ Now, you say that I might have stolen
this letter from John Muir, and in that way have become aware of there
being a money package to arrive from Portage for him. But the letter
proves that John Muir must be a botanist, and though, as you say, his
letter might have been stolen, it would hardly be likely that the
robber would be able to steal John Muir’s knowledge of botany. Now I
suppose, of course, that you have been to school and know something of
botany. Examine me and see if I know anything about it.”
At this he laughed good-naturedly, evidently feeling the force of my
argument, and, perhaps, pitying me on account of looking pale and
hungry, he turned and rapped at the door of a private office—probably
the Manager’s—called him out and said, “Mr. So and so, here is a man
who has inquired every day for the last week or so for a money package
from Portage, Wisconsin. He is a stranger in the city with no one to
identify him. He states correctly the amount and the name of the
sender. He has shown me a letter which indicates that Mr. Muir is a
botanist, and that although a traveling companion may have stolen Mr.
Muir’s letter, he could not have stolen his botany, and requests us to
examine him.”
The head official smiled, took a good stare into my face, waved his
hand, and said, “Let him have it.” Gladly I pocketed my money, and had
not gone along the street more than a few rods before I met a very
large negro woman with a tray of gingerbread, in which I immediately
invested some of my new wealth, and walked rejoicingly, munching along
the street, making no attempt to conceal the pleasure I had in eating.
Then, still hunting for more food, I found a sort of eating-place in a
market and had a large regular meal on top of the gingerbread! Thus my
“marching through Georgia” terminated handsomely in a jubilee of bread.