An excursion--A planter's gallery--Neglect of grounds--Taste
and economy--Mississippi forests--The St. Catherine--Cotton
fields--Worm fences--Hedges--The pride of China--The magnolia
tree and flower--Plantation roads--White cliffs--General view
of a plantation.
A few days since, in company with a northern friend, I made an excursion
to an extensive plantation two hours' ride from the city. We left the
hotel at an early hour, exchanging our mattresses--the universal
southern bed--for more luxurious seats in elastic Spanish saddles, upon
delightfully cradling pacers, and proceeded through one of the principal
streets, already alive with pedestrians and horsemen; for, in a southern
climate, evening and morning constitute the day--the day itself being a
"noon of indolence," where ice and shade are the only blessings to be
devoutly wished. Ambling along at an easy gait toward the great southern
road, leading to New-Orleans, we passed, just on the confines of the
country, the residence of the Presbyterian clergyman, and one of the
most charming retreats I have yet seen in the vicinity of Natchez, whose
suburbs are peculiarly rich in tasteful country seats. Our eyes lingered
over the luxuriant shrubbery clustering about the edifice, entwining
around its columns and peeping in at the windows. Clumps of foliage, of
the deepest green, were enamelled with flowers of the brightest hues;
and every tree was an aviary, from which burst the sweetest melody. What
a spot for the student! Among flowers and vines and singing birds! What
a freshness must they fling around his heart! What a richness must
clothe even the language of sermons composed in such pleasant
shades--the cool wind loaded with fragrance, leaping from among the
trees upon the brow, and playing refreshingly among the hair!
Leaving, to the right, the romantic fort Rosalie, rearing its green
parapets in strong relief against the sky--a prominent object amid the
slightly elevated surface of the surrounding country--we turned into one
of those pleasant roads which wind in all directions through the rich
scenery of this state. The first mile we passed several neat dwellings,
of the cottage order; one of which, with a gallery in front, and
surrounded by a smooth, green slope, was the residence of the
Episcopalian clergyman. It was a chaste and pretty mansion, though not
so luxuriantly embowered as the abode of the clergyman above alluded to.
A huge colonnaded structure, crowning an abrupt eminence near the road,
struck our eyes with an imposing effect. It was the abode of one of the
wealthiest planters of this state; who, like the majority of those whose
families now roll in their splendid equipages, has been the maker of his
fortune. The grounds about this edifice were neglected; horses were
grazing around the piazzas, over which were strewed saddles, whips,
horse blankets, and the motley paraphernalia with which planters love to
lumber their galleries. On nearly every piazza in Mississippi may be
found a wash-stand, bowl, pitcher, towel, and water-bucket, for general
accommodation. But the southern gallery is not constructed, like those
at the north, for ornament or ostentation, but for use. Here they wash,
lounge, often sleep, and take their meals.--Here will the stranger or
visiter be invited to take a chair, or recline upon a sofa, settee, or
form, as the taste and ability of the host may have furnished this
important portion of a planter's house. I once called on a planter
within an hour's ride of Natchez, whose income would constitute a
fortune for five or six modest Yankees. I entered the front yard--a
green level, shaded with the relics of a forest--the live oak, sycamore,
and gum trees--through a narrow wicket in a white-washed paling, the
most common fence around southern dwellings. In the front yard were
several sheep, colts, calves, two or three saddle and a fine pair of
carriage-horses, negro children, and every variety of domestic fowl. The
planter was sitting upon the gallery, divested of coat, vest, and shoes,
with his feet on the railing, playing, in high glee, with a little
dark-eyed boy and two young negroes, who were chasing each other under
the bridge formed by his extended limbs. Three or four noble dogs, which
his voice and the presence of his servant, who accompanied me to the
house, kept submissive, were crouching like leopards around his chair. A
litter of young bull-headed pups lay upon a blanket under a window
opening into a bed-room, white with curtains and valances; while a
domestic tabby sat upon the window-sill, gazing musingly down upon the
rising generation of her hereditary foes, perhaps with reflections not
of the most pleasing cast. A hammock, suspended between an iron hook
driven into the side of the house and one of the slender columns which
supported the sloping roof of the gallery, contained a youth of
fourteen, a nephew of the planter, fast locked in the embraces of
Morpheus; whose _aid-de-camp_, in the shape of a strapping negress,
stood by the hammock, waving over the sleeper a long plume of gorgeous
feathers of the pea-fowl--that magnificent bird of the south, which
struts about the ground of the planter, gratifying the eye with the
glorious emblazonry upon his plumage by day, and torturing the ear with
his loud clamours by night. A pair of noble antlers was secured to one
of the pillars, from whose branches hung broad-brimmed hats, bridles, a
sheep-skin covering to a saddle, which reposed in one corner of the
piazza, a riding whip, a blanket coat or capote, spurs, surcingle, and
part of a coach harness. A rifle and a shot-gun with an incredibly large
bore, were suspended in beckets near the hall entrance; while a couple
of shot-pouches, a game-bag, and other sporting apparatus, hung beside
them. Slippers, brogans, a pillow, indented as though recently deserted,
a gourd, and a broken "cotton slate," filled up the picture, whose
original, in some one or other of its features, may be found in nearly
every planter's dwelling in this state.
There are many private residences, in the vicinity of Natchez, of an
equally expensive character with the one which furnished the above
description, whose elegant interiors, contrasting with the neglected
grounds about them, suggest the idea of a handsome city residence,
accidentally dropped upon a bleak hill, or into the midst of a partially
cleared forest, and there remaining, with its noble roof grasped by the
arms of an oak, and its windows and columns festooned by the drooping
moss, heavily waving in the wind. Thus are situated many of the
planters' dwellings, separated from the adjacent forests by a rude,
white-washed picket, enclosing around the house an unornamented green,
or grazing lot, for the saddle and carriage-horses, which can regale
their eyes at pleasure, by walking up to the parlour windows and gazing
in upon handsome carpets, elegant furniture, costly mantel ornaments,
and side-boards loaded with massive plate; and, no doubt, ruminate
philosophically upon the reflection of their figures at full-length in
long, richly-framed mirrors. Very few of the planters' villas, even
within a few miles of Natchez, are adorned with surrounding ornamental
shrubbery walks, or any other artificial auxiliaries to the natural
scenery, except a few shade trees and a narrow, gravelled avenue from
the gate to the house. A long avenue of trees, ornamenting and
sheltering the approach to a dwelling, is a rare sight in this state,
though very frequently seen in Louisiana. Yet, in no region of the
south can fine avenues of beautiful trees be made with such facility as
in Mississippi. No state surpasses this in the beauty, variety, and
rapid growth of its ornamental shade trees; the laurel, sycamore,
locust, oak, elm, and white bay, with the "pride of China,"--the
universal shade tree in the south-west--arrive here at the most perfect
maturity and beauty. Every plantation residence is approached by an
avenue, often nearly a mile in length; yet so little attention is paid
to this species of ornament and comfort, in a climate where shade is a
synonym for luxury, that scarcely one of them is shaded, except where,
in their course through a forest, nature has flung the broad arms of
majestic trees across the path.
The peculiarity of the dwellings of planters, evinced in hiding the
prettiest cottage imaginable under the wild, gnarled limbs of forest
trees, fringed with long black moss, like mourning weeds, which hangs
over the doors and windows in melancholy grandeur, may be traced, very
naturally, to the original mode of life of most of the occupants, who,
though now opulent, have arisen, with but few exceptions, from
comparative obscurity in the world of dollars. Originally occupying log
huts in the wilderness, their whole time and attention were engaged in
the culture of cotton; and embellishment, either of their cabins or
grounds, was wholly disregarded. When they became the lords of a domain
and a hundred slaves; for many retain their cabins even till
then--ostentation, as they saw the elegancies of refined society
displayed around them--necessity, for fear of being entombed in the
ruins of their venerable log palaces--or a desire for greater
comfort--razed the humble cabin, and reared upon its site the walls of
an expensive and beautiful fabric. Here the planter stops. The same
causes which originally influenced him to neglect the improvement of his
grounds, still continue to exist; and though he may inhabit a building
that would grace an English park, the grounds and scenery about it, with
the exception of a paling enclosing a green yard, are suffered to remain
in their pristine rudeness. Thus far, and with few exceptions, no
farther, have the wealthiest planters advanced. Here they have taken a
stand; and a motive cause, equal to that which led to the first step
from the cabin to the more elegant mansion, must again operate, or the
finest villas in Mississippi will, for many years to come, be
surrounded, on one or more sides, with the native forests, or stand in
unpicturesque contiguity with ploughed fields, cattle-pens, and the
several interesting divisions of a farm-yard.
You will judge, from this state of things, that the Mississippi planters
are not a showy and stylish class, but a plain, practical body of men,
who, in general, regard comfort, and conformity to old habits, rather
than display and fashionable innovations; and who would gaze with more
complacency upon an acre of their domain, whitened, like a newly-washed
flock, with cotton, than were it spread out before them magnificent with
horticulture, or beautifully velveted with green. Still planters are
not destitute of taste; it is their principle to make it yield to
interest. "What a fine park you might have around your house," once
remarked an English gentleman to a planter in this state, as he surveyed
the finely undulating fields here and there sprinkled with an oak,
extending on every side around the dwelling.
"Very true," replied the southron, "but these few acres yield me
annually from ten to twelve bales of cotton: this would be too great a
sacrifice for the mere gratification of the eye."
"Still very true," replied the Englishman, "but this sense could be
gratified without any sacrifice. Your plantation consists of eight or
nine hundred acres, and not one half is under cultivation; a portion of
that now uncultivated might be substituted for this." To this the
planter answered, that the soil about his house would produce more to
the acre than the other, by at least one bale in every ten, having been
long under cultivation; and that merely as a matter of taste, though no
one admired a fine park or lawn more than himself, he could not devote
it to this object.
This principle of the land economist, so devoutly reverenced, will long
preclude that desirable union of taste and interest, which is the
combined result of wealth attained and enjoyed. The last state men
cannot be said to be in, who, however wealthy, never relax their
exertions in adding to their incomes; which is, and ever will be the
case with the planter, and indeed every other man, so long as he can, by
his efforts, annually increase his revenue ten or twenty thousand
dollars. To the immense profit which every acre and the labour of every
slave yield the planter, and to no other cause, is to be referred the
anomalous result manifested in neglecting to improve their estates: for
an acre, that will yield them sixty dollars per annum, and a slave,
whose annual labour will yield from two to five hundred dollars, are, by
the laws which regulate the empire of money, to be appropriated to the
service of interest, to the entire exclusion of the claims of taste.
About a mile from Natchez, we passed, close by the road-side, a family
cemetery, whose white paling was bursting with shrubbery. No mausoleum
gratefully relieving the eye, rose amid the luxuriant foliage,
enshrining the affection of the living or the memory of the dead. On the
opposite side of the road stood a handsome mansion, though without that
noble expanse of lawn which is the finest feature in the grounds of an
English country residence. Instead of a lawn, a small unimproved
court-yard intervened between the house and the road. Winding round an
extensive vegetable garden, attached to the house, which is the only
dwelling for more than ten miles immediately on the road, we travelled
for an hour, either over a pleasantly rolling country, with extensive
cotton fields, spreading away on either hand; or beneath forest trees,
which, in height and majesty, might vie with the "cedars of Lebanon."
There is a grandeur in the vast forests of the south, of which a
northerner can form no adequate conception. The trees spring from the
ground into the air, noble columns, from fifty to a hundred feet in
height, and, expanding like the cocoa, fling abroad their limbs, which,
interlocking, present a canopy almost impervious to the sun, and beneath
which wind arcades of the most magnificent dimensions. The nakedness of
the tall shafts is relieved by the luxuriant tendrils of the muscadine
and woodbine twining about them, in spiral wreaths, quite to their
summit, or hanging in immense festoons from tree to tree. In these woods
horsemen can advance without obstruction, so spacious are the intervals
between the trees, so high the branches above them, and so free from
underwood is the sward. Of such forest-riding the northerner knows
nothing, unless his lore in tales of Italian banditti may have enabled
him to form some idea of scenes with which his own country refuses to
gratify him. So much do the northern and southern forests differ, that a
fleet rider will traverse the latter with more ease than the woodman can
the former.
Cut from the shaft of a southern forest tree, a section forty or fifty
feet in length, and plant the mutilated summit in the earth, and its
stunted appearance would convey to a Mississippian a tolerably correct
idea of a forest tree in New-England; or add to the low trunk of a wide
spreading northern oak, the column abstracted from its southern rival,
and northerners would form from its towering altitude, a tolerable idea
of a forest tree in Mississippi. Hang from its heavy branches huge
tassels of black Carolina moss, from two to six feet in length--suspend
from limb to limb gigantic festoons of vines, themselves but lesser
trees in size, and clothe its trunk with a spiral vestment of leaves, as
though a green serpent were coiled about it, and you will have created a
southern tree in its native majesty. Imagine a forest of them lifting
their tops to heaven and yourself bounding away upon a fleet horse
beneath its sublime domes, with a noble stag, flying down its glades
like a winged creature, while the shouts of hunters, the tramp of
horses, and the baying of hounds echo through its solemn corridors, and
then you will have some faint idea of the glory of a southern forest and
the noble character of its enjoyments.[5]
Between three and four miles from Natchez we crossed the St. Catharine,
a deeply bedded and narrow stream, winding through a fertile tract of
country in a very serpentine course, for nearly thirty leagues before it
empties into the Mississippi, twenty miles below Natchez. This stream is
celebrated in the early history of this state, and still possesses
interest from the Indian traditions with which it is associated. In
numerous villages, formerly scattered along its banks, and spread over
the beautiful hills among which it meanders, but not a vestige of which
now remains, it is supposed, on the authority both of oral and written
history, that more than two hundred thousand Indians but a few degrees
removed from the refinements of civilized life, dwelt peaceably under
their own vine and fig-tree. But where are they now? "Echo
answers--Where!"
Between five and six miles from town the road passed through the centre
of one of the most extensive plantations in the county. For more than a
mile on either side, an immense cotton field spread away to the distant
forests. Not a fence, except that which confined the road, (always
degraded, in the parlance of the country, when running between two
fences, to a "lane,") was to be seen over the whole cultivated surface
of a mile square. The absence of fences is a peculiarity of southern
farms. As their proprietors cultivate but one article as a staple, there
is no necessity of intersecting their lands by fences, as at the north,
where every farm is cut up into many portions, appropriated to a variety
of productions. To a northern eye, a large extent of cultivated country,
without a fence, or scarcely a dwelling, would present a singular
appearance; but a short residence in the south will soon render one
familiar with such scenery where no other meets the eye. The few fences,
however, that exist on plantations, for defining boundaries, confining
public roads, and fencing in the pasture lands--which, instead of broad
green fields as in New-England, are the woods and cane-brakes--are of
the most unsightly kind. With a gently undulating surface and a
diversity of vale and wood scenery unrivalled, the natural loveliness of
this state is disfigured by zigzag, or Virginia fences, which stretch
along the sides of the most charming roads, surround the loveliest
cottages, or rudely encroach upon the snowy palings that enclose them,
and intersect the finest eminences and fairest champaigns. The Yankee
farmer's stone and rail fences are bad enough, but they are in character
with the ruder features of his country; but the worm fences and arcadian
scenery of the south are combinations undreamed of in my philosophy.
These crooked lines of deformity obtruding upon the eye in every
scene--the numerous red banks and chasms caused by the "wash," and Congo
and Mandingo nymphs and swains, loitering around every fountain,
rambling through the groves, or reclining in the shades, are in
themselves sufficient to unruralise even "Araby the blest." Yet with all
these harsh artificial features, there is a picturesqueness--a quiet
beauty in the general aspect of the scenery, not unfrequently
strengthened into majesty, so indelibly stamped upon it by nature that
nothing less than a rail-road can wholly deface it.
On the plantation alluded to above, through which lay our road, I
noticed within the fence a young hedge, which, with an unparalleled
innovation upon the prescriptive right of twisted fences, had recently
been planted to supersede them. In a country where the "chickasaw rose,"
which is a beautiful hedge thorn, grows so luxuriantly, it is worthy of
remark that the culture of the hedge, so ornamental and useful as a
field-fence, is altogether neglected. Planters would certainly find it
eventually for their interest, and if generally adopted, the scenery of
this state would rival the loveliest sections of rural England.
Delaware, without any striking natural beauties, by clustering green
hedges around her wheat-fields and farm-houses, has created an
artificial feature in her scenery which renders her naturally tame
aspect extremely rural, if not beautiful. The hedge, however, will not
be introduced into this state to the exclusion of the rail-fence, until
the pine woods, dwindled here and there to a solitary tree, refuse
longer to deform in the shape of rails, a country they were originally
intended to beautify.
The "quarters" of the plantation were pleasantly situated upon an
eminence a third of a mile from the road, each dwelling neatly
white-washed and embowered in the China tree, which yields in beauty to
no other. This, as I have before remarked, is the universal shade tree
for cabin and villa in this state. It is in leaf about seven months in
the year, and bears early in the spring a delicate and beautiful flower,
of a pale pink ground slightly tinged with purple. In appearance and
fragrance it resembles the lilac, though the cluster of flowers is
larger and more irregularly formed. These after loading the air with
their fragrance for some days, fall off, leaving green berries thickly
clustering on every branch. These berries become yellow in autumn, and
long after the seared leaf falls, hang in clusters from the boughs, nor
finally drop from them until forced from their position by the young
branches and leaves in the succeeding spring. The chief beauty of this
tree consists in the richness and arrangement of its foliage. From a
trunk eight or ten feel in height, the limbs, in the perfect tree,
branch irregularly upward at an angle of about 45 deg. or 50 deg. From these,
which are of various lengths, slender shoots extend laterally, bearing
at their extremities a thick tuft of leaves. These slender branches
radiate in all directions, each also terminating in fine feathery tufts,
which, being laid one over the other like scales on armour, present an
almost impenetrable shield to the rays of the sun. These young shoots
throughout the season are constantly expanding their bright parasols of
leaves, and as they are of a paler hue than the older leaves, which are
of a dark purple green, the variegated effect, combined with the
singularly beautiful arrangement of the whole, is very fine. The rapid
growth of this tree is remarkable. A severed limb placed in the ground,
in the winter, will burst forth into a fine luxuriant head of foliage in
the spring. From a berry slightly covered with soil, a weed, not unlike
the common pig-weed, in the rapidity of its growth and the greenness of
its stalk, shoots up during the summer four or five feet in height.
During the winter its stalks harden, and in the spring, in a brown coat,
and with the dignity of a young tree, it proudly displays its tufts of
pale, tapering leaves. In three or four summers more it will fling its
limbs over the planter's cottage--and cast upon the ground a broad and
delightful shade. Divest a tree of the largest size of its top, and in
the spring the naked stump will burst forth into a cloud of foliage.
Such is the tree which surrounds the dwellings and borders the streets
in the villages of the south-west--the "vine" and the "fig tree" under
which every man dwells.
About two leagues from Natchez the road entered an extensive forest,
winding along upon a ridge thickly covered with the polished leaved
magnolia tree (M. grandiflora)--the pride of southern forests. This tree
is an evergreen, and rises from the ground often to the height of
seventy feet, presenting an exterior of evergreen leaves, and large
white flowers. Its leaves appearing like "two single laurel-leaves
rolled into one," are five or six inches in length, of a dark green
colour, the under side of a rich brown, and the upper beautifully
glazed, and thick like shoe leather. The flower is magnificent. In June
it unfolds itself upon the green surface of the immoveable cone in fine
relief. When full blown it is of a great size; some of them cannot be
placed in a hat without crushing them. Its petals are a pure white,
shaped and curved precisely like a quarter-section of the rind of an
orange, and nearly as thick, and perfectly smooth and elastic. They are
frequently used by boarding-school misses to serve as _billets doux_,
for which, from their fragrance and unsullied purity, they are admirably
fitted. They are so large that I have written upon one of them with a
lead pencil in ordinary handwriting, a stanza from Childe Harold. It
must be confessed that the writing as well as the material is of a very
ephemeral kind; but for this reason the material is perhaps the more
valuable when pressed into the service of Don Cupid. They are so
fragrant that a single flower will fill a house with the most agreeable
perfume; and the atmosphere for many rods in the vicinity of a tree in
full flower is so heavily impregnated, that a sensation of faintness
will affect one long remaining within its influence.
The remainder of our ride was through a fine forest, occasionally
opening into broad cotton fields. Once on ascending a hill we caught,
through a vista in the woods over broad fields, a glimpse of the cypress
forests of Louisiana, spread out like a dark sea to the level horizon.
The Mississippi rolled through the midst unseen. As we rode on we passed
roads diverging to the right and left from the highway, leading to the
hidden dwellings of the planters. A large gate set into a rail fence
usually indicates the vicinity of a planter's residence in the
south--but the plantation roads here turned into the forests, through
which they romantically wound till lost in their depths. Any of these
roads would have conducted us to the villa of some wealthy planter.
There can be little ostentation in a people who thus hide their
dwellings from the public road. Jonathan, on the other hand, would plant
his house so near the highway as to have a word from his door with every
passenger. Deprive him of a view of the public road, and you deprive him
of his greatest enjoyment--the indulgence of curiosity. About nine miles
from town the forest retreated from the road, and from the brow of a
hill, the brown face of a cliff rose above the tops of the trees about a
league before us. To the eye so long accustomed to the unvarying green
hue of the scenery--the rough face of this cliff was an agreeable
relief. It was one of the white cliffs alluded to in a former letter.
Shortly after losing sight of this prominent object, we turned into a
road winding through the woods, which conducted us for a quarter of an
hour down and up several precipitous hills, across two deep bayous,
through an extensive cotton field in which the negroes were
industriously at work without a "driver" or an "overseer," and after
winding a short distance bordered by young poplars round the side of a
hill, passed through a first, then a second gateway, and finally brought
us in front of the dwelling house of our host, and the termination of
our interesting ride.