see his plantation. We rode through alleys formed by the tall stalks of
the maize, 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 a 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 sepoys and sowars as seen in
Indian fields in the morning sun on many a march. As we rode toward 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 vessels 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 men, with
twenty mules and ploughs, 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 hands on the plantation.
The overseer, a sharp-looking Creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand,
superintends 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
“Alcibiades” or “Pompey,” 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 any thing else, and
“suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home to give the
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 toward the river, which is a fair index to the size of the
estate wherever the river bank is straight. The lines of the estates 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 hothouses and
conservatories, ponds full of magnificent Victoria Regia in flower,
orange-trees, and many 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 the 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 300,000 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 a 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 his
wishes for his happiness and prosperity, but assuredly in no degree
satisfied that even with his care and kindness 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 anthropropietors. The negro skull wont hold as
many ounces of shot as 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-tibiaed 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 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 meet 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
Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics--_de omni 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 of Baxter’s works. “This rain will do good to the 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 not 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 use 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 oarhouse.” 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 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 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 staunch. 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 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, in the 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 six thousand 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.
When my eyes “uncurtained the early morning,” I might have imagined
myself in the magic garden of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and
multifarious were the carols of the birds, which were the only happy
colored people I saw in my Southern tour, notwithstanding the assurances
of the many ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to prove to me
that the palm of terrestrial felicity must be awarded to their negroes.
As I stepped through my window upon the verandah, a sharp chirp called
my attention to a mocking-bird perched upon a rose-bush beneath, whom my
presence seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated behind my
curtain, whence I observed her flight to a nest, cunningly hid in a
creeping-rose trailed around a neighboring column of the house, where
she imparted a breakfast of spiders and grasshoppers to her gaping and
clamorous offspring. While I was admiring the motherly grace of this
melodious fly-catcher, a servant brought coffee, and announced that the
horses were ready, and that I might have a three hours’ ride before
breakfast. At Houmas _les jours se suivent et se ressemblent_, and an
epitome of the first will serve as a type for all, with the exception of
such variations in the kitchen and produce as the ingenuity and
exhaustless hospitality of my host were never tired of framing.
If I regretted the absence of our English agriculturist when I beheld
the 6,000 acres of cane and 1,600 of maize unfolded from the belvedere
the day previous, I longed for his presence still more when I saw those
evidences of luxuriant fertility attained without the aid of phosphates
or guano. The rich Mississippi bottoms need no manure; a rotation of
maize with cane affords them the necessary recuperative action. The cane
of last year’s plant is left in stubble, and renews its growth this
spring under the title of _ratoons_. When the maize is in tassel,
cow-peas are dropped between the rows; and when the lordly stalk, of
which I measured many twelve and even fifteen feet in height, bearing
three and sometimes four ears, is topped to admit the ripening sun, the
pea-vine twines itself around the trunk, with a profusion of leaf and
tendril that supplies the planter with the most desirable fodder for his
mules in “rolling-time,” which is their season of trial. Besides this,
the corn-blades are culled and cured. These are the best meals of the
Southern race-horse, and constitute nutritious hay without dust. The
cow-pea is said to strengthen the system of the earth for the digestion
of a new crop of sugar-cane. A sufficient quantity of the cane of last
season is reserved from the mill, and laid in pits, where the ends of
the stalk are carefully closed with earth until spring. After the ground
has been plowed into ridges, these canes are laid in the endless tumuli,
and not long after their interment, a fresh sprout springs at each joint
of these interminable flutes.
As we ride through the wagon roads, of which there are not less than
thirty miles in this confederation of four plantations, held together by
the purse and the life of our host--the unwavering exactitude of the
rows of cane, which run without deviation at right angles with the river
down to the cane-brake, two miles off, proves that the negro would be a
formidable rival in a ploughing match. The cane has been “laid by,” that
is, it requires no more labor, and will soon “lap,” or close up, though
the rows are seven feet apart. It feathers like a palm-top; a stalk
which was cut measured six feet, although from the ridges it was but
waist high. On dissecting it near the root, we find five nascent joints
not a quarter of an inch apart. In a few weeks more, these will shoot up
like a spy-glass pulled out to its focus.
There are four lordly sugar-houses, as the grinding-mills and boiling
and crystalizing buildings are called, and near each is to be found the
negro village, or “quarter,” of that section of the plantation. A wide
avenue, generally lined with trees, runs through these hamlets, which
consist of twenty or thirty white cottages, single storied, and divided
into four rooms. They are whitewashed, and at no great distance might be
mistaken for New-England villages, with a town-hall which often serves
in the latter for a “meeting-house,” with occasionally a row of stores
on the ground floor.
The people, or “hands,” are in the field, and the only inhabitants of
the settlements are scores of “picaninnies,” who seem a jolly
congregation, under the care of crones, who here, as in an Indian
village, act as nurses of the rising generation, destined from their
births to the limits of a social Procrustean bed. The increase of
property on the estate is about five per cent. per annum by the birth of
children.
We ride an hour before coming upon any “hands” at work in the fields.
There is an air of fertile desolation that prevails in no other
cultivated land. The regularity of the cane, its gardenlike freedom from
grass or weeds, and the _ad unguem_ finish and evenness of the furrows,
would seem the work of nocturnal fairies, did we not realize the system
of “gang labor” exemplified in a field we at length reach, where some
thirty men and women were giving with the hoe the last polish to the
earth around the cane, which would not be molested again until gathered
for the autumnal banquet of the rolling-mills.
Small drains and larger ditches occur at almost every step. All these
flow into a canal, some fifteen feet wide, which runs between the
plantation and the uncleared forest, and carries off the water to a
“bayou” still more remote. There are twenty miles of deep ditching
before the plantation, exclusive of the canal; and as this is the
contract work of “Irish navvies,” the sigh with which our host alluded
to this heavy item in plantation expenses was expressive. The work is
too severe for African thews, and experience has shown it a bad economy
to overtask the slave. The sugar-planter lives in apprehension of four
enemies. These are, the river when rising, drought, too much or
unseasonable rain, and frost. The last calls into play all his energies,
and tasks his utmost composure. In Louisiana, the cane never ripens as
it does in Cuba, and they begin to grind as early in October as the
amount of juices will permit. The question of a crop is one of early or
late frost. With two months’ exemption they rely, in a fair season, upon
a hogshead of 1,200 pounds to the acre; and if they can run their mills
until January, the increase is more than proportionate, each of its
latter days in the earth adding saccharine virtue to the cane.
At an average of a hogshead to the acre, each working hand is good for
seven hogsheads a year, which, at last years’ prices--eight cents per
pound for ordinary qualities--would be a yield of £140 per annum for
each full geld hand.
Two hogsheads to the acre are not unfrequently, and even three have
been, produced upon rich lands in a good season. Estimating the sugar at
seventy per cent., and the refuse, _bagasse_, at thirty per cent., the
latter figure would give us two tons and a quarter to the acre, which
opens one’s eyes to the tireless activity of nature in this
semi-tropical region.
From the records of Houmas, I find that in 1857, the year of its
purchase at about £300,000, it yielded a gross of $304,000, say £63,000,
upon the investment.
In the rear of this great plantation there are 18,000 additional acres
of cane-brake which are being slowly reclaimed, like the fields now
rejoicing in crops, as fast as the furnace of the sugar-house calls for
fuel. Were it desirable to accelerate the preparation of this reserve
for planting, it might be put in tolerable order in three years at a
cost of £15 per acre. We extended our ride into this jungle, on the
borders of which, in the unfinished clearing, I saw plantations of
“negro corn,” the sable cultivators of which seem to have disregarded
the symmetry practiced in the fields of their master, who allows them
from Saturday noon until Monday’s cockcrow for the care of their private
interests, and, in addition to this, whatever hours in the week they can
economize by the brisk fulfilment of their allotted tasks. Some of these
patches are sown broadcast, and the corn has sprung up like Zouave
_tirailleurs_ in their most fantastic vagaries, rather than like the
steady regimental drill of the cane and maize we have been traversing.
Corn, chickens, and eggs, are, from time immemorial, the perquisites of
the negro, who has the monopoly of the two last-named articles in all
well-ordered Louisiana plantations. Indeed, the white man cannot compete
with them in raising poultry, and our host was evidently delighted when
one of his negroes, who had brought a dozen Muscovy ducks to the
mansion, refused to sell them to him except for cash. “But, Louis, won’t
you trust me? Am I not good for three dollars?” “Good enough, massa; but
dis nigger want de money to buy flour and coffee for him young family.
Folks at Donaldsonville will trust massa--won’t trust nigger.” The money
was paid, and, as the negro left us, his master observed with a sly,
humorous twinkle: “That fellow sold forty dollars’ worth of corn last
year, and all of them feed their chickens with my corn, and sell their
own.”