Nature's holiday--Through wonderful country--Brown negroes a libel
on mankind--The wild-flower state--The black problem--A piebald
flirt--The hippopotamus and the flea--A narrow escape--The home of
the swamp-gobblin--Is the moon a fraud?
IN the morning everything had changed. Vegetation was tropical. Black
men had supplanted brown. Occasional tracts of rich meadow, with
splendid cattle and large-framed horses wading about among the pasture,
alternated with brakes of luxuriant foliage concealing the streams that
flowed through them, while fields of cotton in lusty leaf, gigantic
maize, and league after league of corn stubble, showed how fertile the
negro found his land. And the wild flowers--but what can I say more
about them? They seemed even more beautiful than before.
There is something very striking and suggestive in these impressive
efforts of Nature to command, at recurring intervals, a recurring
homage. Thus, for one interval of the year the rhododendron holds an
undivided empire over the densely-wooded slopes of the great Himalayan
mountains in India. All the other beauties of mountain and valley
are forgotten for that interval of lovely despotism, and every one
who can, goes up to see "the rhododendrons in bloom." Nature is very
fond of such "tours de force," thinking, it may be, that men who see
her every-day marvels and grow accustomed to them require now and
then some extra-ordinary display, like the special festivals of the
ancient Church, to evoke periodically an extraordinary homage. Lest
the migration of creatures should cease to be a thing of wonder to us,
Nature organizes once in a way a monster excursion, sometimes of rats,
sometimes of deer, but most frequently of birds, to remind man of the
marvellous instinct that draws the animal world from place to place or
from zone to zone. For the same reason, perchance, she ever and again
drives butterflies in clouds from off the land out on to the open sea,
and, that the perpetual miracle of Spring may not pall upon us, she
gives the world in succession such breadths and tones of colour that
even the callous stop to admire the sudden gold of the meadows, the
hawthorn lying like snowdrifts along the country, the bridal attire of
the chestnuts, or the blue levels of wild hyacinth. As the priestess of
a prodigious cult, Nature decrees at regular intervals, for the delight
and discipline of humanity, a public festa, or universal holiday, to
which the whole world may go free, and wonder at the profusion of her
beauties.
The track was, in places, very poor indeed, the cars jumping so much
as to make travelling detestable and travellers "sea-sick." And
then Dallas, with an execrable breakfast, and away again into the
wonderful country, with cattle perpetually wandering on to the track
and refusing to hear the warning shriek of the engine. The country was
richly timbered with oak and willow and walnut, with park-like tracts
intervening of undulating grassland. Here the stock wandered about in
herds as they chose, and except for a chance tent, or a shanty knocked
together with old packing-cases and canvas, there was no sign of
human population. But in the timbered country every clearing had the
commencement of a settlement, the tumble-down rickety habitation with
which the African, if left to his own inclinations, is content. And
wonderfully picturesque they looked, too, these efforts at colonization
in the middle of the forests, with the creepers swinging branches of
scarlet blossoms from the trees, and the foliage of the plantains,
maize and sugar-cane brightening the sombre forest depths. But the heat
must be prodigious, and so must the mosquitoes.
It was Sunday, and after their kind the children of Ham were taking
"rest." Parties of negresses all dressed in the whitest of white, with
bright-coloured handkerchiefs on their heads, or hats trimmed with
gaudy ribands and flowers, and sometimes wearing, believe me, gloves,
were promenading in the jungle with their hulking, insolent-mannered
beaux. They looked like gorillas masquerading. In his native country
I sincerely like the negro. But here in America I regret to find him
unlovely. I am told that individual negroes have done wonders. I know
they have. But this does not alter my prejudice. I think the brownish
American negro of to-day is the most deplorable libel on the human
race that I have ever encountered. And I cannot help fearing that
America has a serious problem growing into existence in the South. The
brown-black population is there formulating for itself, apart from
white supervision, ideas of self-government, morality, "independence,"
and even religion, that may make any future intervention of a better
class a difficult matter, or may eventuate in the contemporary
growth of two sharply-defined castes of society. I find the opinion
universally entertained in America that the brownish-black man is not
a sound or creditable basis for a community, and now that I have seen
in what numbers and what prosperity he has established himself in the
South, I cannot but think that he may be found in the future an awkward
factor in the body politic and social.
The country in fact appears to be breeding helots as fast as it can for
the perplexity of the next generation.
To the north of us as we travelled was a large Indian reservation, and
at more than one station I saw them crouching about the building. But I
should not have mentioned them had it not been that I saw a white man
trying to buy a cradle from a squaw. He offered $20 for it, but she
would not even turn her head to look at the money. It is quite possible
that the mother thought he was bargaining for the papoose as well as
the cradle. But I was assured that these women sometimes expend an
incredible amount of labour and indeed (for Indians) of money also upon
their papoose-panniers. One case was vouched for of an offer of $120
being refused, the Indians stating that there were $80 worth of beads
upon the work of art, and that it had taken eleven years to complete.
How beautiful Texas is! And what a future it has! For half a day and
a night we have been traversing grazing-land, and for half a day
fine timber growing in a soil of intense fertility. And now for half
a day we are in a pine country, sometimes with wide levels of turf
spreading out among the trees, sometimes with oak and walnut so thickly
intermingled with the pines that the whole forms a magnificent forest.
Passion-flowers entangle all the lower undergrowth, and up the dead
trees climbs that fine scarlet creeper which is such an ornament of
well-ordered gardens of some English country houses. But here in Texas
the people, as usual, have not had time yet to think of adornments,
and their ugly shanties therefore remain bare and wooden. They are of
course only ugly in themselves, that is to say, in material, shape, and
condition, for their surroundings are delightful and location perfect.
There is of course a good deal of "the poetry of malaria," as I heard a
charming lady say, about some of these sites. For it is impossible to
avoid the suspicion of agues and fevers in those splendid clearings,
with the rich foliage mobbing each patch of cotton, grapes, or maize.
Whenever we happen to slacken pace near one of them an interesting
glimpse of local life is caught. Negroidal women come to the doors or
suddenly stand up in the middle of the crops in which, working, they
were unperceived. From the undergrowth, the ditches, and from behind
fences, appear dusky children, numbers of them, a swart infantry that
seems to me to fill the future with perplexity. Are these swarms going
to grow up a credit to the country? Have they it in their breed to be
fit companions in progress of the progeny of the best European stocks?
The abundance of wild life, too, is very noticeable. Wherever we stop
we become aware of countless butterflies and insects busy among the
foliage, and the voices of strange birds resound from the forest depths.
But other sites appear to me perfection. Take Marshall for instance,
or Jefferson. Which is the more beautiful of the two? Some of the
"commercial" settlements, just beginning life with a railway-station,
six drug stores, and seven saloons, have situations that ought to have
been reserved for honeymoon Edens. They are "hard" places. Law as yet
there is none except revolver law, and that is pitiless and sudden and
wicked. For Texas, the beautiful flower state, blessed with turf and
blessed with pines, has still the stern commencements of American life
before it--that rapid, fierce process of civilization which begins with
cards and whisky and murder, which finds its first protection in the
"Vigilantes" who hold their grim tribunals under the roadside trees,
but which suddenly one day wrenches itself, as it were, from its bad,
lawless past, and takes its first firm step on the high road to order
and prosperity and the world's respect. For every intelligent traveller
these ragged, half-savage, settlements should have a great significance
and interest. Before he dies they may be Chicagos or San Franciscos.
And these men, with their mouths full of oaths and revolvers on their
hips, are the fathers of those future cities. They will have no
immortality though in the gratitude of posterity. For they will shoot
each other of in those saloons, or the Rangers will shoot them down on
the flower prairies beyond the forests. But they will have done their
work nevertheless. Nature in every part of her scheme proceeds on the
same system of building foundations upon ruins. Whole nations have to
be killed off when they have prepared and preserved the ground as it
were for those that are to follow. Whether they are nations of men,
or of beasts, or of plants, she uses them in exactly the same way.
Everything must subserve the ultimate end.
But I did not intend to moralize. The negress waiter at Longview (where
we dine very badly) reminds me how practical life should be. She never
stops to moralize. On the contrary, she just stands by the window,
swallowing all the peaches and fragments of pudding that the travellers
leave on their plates. Two he negroes wait upon us. But it looks as if
they were there to feed the negress rather than to feed us. For they
keep rushing in with full dishes to us and rushing off with the half
empty ones to her. And there she stands omnivorous, insatiable, black.
Everything that is brought to her of a sweet kind she swallows. Not as
if she enjoyed it, but as if she must. It was like throwing things into
a sink. She never filled up.
And then, through the splendid tropical country, to Marshall. I must
return to Marshall, Texas, some day and be disillusioned, or else I
shall go down to my grave accusing myself of having passed Paradise in
the train, and not "stopped off" there. What an exasperating reflection
for a deathbed! I should never forgive myself. But perhaps it is not
so beautiful as it seems. In any case studies "from the life" would
be immensely interesting. I caught a few glimpses which entertained
me prodigiously. There was the negro dandy walking painfully in
patent-leather boots that were made for some man with ordinary feet,
with a fan in his hand and a large flower in his button-hole, an old
stove-pipe hat on his head, and a very corpulent handleless umbrella
under his arm. There was another, similarly caparisoned, escorting
three belles for a walk in the neighbouring jungle, the ladies all
wearing white cloth gloves and black cloth boots that squelched out
spaciously as they put their feet down. And alas! there was the black
coquette, with her bunch of crimson flowers behind her ear, her black
satin skirt and white muslin jacket, her parasol of black satin
lined with crimson--and how she flirts up the green slope, with a
half-acre smile on her face! She looks back at every other step to see
which, if any, of the black men, or the brown, or the yellow, on the
station platform is going to follow her expansive charms, and so she
disappears, this piebald siren, into the groves, her parasol flashing
back Parthian gleams of crimson as she goes. But every one, man, woman,
or child, black, brown, or yellow, was a study, so I must go back to
Marshall some day.
At present, however, we are whirling away again through the lovely
woodland, and the whole afternoon passes in an unbroken panorama of
forest views, with great glades of meadow breaking away to right and
left, and patches of maize and cotton suddenly interrupting the stately
procession of timber. And then Jefferson. Is Jefferson more prettily
situated than Marshall? I cannot say. But Jefferson lies back among
the trees with an interval of orchard and corn-land between it and the
railway line, and looks a very charming retreat indeed. A fat negro
comes on board on duty of some kind connected with the brake, and
a witty little half-breed boy comes on after him. The fat negro is
the brown boy's butt. And he nearly bursts with wrath at the hybrid
urchin's chaff, and threatens, between gasps, a retaliation that cannot
find utterance in words. But the brown boy is relentless, and though
the train is rapidly increasing in its speed, he clings to the step and
taunts the negro who dare not leave his look-out post. But he knows
very well where the fat man will get off, and suddenly, with a parting
personality, the little wretch drops off the step, just as a ripe apple
might drop off a branch. And then the fat man has to get off. The speed
is really dangerous, but he climbs down the steps backwards, thinking
apparently only of his tormentor, and still breathing forth fire and
slaughter; and then lets go. Is he killed? Not a bit of it. He lands on
his feet without apparently even jarring his obese person, and when we
look back, we see that he is already throwing stones at the small boy,
whose batteries are replying briskly. I wonder if the hippopotamus ever
caught the flea? And if he did, what he did to him?
And I remember how the Somali boys in Aden used to drive the bo'sun to
the verge of despair by clambering on to the ship and pretending not to
see him working his way round towards them with a rope's end behind his
back, and how at the very last moment, almost as the arm was raised to
strike, the young monkeys used to drop off backwards into the sea, like
snails off a wall.
But is this Bengal or Texas that we are traveling through? The
vegetation about us is almost that of suburban Calcutta, and the heat,
the damp steamy heat of low-lying land, might be the Soonderbuns. And
here befell an adventure. We were nearing Atalanta. The train was on a
down grade and going very fast indeed, perhaps half a mile a minute. I
was sitting on my seat in the Pullman with the table up in front of me
and reading. At the other end of the car was a lady with some children
sitting with their backs to me. Further off, but also with his back to
me, was the conductor. Each "section" of a car has two windows. The
one at my left elbow had the blind drawn down. The other had not. On a
sudden at my ear, as it seemed, there was a report as of a rifle; the
thick double glass of the window in front of me flew into fragments all
over me, and the woodwork fell in splinters upon my book. I instantly
pulled up the blind of the other window and looked out to see who had
"fired." But of course at the speed we were going, there was no one in
sight. I called out to the conductor that some one had fired through
the window. He had not heard the explosion, nor had the lady. So their
surprise was considerable. And while I was looking in the woodwork
for the bullet I expected to find, the conductor picked off my table
a railway spike! Some wretch had thrown it at the passing train, and
the great velocity at which we were travelling gave the missile all
the deadly force of a bullet. "An inch more towards the centre of the
window, sir, and you might have been killed," said the brakeman. A
look at the splintered woodwork, and the bullet-like groove which the
sharp-pointed abomination had cut for itself, was suffcient to assure
me that he was right. But think of the atrocious character of such
mischief. The man who did it probably never thought of hurting any one.
And yet he narrowly missed having a horrible crime on his head. "If
we could have stopped the train and caught him, we would have lynched
him," said the conductor. "A year or two ago a miscreant threw a corn
cob into a window, very near this spot too. It struck a lady, breaking
her cheek bone, and bursting the ball of her left eye. We stopped the
train, caught the man, and hanged him by the side of the track then and
there."
And then Atalanta, in a country that is very beautiful, but with that
poetry of malaria which suggests a peril in such beauty. And gradually
the land becomes swampy, and the old trees, hung with moss, stand
ankle-deep in brown stagnant water. The glades are all pools, and
where-ever a vista opens, there is a long bayou stretching down between
aisles of sombre trees. It is wonderful in its unnatural beauty, this
forest standing in a lagoon. The world was like this when the Deluge
was subsiding. There is a mysterious silence about the gloomy trees.
Not a bird lives among them. But in the sullen water, there are turtles
moving, and now and then a snake makes a moment's ripple on the dull
pools. Sunlight never strikes in, and as I looked, I could not help
remembering all the horrors of the slave-hunt, and the murder at the
end of it, in the dark depths of some such horrid brake as these we
pass. What a spot for legends to gather round! Has no one ever invented
the swamp-goblin?
For an hour and more we pass through this eerie country, and then
comes a change to higher land with a splendid growth of pine and
walnut and oak all healthily rooted in dry ground. But towards evening
we come again into the swamps, and the sun goes down rosy-red behind
the water-logged trees, till their trunks stand out black against
the ruddy sky and the pools about their feet take strange tints of
copper and purpled bronze. And suddenly we flash across the track
of the narrow-gauge line to New Orleans--and such a sight! The line
pierces an avenue, straight as an arrow, for miles and miles through
the belt of forest. On either side along the track lie ditches filled
with water. But to-night the ditches seem filled with logwood dye, and
the wonderful vista through the deep green trees is closed as with a
curtain, by the crimson west!
It was only a glimpse we got of it, but as long as I live I shall never
forget it, the most marvellous sight of all my life.
No, not even sunrise upon the Himalayas, nor the moonlight on the
palm-garden in Mauritius--two miracles of simple loveliness that are
beyond words--could surpass that glimpse through the Texan forest. It
was not in the least like this earth. Beyond that crimson curtain might
have been heaven, or there might have been hell. But I am not content
to believe that it was merely Louisiana.
And now comes Texakharna with its sweltering Zanzibar heat, but an
admirable supper to put us into good humour, and a beautiful moonlight
to sit and smoke in. If the sunset was weird, the moonlight was
positively goblinish. Such gloom! Not darkness remember, but gloom,
blacker than darkness, and yet never absolutely impenetrable. At least
so it seemed, and the fire-flies, flickering in thousands above the
undergrowth and up among the invisible branches, helped the fancy.
And the frogs! Was there ever, even in India in "the rains," such a
prodigious chorus of batrachians? And the katydids! Surely they were
all gone mad together. But it was a delightful ride. Sometimes in the
clearings we caught glimpses of negro parties, the white dresses of the
women glancing in and out along the paths, and the sound of singing
coming from the huts in the corners of the maize-patches.
Here at the corner of a clearing stands a cottage, a regular fairy-tale
cottage "by the wood," and in the moonlight it looked as if, "really
and truly," the walls were made of toffy and the roof was plum-cake. At
any rate there were great pumpkins on the roof, just such pumpkins as
those in which Cinderella (after they had turned into coaches) drove
to the Prince's ball. And I would bet my last dollar on it that the
lizards that turned into horses were there too, and the rats, and in
the marsh close by you might have a large choice of frogs to change
into coachmen.
And yet, I cannot help thinking, there is a good deal of false
sentiment expended upon the moon, the result of a demoralizing humility
which science has taught the inhabitants of "the planet we call Earth."
We are for ever being warned by our teachers against the sin of pride,
and being told that the universe is full of "Earths" just as good as
ours, and perhaps better. We are not, they say, to fancy that our own
world is something very special, for it is only a little ball, spinning
round and round in the firmament, among a number of other balls which
are so superior to it that if our own insignificant orange came in
contact with them we should get the worst of the collision. Nor are
we to fancy that the moon is our private property, and grumble at her
shabbiness, as our planetary betters have a superior claim to their
share of her, and this sphere of ours ought to be very thankful for as
much of the luminary as it gets.
Now, to my thinking, there is something distinctly degrading in this
view. Englishmen maintain patriotically that Great Britain is the
Queen of the Sea; why, then, should not we Earthians, with a larger
patriotism, say that our planet is the best planet of the kind in the
firmament, and, putting on one side all petty territorial distinctions,
boldly challenge the supremacy of the Universe itself? Depend upon it,
if any presumptuous moon-men or Jupiterites were to descend to Earth
and begin to boast, they would be very soon put down, and I do not see,
therefore, why we should not at once call upon all the other stars
and comets to salute our flag whenever we sail past them on the high
seas of the Empyrean. As it is, we are taught timidity by science, and
told that whenever a filibustering comet or meteor--the pirates and
privateers of the skies--comes along our way we are to expect instant
combustion, or something worse. Why are they not made to drop their
colours by a shot across their bows? or why, when we next see a meteor
bearing down upon us, should we not steer straight at it, and, using
Chimborazo or Mount Everest, or the dome of St. Paul's, or the Capitol
at Washington as a ram, sink the rascal? A broadside from our volcanic
batteries, Etna and Hecla, Vesuvius, Erebus, and the rest would soon
settle the matter, and we should probably hear no more for a long time
to come of these black-flagged craft who go cruising about to the
annoyance of honest planets. The same unbecoming apprehensions are
entertained with regard to the moon. Yet it is absurd that we should be
afraid of her. The Earth, by its velocity and weight, could butt the
moon into space or smash her into all her original fragments, could
bombard her with volcanoes, or put an earthquake under her and make a
ruin of her, or turn the Atlantic on to her and put her out. The moon
is really our own property, something between a pump and a night light,
and, if the truth must be told, not very good as either. Twice a day
she is supposed to raise the water of our oceans, but we have often
had to complain of her irregularity; and every night she ought to be
available for lighting people home to their beds, but seldom is. As a
rule, our nights are very dark indeed, owing to her non-attendance;
and even when she is on duty the arrangements she makes for keeping
clouds off her face are most defective. If the Earth were to be half as
irregular in the duties which she has to perform there would soon be
a stoppage of everything, collisions at all the junctions, accidents
at the level crossings, planets telescoped in every direction, and
passengers and satellites much shaken, if not seriously injured. But
the Earth is business-like and practical, and sets an example to those
other denizens of the firmament which are perpetually breaking out in
eruptions, getting off the track, and going about in disorderly gangs
to the public annoyance. Why, then, we ask, ought our planet to be
for ever taking off its hat to the flat-faced old moon, who is always
trying to show off with borrowed light, makes such a monstrous secret
of her "other side," is perpetually being snubbed by eclipses, and made
fun of by stars that go and get occultated by her?
But there are objections to discarding the luminary, for it is never a
graceful act to turn off an old dependant, and, besides, the moon is
about as economical a contrivance as we could have for keeping up the
normal average of lunatics, giving dogs something to bark at by night
when they cannot see anything else, and affording us an opportunity of
showing that respect for antiquities which is so becoming.
But what business the Man in the Moon has there, remains to be
decided; and who gave him permission to go collecting firewood in
our moon, remains to be seen. For it is well to remember that a very
distinguished French savant has proved that the moon is the private
property of the Earth. We used, he says, to do very well without a moon
once upon a time; but going along on our orbit one day, we picked up
the present luminary--then a mere vagabond, a disreputable vagrant mass
of matter, with no visible means of subsistence--"and shall, perhaps,
in the future pick up other moons in the same way." As a matter of fact
then, he declares the moon to be a dependant of our Earth, and says
that if we were selfishly to withdraw our "attraction" from it, the
poor old luminary would tumble into space, and never be able to stop
herself, or, worse still, might come into collision with some wandering
comet or other, and get blown up entirely. We ought, therefore, to
think kindly of the faithful old creature; but we should not, all the
same, allow any length of service to blind us to the actual relations
between her and ourselves--much less to make us frightened of the moon.
But the man in the moon should be seen to. He is either there or he is
not. If he is, he ought to pay taxes: and if he is not, he has no right
to go on pretending that he is.