ADVENTURES IN MOSQUITO-LAND.
At the close of the school in July, 1870, a friend of mine, Doctor
B----, of Boston, and I, attracted by the alluring prospectus of a
new town near Plymouth, North Carolina, visited that place via the
Merchant's and Miner's steamship line.
I wrote an account of this pleasure excursion, which was widely copied
by northern newspapers in which I figured as the professor and he as
the doctor, while both of us combined were called the "Shoo-Fly
Club." I quote some extracts from the description of this remarkable
excursion.
"On the early morning after our arrival in the Southland, doctor and
professor, after a brief sojourn in the arms of Morpheus, awoke to a
contest which was enough to daunt the stoutest heart.
"Mosquitoes to the right of them, mosquitoes to the left of them,
black flies above them, black flies beneath them, buzzed and stabbed
with a vengeance. We lay under our netting appalled at the profanity
and ferocity of our foes, caught in a trap from which there seemed
to be no escape. The breakfast-bell rang and rang, but we dared not
venture out among our bloodthirsty foes, for an array of bristling
bayonets was thrust through the bars long enough to hang our clothes
on, and fierce enough to suck every drop of blood from our trembling
limbs, and our only consolation was that our invariable diet of 'hog
and hominy' had so reduced the vital fluid, that our tormentors would
starve though we were slain.
"At length a brilliant thought flashed across the mind of the doctor.
'The shoo-fly--the shoo-fly,' said he; 'why didn't we think of that?
and out he went for his carpetbag, pulled out some suspicious looking
bottles labeled with the mystic words, and made for the bed, entirely
covered with a ferocious cloud of the aforesaid 'skeeters' and flies
stabbing him for dear life. We then proceeded to anoint our bodies
with this preparation, which the doctor declared to be a panacea for
all human ills; then completely clad in our armor, we sallied forth
to the crusade. Down came the fiends; they cared not for 'shoo-fly,'
cared not for blows, and our visions of fortunes to be realized from
our new discovery vanished away, but not so our tormentors.
"Regardless of Mrs. Grundy, regardless of everything save life, the
professor fled, down over the stairs he fled, pants and unmentionables
flying in the air, to the astonishment of the contraband servant
girls, for the bath-house--here at length plunged beneath the flood he
found relief. After copious ablutions the professor went back for his
friend, but the valiant doctor had retreated behind the bars, resolved
there to starve rather than again to face his foes.
"After much parleying the doctor's desire for hog and hominy overcame
all his fears, and the club marched to breakfast. Here two servant
girls armed with long fans, fought a cloud of the famished varmints,
while the club swallowed hoe cake covered with a copious lather of the
flies of the season. At length our appetites or rather we ourselves,
were conquered, and retired in disgust, leaving our foes to bury their
dead and divide the spoils of war.
"Our host, who is a true gentleman from Pennsylvania, then ordered the
darkies to harness the span. After the inevitable delays which always
attend everything that the fifteenth amendments have undertaken to do,
we rode out to view the country; and we now congratulated ourselves
that our troubles were at an end, but they had but just commenced.
Our host had a lame hand, and the professor volunteered to drive;
our friends, the varmints, now confined their kind attentions almost
exclusively to the horses, which they butchered unmercifully. Oh, such
roads! Boys of New England, if you sigh for 'sunny' North Carolina,
go; go by all means, and you will return satisfied that old
Massachusetts, with all its east winds is a paradise compared with
what we saw in the 'old North State,' or in the 'Old Dominion.'
"But to our journey. The horses floundered through quagmires covered
in some places with logs, which toss and tumble you till every bone
aches, floundered and swam through streams reeking with scum from
the cypress swamps; the roads are about six inches wider than your
carriage, and the professor found himself obliged to avoid the sharp
corners of fences, on either side the deep ditches on whose very edge
ran the wheels; to urge his horses over stumps and fallen trees; to
whip them over long snouts of prostrate pigs who refused to budge an
inch; to jump them over chasms running dark and deep across his path
and to spur them down sharp, perpendicular pitches which threatened to
break every bone in his body.
"Here and there we saw a few logs piled up together, flanked by mud
and sticks, and dignified by the name of house; the naked piccaninnies
rolled in the dust, and the poor-white scowled as he lifted his hat,
while we worried our miserable way along.
"Now, by the departure of our friend to look after his business, the
doctor and the professor were thrown upon their own resources for
enjoyment. After shooting at the wild pigs for a while, finding there
was great danger of their being melted down into their boots, they
threw off their clothes, and regardless of moccasins, regardless of
spiders and the whole race of poisonous vermin, they plunged to their
necks into the ditch by the roadside. For long weary hours we wallowed
till the welcome form of our host appeared, and we recommenced the
pitching and stumbling of the dangerous return voyage of this, our
pleasure trip.
"For miles the tall, slender pine and cypress-trees festooned with
moss and enormous Scuppernong grape-vines, were unbroken by a single
clearing or a single shanty. The Scuppernong grapes, by the way, are a
great luxury; from these are made a wine equal to anything that can be
found (we believe) in the world. One vine is found on Roanoke Island,
which is two miles in length, covers several acres of land, and was
planted by Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, centuries ago. For miles
that afternoon, we wandered up and down the country seeking for water
fit to drink and finding none; looking at the droves of rollicking
darkies, making collections of souvenirs, gazing at the good-looking
crops of corn, cotton, sweet potatoes, and still fighting the
aborigines, the flies.
"We have seen some toothsome things in the South, some beautiful
scenes, but at this season of the year, at least, the flies and
mosquitoes ruined all as thoroughly as the harpies of olden times
defiled the feast of the wandering Trojans.
"The great gala-day of Jamesville has dawned, to-day the great Norfolk
steamer honors the town with its presence; everybody (and some more)
comes down to the wharf to see the wonderful sight. Here are groups of
'F.F.'s' puffing their long pipes and talking the everlasting 'd--n
nigger'; there are crowds of 'fifteenth amendments' laughing
and frolicking like children, and here, too, the flea-bitten,
mosquito-stabbed, black-fly tortured Doctor B. and Professor F.,
looking northward as the pilgrim to his loved and far-off Mecca. A
scream, a hurrah, a waving of handkerchiefs, and away we go out of the
howling wilderness, all that is left of us, and but little indeed that
is.
"The _Astoria_, is but a wretched tub, and we crawl along at the rate
of four or five miles per hour, halting here and there to avoid the
wrecks of the war, panting for breath, longing, 'as the heart panteth
for the water-brook,' to see once more the shores of our beloved New
England. Never will this excruciating sail be forgotten. All day--all
night, for long, long, weary hours, the wretched little steamer
groaned and screamed its melancholy way over the yellow, nasty
Roanoke.
"Hour after hour we sat gazing at the tall cypress-trees and the long
trailing mosses, looking like the pale sickly shrouds enveloping a
dead and ruined world. Here and there we saw huge nests of the
size and shape of a barrel, and near, on the ruined branch of a
lightning-struck tree, perched on its topmost bough, the great bald
eagle of the South, keeping his sleepless watch and ward, while the
wife-bird tended the household gods below. Deadly moccasins and
huge turtles lay listless in the sun, and hundreds of bushels of
blackberries were wasting their sweetness on the desert air. Now and
then there came to us like an inspiration from heaven the ecstatic
music of the mockingbird, carrying shame and despair to the breasts of
all the other warblers of the aerial choir.
"Nothing could be more inspiring than the notes of this charming
singer, as we listened to them here amid these melancholy swamps
exhaling the sickly miasma beneath this blighting sun, with not a
breath of air to lift the blood red banners of the trumpet creepers,
or to cool the fevered brow. Melancholy waitings are heard from the
swamps, and the waves in parting, look like fields of fire. The winds
come to us, but with them no refreshing, for they came over mile after
mile of suffocating, reeking lagoons, stifling with the hot breath of
the miasma.
"Every now and then the Rip Van Winkle machinery breaks down, and for
hours we are motionless, listening per force to the terrific cursing
and pounding in the Vulcanic realms below. At length the sun, not like
the rosy-fingered Aurora, daughter of the dawn, but like a huge red
monster intent on devouring the world, shoots at us his blighting,
withering lances of scorching heat. We touch once more at Plymouth,
which greets us with its usual entertainment of murderous fleas,
death-dealing watermelons and chain-lightning whiskey. Our ten minute
touch here lengthened into three horrid sweltering hours owing to
the fact, that the intelligent contrabands were paid by the hour for
'toting' the cargo; but off we are at last, thank heaven, and at
length we enter the great canal leading to the North River of Norfolk.
"With chat and jest we were worrying away the leaden-winged hours,
when suddenly thug, splash, and like a huge turtle we were floundering
in the mud. 'No moving,' said the captain, 'till the tide comes up;'
and so for three mortal hours we lay stuck in the mud at the edge of
the great dismal swamp of Virginia. 'Ah,' said the mate, 'there is the
scene of many a horror, there the nigger was torn limb from limb by
the bloodhounds, there the runaway slave chose to endure starvation
and death amid deadly snakes and miasma rather than comfort in
bondage; there I myself saw crowds of black men swinging from limb to
limb like monkeys over reeking scums to their fever-haunted dens to
escape the lash.'
"Thus was the story of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe verified by one of
Virginia's own sons. All the fearful word paintings of Dred floated
again before our mental vision, and we thanked God that the old horror
of slavery is passed, and that the old flag now floats indeed 'o'er
the land of the free and the home of the brave.'
"But these hours of waiting, like all things earthly, at length had
their end, and just as the moon gilded the cypress-trees with golden
glory, the wheels began to move and we again worried our tortuous way
up the North River. 'Ah,' said the melancholy-looking man who had
been long gazing in silence at the sad waves below, 'alas, here I am,
friendless and alone in this wretched country, peddling beeswax
and eggs for hog and hominy, chills and fever; but I was once a
schoolmaster with $1,200 a year, down in Connecticut; wine and women
did it. But,' said he, 'I'll be rich yet--I've got it--I've discovered
perpetual motion, and the world will honor me yet.'
"'Wish you would apply it to this old tub at once,' said the
professor; and the forlorn peddler went his way to cherish visions
of coming glory. Just then we were electrified by a cheer from the
doctor, as the lights of Norfolk flashed over this splendid harbor,
yet to float the commerce of a great city.
"We bade farewell without a single regret to the old tub _Astoria_,
and entered the narrow streets, reeking with the horrors of a thousand
and one stenches, stumbling over the prostrate forms of sleeping
negroes to the hotel, where we indulged once more in the luxury of a
bath, which the nasty water of North Carolina had forbidden for many
weary days. Suddenly the city was aroused by the roll of drums and the
shouts of hundreds, calling to a mass meeting in Court House Square.
Thither we followed the crowd, listening for awhile to the blatant
Southern orators roaring about the future greatness of the 'Mother of
Presidents,' deploring the reign of carpet-baggers and calling for a
white man's government amidst the shouts of the great unwashed; while
the sons of Ham looked silently and sullenly on.
"We gladly responded to the steamer's shrill call and sailed away to
our home in the great and glorious North."