CHAPTER V

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VIRGINIA AND ITS ECONOMY—CONTINUED.

_Norfolk._—In order to be in time for the train of cars in which I was to leave Petersburg for Norfolk, I was called up at an unusual hour in the morning and provided with an apology for breakfast, on the ground that there had not been time to prepare anything better (though I was charged full time on the bill), advised by the landlord to hurry when I seated myself at the table, and two minutes afterwards informed that, if I remained longer, I should be too late.

Thanks to these kind precautions, I reached the station twenty minutes before the train left, and was afterwards carried, with about fifty other people, at the rate of ten miles an hour, to City-point, where all were discharged under a dirty shed, from which a wharf projected into James River.

The train was advertised to connect here with a steamboat for Norfolk. Finding no steamboat at the wharf, I feared, at first, that the delay in leaving Petersburg and the slow speed upon the road had detained us so long that the boat had departed without us. But observing no disappointment or concern expressed by the other passengers, I concluded the boat was to call for us, and had yet to arrive. An hour passed, during which I tried to keep warm by walking up and down the wharf; rain then commenced falling, and I returned to the crowded shed and asked a young man, who was engaged in cutting the letters G. W. B., with a dirk-knife, upon the head of a tobacco-cask, what was supposed to have detained the steamboat.

“Detained her? there aint no detention to her, as I know on; ’taint hardly time for her to be along yet.”

Another half-hour, in fact, passed, before the steamboat arrived, nor was any impatience manifested by the passengers. All seemed to take this hurrying and waiting process as the regular thing. The women sat sullenly upon trunks and packing-cases, and watched their baggage and restrained their children; the men chewed tobacco and read newspapers; lounged first on one side and then on the other; some smoked, some walked away to a distant tavern; some reclined on the heaps of freight and went to sleep, and a few conversed quietly and intermittently with one another.

The shores of the James River are low and level—the scenery uninteresting; but frequent planters’ mansions, often of considerable size and of some elegance, stand upon the bank, and sometimes these have very pretty and well-kept grounds about them, and the plantations surrounding them are cultivated with neatness and skill. Many men distinguished in law and politics here have their homes.

I was pleased to see the appearance of enthusiasm with which some passengers, who were landed from our boat at one of these places, were received by two or three well-dressed negro servants, who had come from the house to the wharf to meet them. Black and white met with kisses; and the effort of a long-haired sophomore to maintain his dignity, was quite ineffectual to kill the kindness of a fat mulatto woman, who joyfully and pathetically shouted, as she caught him off the gang-plank, “Oh Massa George, is you come back!” Field negroes, standing by, looked on with their usual besotted expression, and neither offered nor received greetings.

_Jan. 10th._—Norfolk is a dirty, low, ill-arranged town, nearly divided by a morass. It has a single creditable public building, a number of fine private residences, and the polite society is reputed to be agreeable, refined, and cultivated, receiving a character from the families of the resident naval officers. It has all the immoral and disagreeable characteristics of a large seaport, with very few of the advantages that we should expect to find as relief to them. No lyceum or public libraries, no public gardens, no galleries of art, and though there are two “Bethels,” no “home” for its seamen; no public resorts of healthful amusement; no place better than a filthy, tobacco-impregnated bar-room or a licentious dance-cellar, so far as I have been able to learn, for the stranger of high or low degree to pass the hours unoccupied by business.

Lieut. Maury has lately very well shown what advantages were originally possessed for profitable commerce at this point, in a report, the intention of which is to advocate the establishment of a line of steamers hence to Para, the port of the mouth of the Amazon. He says—

“Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the Atlantic sea-board: it is midway the coast. It has a back country of great facility and resources; and, as to approaches to the ocean, there is no harbour from the St. John’s to the Rio Grande that has the same facilities of ingress and egress at all times and in all weathers. * * * The back country of Norfolk is all that which is drained by the Chesapeake Bay—embracing a line drawn along the ridge between the Delaware and the Chesapeake, thence northerly, including all of Pennsylvania that is in the valley of the Susquehanna, all of Maryland this side of the mountains, the valleys of the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers, with the Valley of the Roanoke, and a great part of the State of North Carolina, whose only outlet to the sea is by the way of Norfolk.”

In a letter to the _National Intelligencer_, Oct. 31, 1854, after describing similar advantages which the town possesses, to those enumerated above, Lieut. Maury, who is a Virginian, again says—

“Its climate is delightful. It is of exactly that happy temperature where the frosts of the North bite not, and the pestilence of the South walks not. Its harbour is commodious and safe as safe can be. It is never blocked up by ice. It has the double advantage of an inner and an outer harbour. The inner harbour is as smooth as any mill-pond. In it vessels lie with perfect security, where every imaginable facility is offered for loading and unloading.” * * * “The back country, which without portage is _naturally_ tributary to Norfolk, not only surpasses that which is tributary to New York in mildness of climate, in fertility of soil, and variety of production, but in geographical extent by many square miles. The proportion being as _three to one_ in favour of the Virginia port.” * * * “The _natural_ advantages, then, in relation to the sea or the back country, are superior, _beyond comparison_, to those of New York.”

There is little, if any exaggeration in this estimate; yet, if a deadly, enervating pestilence had always raged here, this Norfolk could not be a more miserable, sorry little seaport town than it is. It was not possible to prevent the existence of some agency here for the transhipment of goods, and for supplying the needs of vessels, compelled by exterior circumstances to take refuge in the harbour. Beyond this bare supply of a necessitous demand, and what results from the adjoining naval rendezvous of the nation, there is nothing.

_Jan. 18th._—The “Great Dismal Swamp,” together with the smaller “Dismals” (for so the term is used here), of the same character, along the North Carolina coast, have hitherto been of considerable commercial importance as furnishing a large amount of lumber, and especially of shingles for our Northern use, as well as for exportation. The district from which this commerce proceeds is all a vast quagmire, the soil being entirely composed of decayed vegetable fibre, saturated and surcharged with water; yielding or _quaking_ on the surface to the tread of a man, and a large part of it, during most of the year, half inundated with standing pools. It is divided by creeks and water-veins, and in the centre is a pond six miles long and three broad, the shores of which, strange to, say, are at a higher elevation above the sea, than any other part of the swamp, and yet are of the same miry consistency. The Great Dismal is about thirty miles long and ten miles wide, on an average; its area about 200,000 acres. And the little Dismal, Aligator, Catfish, Green, and other smaller swamps, on the shores of Albemarle and Pamlico, contain over 2,000,000 acres.

The swamp belongs to a great many proprietors. Most of them own only a few acres, but some possess large tracts and use a heavy capital in the business. One, whose acquaintance I made, employed more than a hundred hands in getting out shingles alone. The value of the swamp land varies with the wood upon it, and the facility with which it can be got off, from 12½ cents to $10 an acre. It is made passable in any desired direction in which trees grow, by laying logs, cut in lengths of eight or ten feet, parallel and against each other on the surface of the soil, or “sponge,” as it is called. Mules and oxen are used to some extent upon these roads, but transportation is mainly by hand to the creeks, or to ditches communicating with them or the canal.

Except by those log-roads, the swamp is scarcely passable in many parts, owing not only to the softness of the sponge, but to the obstruction caused by innumerable shrubs, vines, creepers, and briars, which often take entire possession of the surface, forming a dense brake or jungle. This, however, is sometimes removed by fires, which of late years have been frequent and very destructive to the standing timber. The most common shrubs are various smooth-leafed evergreens, and their dense, bright, glossy foliage was exceedingly beautiful in the wintry season of my visit. There is a good deal of game in the swamp—bears and wild cats are sometimes shot, raccoons and opossums are plentiful, and deer are found in the drier parts and on the outskirts. The fishing, in the interior waters, is also said to be excellent.

Nearly all the valuable trees have now been cut off from the swamp. The whole ground has been frequently gone over, the best timber selected and removed at each time, leaving the remainder standing thinly, so that the wind has more effect upon it; and much of it, from the yielding of the soft soil, is uprooted or broken off. The fires have also greatly injured it. The principal stock, now worked into shingles, is obtained _from beneath the surface_—old trunks that have been preserved by the wetness of the soil, and that are found by “sounding” with poles, and raised with hooks or pikes by the negroes.

The quarry is giving out, however; and except that lumber, and especially shingles, have been in great demand at high prices of late, the business would be almost at an end. As it is, the principal men engaged in it are turning their attention to other and more distant supplies. A very large purchase had been made by one company in the Florida everglades, and a schooner, with a gang of hands trained in the “Dismals,” was about to sail from Deep Creek, for this new field of operations.

The labour in the swamp is almost entirely done by slaves; and the way in which they are managed is interesting and instructive. They are mostly hired by their employers at a rent, perhaps of one hundred dollars a year for each, paid to their owners. They spend one or two months of the winter—when it is too wet to work in the swamp—at the residence of their master. At this period little or no work is required of them; their time is their own, and if they can get any employment, they will generally keep for themselves what they are paid for it. When it is sufficiently dry—usually early in February—they go into the swamp in gangs, each gang under a white overseer. Before leaving, they are all examined and registered at the Court House; and “passes,” good for a year, are given them, in which their features and the marks upon their persons are minutely described. Each man is furnished with a quantity of provisions and clothing, of which, as well as of all that he afterwards draws from the stock in the hands of the overseer, an exact account is kept.

Arrived at their destination, a rude camp is made; huts of logs, poles, shingles, and boughs being built, usually, upon some places where shingles have been worked before, and in which the shavings have accumulated in small hillocks upon the soft surface of the ground.

The slave lumberman then lives measurably as a free man; hunts, fishes, eats, drinks, smokes and sleeps, plays and works, each when and as much as he pleases. It is only required of him that he shall have made, after half a year has passed, such a quantity of shingles as shall be worth to his master so much money as is paid to his owner for his services, and shall refund the value of the clothing and provisions he has required.

No “driving” at his work is attempted or needed. No force is used to overcome the indolence peculiar to the negro. The overseer merely takes a daily account of the number of shingles each man adds to the general stock, and employs another set of hands, with mules, to draw them to a point from which they can be shipped, and where they are, from time to time, called for by a schooner.

At the end of five months the gang returns to dry land, and a statement of account from the overseer’s book is drawn up, something like the following:—

_Sam Bo to John Doe, Dr._

Feb. 1. To clothing (outfit) $5 00 Mar. 10. To clothing, as per overseer’s account 2 25 Feb. 1. To bacon and meal (outfit) 19 00 July 1. To stores drawn in swamp, as per overseer’s account 4 75 July 1. To half-yearly hire, paid his owner. 50 00 ------ $81 00 _Per Contra, Cr._

July 1. By 10,000 shingles, as per overseer’s account, 10c 100 00 Balance due Sambo ------ $19 00

which is immediately paid him, and of which, together with the proceeds of sale of peltry which he has got while in the swamp, he is always allowed to make use as his own. No liquor is sold or served to the negroes in the swamp, and, as their first want when they come out of it is an excitement, most of their money goes to the grog-shops.

After a short vacation, the whole gang is taken in the schooner to spend another five months in the swamp as before. If they are good hands and work steadily, they will commonly be hired again, and so continuing, will spend most of their lives at it. They almost invariably have excellent health, as have also the white men engaged in the business. They all consider the water of the “Dismals” to have a medicinal virtue, and quite probably it is a mild tonic. It is greenish in colour, and I thought I detected a slightly resinous taste upon first drinking it. Upon entering the swamp also, an agreeable resinous odour, resembling that of a hemlock forest, was perceptible.

The negroes working in the swamp were more sprightly and straightforward in their manner and conversation than any field-hand plantation negroes that I saw at the South; two or three of their employers with whom I conversed spoke well of them, as compared with other slaves, and made no complaints of “rascality” or laziness.

One of those gentlemen told me of a remarkable case of providence and good sense in a negro that he had employed in the swamp for many years. He was so trustworthy, that he had once let him go to New York as cook of a lumber schooner, when he could, if he had chosen to remain there, have easily escaped from slavery.

Knowing that he must have accumulated considerable money, his employer suggested to him that he might _buy_ his freedom, and he immediately determined to do so. But when, on applying to his owner, he was asked $500 for himself, a price which, considering he was an elderly man, he thought too much, he declined the bargain; shortly afterwards, however, he came to his employer again, and said that although he thought his owner was mean to set so high a price upon him, he had been thinking that if he was to be an old man he would rather be his own master, and if he did not live long, his money would not be of any use to him at any rate, and so he had concluded he would make the purchase.

He did so, and upon collecting the various sums that he had loaned to white people in the vicinity, he was found to have several hundred dollars more than was necessary. With the surplus, he paid for his passage to Liberia, and bought a handsome outfit. When he was about to leave, my informant had made him a present, and, in thanking him for it, the free man had said that the first thing he should do, on reaching Liberia, would be to learn to write, and, as soon as he could, he would write to him how he liked the country: he had been gone yet scarce a year, and had not been heard from.

* * * * *

_Deep River, Jan. 18th._—The shad and herring fisheries upon the sounds and inlets of the North Carolina coast are an important branch of industry, and a source of considerable wealth. The men employed in them are mainly negroes, slave and free; and the manner in which they are conducted is interesting, and in some respects novel.

The largest sweep seines in the world are used. The gentleman to whom I am indebted for the most of my information, was the proprietor of a seine over two miles in length. It was manned by a force of forty negroes, most of whom were hired at a dollar a day, for the fishing season, which usually commences between the tenth and fifteenth of March, and lasts fifty days. In favourable years the profits are very great. In extremely unfavourable years many of the proprietors are made bankrupt.

Cleaning, curing, and packing houses are erected on the shore, as near as they conveniently may be to a point on the beach, suitable for drawing the seine. Six or eight windlasses, worked by horses, are fixed along the shore, on each side of this point. There are two large seine-boats, in each of which there is one captain, two seine-tenders, and eight or ten oarsmen. In making a cast of the net, one-half of it is arranged on the stern of each of the boats, which, having previously been placed in a suitable position—perhaps a mile off shore, in front of the buildings—are rowed from each other, the captains steering, and the seine-tenders throwing off, until the seine is all cast between them. This is usually done in such a way that it describes the arc of a circle, the chord of which is diagonal with the shore. The hawsers attached to the ends of the seine are brought first to the outer windlasses, and are wound in by the horses. As the operation of gathering in the seine occupies several hours, the boat hands, as soon as they have brought the hawsers to the shore, draw their boats up, and go to sleep.

As the wings approach the shore, the hawsers are from time to time carried to the other windlasses, to contract the sweep of the seine. After the gaff of the net reaches the shore, lines attached toward the bunt are carried to the windlasses, and the boats’ crews are awakened, and arrange the wing of the seine, as fast as it comes in, upon the boat again. Of course, as the cast was made diagonally with the shore, one wing is beached before the other. By the time the fish in the bunt have been secured, both boats are ready for another cast, and the boatmen proceed to make it, while the shore gang is engaged in sorting and gutting the “take.”

My informant, who had $50,000 invested in his fishing establishment, among other items of expenditure, mentioned that he had used seventy kegs of gunpowder the previous year, and amused himself for a few moments with letting me try to conjecture in what way villanous saltpetre could be put to use in taking fish.

There is evidence of a subsidence of this coast, in many places, at a comparatively recent period; many stumps of trees, evidently standing where they grew, being found some way below the present surface, in the swamps and salt marshes. Where the formation of the shore and the surface, or the strength of the currents of water, which have flowed over the sunken land, has been such as to prevent a later deposit, the stumps of great cypress trees, not in the least decayed, protrude from the bottom of the sounds. These would obstruct the passage of a net, and must be removed from a fishing-ground.

The operation of removing them is carried on during the summer, after the close of the fishing season. The position of a stump having been ascertained by divers, two large seine-boats are moored over it, alongside each other, and a log is laid across them, to which is attached perpendicularly, between the boats, a spar, fifteen feet long. The end of a chain is hooked to the log, between the boats, the other end of which is fastened by divers to the stump which it is wished to raise. A double-purchase tackle leads from the end of the spar to a ring-bolt in the bows of one of the boats, with the fall leading aft, to be bowsed upon by the crews. The mechanical advantages of the windlass, the lever, and the pulley being thus combined, the chain is wound on to the log, until either the stump yields, and is brought to the surface, or the boats’ gunwales are brought to the water’s edge.

When the latter is the case, and the stump still remains firm, a new power must be applied. A spile, pointed with iron, six inches in diameter, and twenty feet long, is set upon the stump by a diver, who goes down with it, and gives it that direction which, in his judgment, is best, and driven into it by mauls and sledges, a scaffold being erected between the boats for men to stand on while driving it. In very large stumps, the spile is often driven till its top reaches the water; so that when it is drawn out, a cavity is left in the stump, ten feet in depth. A tube is now used, which is made by welding together three musket-barrels, with a breech at one end, in which is the tube of a percussion breech, with the ordinary position of the nipple reversed, so that when it is screwed on with a detonating cap, the latter will protrude within the barrel. This breech is then inserted within a cylindrical tin box, six inches in diameter, and varying in length, according to the supposed strength of the stump; and soap or tallow is smeared about the place of insertion to make it water tight. The box contains several pounds of gunpowder.

The long iron tube is elevated, and the diver goes down again, and guides it into the hole in the stump, with the canister in his arms. It has reached the bottom—the diver has come up, and is drawn into one of the boats—an iron rod is inserted in the mouth of the tube—all hands crouch low and hold hard—the rod is let go—crack!—whoo—oosch! The sea swells, boils, and breaks upward. If the boats do not rise with it, they must sink; if they rise, and the chain does not break, the stump must rise with them. At the same moment the heart of cypress is riven; its furthest rootlets quiver; the very earth trembles, and loses courage to hold it; “up comes the stump, or down go the niggers!”

The success of the operation evidently depends mainly on the discretion and skill of the diver. My informant, who thought that he removed last summer over a thousand stumps, using for the purpose seventy kegs of gunpowder, employed several divers, all of them negroes. Some of them could remain under water, and work there to better advantage than others; but all were admirably skilful, and this, much in proportion to the practice and experience they had had. They wear, when diving, three or four pairs of flannel drawers and shirts. Nothing is required of them when they are not wanted to go to the bottom, and, while the other hands are at work, they may lounge, or go to sleep in the boat, which they do, in their wet garments. Whenever a diver displays unusual hardihood, skill, or perseverance, he is rewarded with whisky; or, as they are commonly allowed, while diving, as much whisky as they want, with money. Each of them would generally get every day from a quarter to half a dollar in this way, above the wages paid for them, according to the skill and industry with which they had worked. On this account, said my informant, “the harder the work you give them to do, the better they like it.” His divers very frequently had intermittent fevers, but would very rarely let this keep them out of their boats. Even in the midst of a severe “shake,” they would generally insist that they were “well enough to dive.”

What! slaves eager to work, and working cheerfully, earnestly, and skilfully? Even so. Being for the time managed as freemen, their ambition stimulated by wages, suddenly they, too, reveal sterling manhood, and honour their Creator.

* * * * *

_Norfolk, Jan. 19th._—The market gardens at Norfolk—which have been profitably supplying New York markets with poor early vegetables, and half-hardy luxuries for several years past—do not differ at all from market gardens elsewhere. They are situated in every direction for many miles from the city, offering a striking contrast, in all respects, to the large, old-fashioned Virginian farms, among which they are scattered.

On one of the latter, of over a thousand acres, a friend told me he had seen the negroes moving long, strawy manure with shovels, and upon inquiry found there was not a dung-fork on the place.

The soil is a poor sandy loam, and manure is brought by shipping from Baltimore, as well as from the nearer towns, to enrich it. The proprietors of the market gardens are nearly all from New Jersey, and brought many of their old white labourers with them. Except at picking-time, when everything possessing fingers is in demand, they do not often employ slaves.

The _Norfolk Argus_ says that, from about the 20th June to the 20th July, from 2,000 to 2,500 barrels of potatoes will be shipped daily from that city to Philadelphia and New York, together with 300 to 500 barrels of cucumbers, musk-melons, etc.

* * * * *

_Norfolk, Jan. 20th._—While driving a chaise from Portsmouth to Deep River, I picked up on the road a jaded-looking negro, who proved to be a very intelligent and good-natured fellow. His account of the lumber business, and of the life of the lumbermen in the swamps, in answer to my questions, was clear and precise, and was afterwards verified by information obtained from his master.

He told me that his name was Joseph, that he belonged (as property) to a church in one of the inland counties, and that he was hired from the trustees of the church by his present master. He expressed contentment with his lot, but great unwillingness to be sold to go on to a plantation. He liked to “mind himself,” as he did in the swamps. Whether he would still more prefer to be entirely his own master, I did not ask.

The Dismal Swamps are noted places of refuge for runaway negroes. They were formerly peopled in this way much more than at present; a systematic hunting of them with dogs and guns having been made by individuals who took it up as a business about ten years ago. Children were born, bred, lived, and died here. Joseph Church told me he had seen skeletons, and had helped to bury bodies recently dead. There were people in the swamps still, he thought, that were the children of runaways, and who had been runaways themselves “all their lives.” What a life it must be! born outlaws; educated self-stealers; trained from infancy to be constantly in dread of the approach of a white man as a thing more fearful than wild cats or serpents, or even starvation.

There can be but few, however, if any, of these “natives” left. They cannot obtain the means of supporting life without coming often either to the outskirts to steal from the plantations, or to the neighbourhood of the camps of the lumbermen. They depend much upon the charity or the wages given them by the latter. The poorer white men, owning small tracts of the swamps, will sometimes employ them, and the negroes frequently. In the hands of either they are liable to be betrayed to the negro-hunters. Joseph said that they had huts in “back places,” hidden by bushes, and difficult of access; he had, apparently, been himself quite intimate with them. When the shingle negroes employed them, he told me, they made them get up logs for them, and would give them enough to eat, and some clothes, and perhaps two dollars a month in money. But some, when they owed them money, would betray them, instead of paying them.

I asked if they were ever shot. “Oh, yes,” he said; “when the hunters saw a runaway, if he tried to get from them, they would call out to him, that if he did not stop they would shoot, and if he did not, they would shoot, and sometimes kill him.

“_But some on ’em would rather be shot than be took, sir_,” he added, simply.

A farmer living near the swamp confirmed this account, and said he knew of three or four being shot in one day.

No particular breed of dogs is needed for hunting negroes: blood-hounds, fox-hounds, bull-dogs, and curs were used,[24] and one white man told me how they were trained for it, as if it were a common or notorious practice. They are shut up when puppies, and never allowed to see a negro except while training to catch him. A negro is made to run from them, and they are encouraged to follow him until he gets into a tree, when meat is given them. Afterwards they learn to follow any particular negro by scent, and then a shoe or a piece of clothing is taken off a negro, and they learn to find by scent who it belongs to, and to tree him, etc. All this the farmer told me. I don’t think dogs are employed in the ordinary “driving” in the swamp, but only to overtake some particular slave, as soon as possible, after it is discovered that he has fled from a plantation. Joseph said that it was easy for the drivers to tell a fugitive from a regularly employed slave in the swamps.

“How do they know them?”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, dey looks _strange_.”

“_Skeared_ like, you know, sir, and kind o’ strange, cause dey hasn’t much to eat, and ain’t decent [not decently clothed], like we is.”

When the hunters take a negro who has not a pass, or “free papers,” and they don’t know whose slave he is, they confine him in jail, and advertise him. If no one claims him within a year he is sold to the highest bidder, at a public sale, and this sale gives title in law against any subsequent claimant.

The form of the advertisements used in such cases is shown by the following, which are cut from North Carolina newspapers, published in counties adjoining the Dismals. Such advertisements are quite as common in the papers of many parts of the Slave States as those of horses or cattle “Taken up” in those of the North:—

WAS TAKEN UP and committed to the Jail of Halifax County, on the 26th day of May, a dark coloured boy, who says his name is JORDAN ARTIS. Said boy says he was born free, and was bound out to William Beale, near Murfreesboro, Hertford County, N.C., and is now 21 years of age. The owner is requested to come forward, prove property, pay charges, and take the said boy away, within the time prescribed by law; otherwise he will be dealt with as the law directs.

O. P. SHELL, Jailer.

Halifax County, N.C., June 8,1855.

* * * * *

TAKEN UP,

AND COMMITTED to the Jail of New Hanover County, on the 5th of March, 1855, a Negro Man, who says his name is EDWARD LLOYD. Said negro is about 35 or 40 years old, light complected, 5 feet 9½ inches high, slim built, upper fore teeth out; says he is a Mason by trade, that he is free, and belongs in Alexandria, Va., that he served his time at the Mason business under Mr. Wm. Stuart, of Alexandria. He was taken up and committed as a runaway. His owner is notified to come forward, prove property, pay charges, and take him away, or he will be dealt with as the law directs.

E. D. HALL, Sheriff.

In the same paper with the last are four advertisements of Runaways: two of them, as specimens, I transcribe.

$200 REWARD.

RAN AWAY from the employ of Messrs. Holmes & Brown, on Sunday night, 20th inst., a negro man named YATNEY or MEDICINE, belonging to the undersigned. Said boy is stout built, about 5 feet 4 inches high, 22 years old, and dark complected, and has the appearance, when walking slow, of one leg being a little shorter than the other. He was brought from Chapel Hill, and is probably lurking either in the neighbourhood of that place, or Beatty’s Bridge, in Bladen County.

The above reward will be paid for evidence sufficient to convict any white person of harbouring him, or a reward of $25 for his apprehension and confinement in any Jail in the State, so that I can get him, or for his delivery to me in Wilmington.

J. T. SCHONWALD.

RUNAWAY

FROM THE SUBSCRIBER, on the 27th of May, his negro boy ISOME. Said boy is about 21 years of age; rather light complexion; very coarse hair; weight about 150 lbs.; height about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches; rather pleasing countenance; quick and easy spoken; rather a downcast look. It is thought that he is trying to make his way to Franklin county, N.C., where he was hired in Jan. last, of Thomas J. Blackwell. A liberal Reward will be given for his confinement in any Jail in North or South Carolina, or to any one who will give information where he can be found.

W. H. PRIVETT,

Canwayboro’, S.C.

Handbills, written or printed, offering rewards for the return of runaway slaves, are to be constantly seen at nearly every court-house, tavern, and post-office. The frequency with which these losses must occur, however, on large plantations, is most strongly evidenced by the following paragraph from the domestic-news columns of the _Fayetteville Observer_. A man who would pay these prices must anticipate frequent occasion to use his purchase.

“Mr. J. L. Bryan, of Moore county, sold at public auction, on the 20th instant, a pack of ten hounds, trained for hunting runaways, for the sum of $1,540. The highest price paid for any one dog was $301; lowest price, $75; average for the ten, $154. The terms of sale were six months’ credit, with approved security, and interest from date.”

The newspapers of the South-western States frequently contain advertisements similar to the following, which is taken from the _West Tennessee Democrat_:—

BLOOD-HOUNDS.—I have TWO of the FINEST DOGS for CATCHING NEGROES in the Southwest. They can take the trail TWELVE HOURS after the NEGRO HAS PASSED, and catch him with ease. I live just four miles southwest of Boliver, on the road leading from Boliver to Whitesville. I am ready at all times to catch runaway negroes.—March 2, 1853.

DAVID TURNER.

The largest and best “hotel” in Norfolk had been closed, shortly before I was there, from want of sufficient patronage to sustain it, and I was obliged to go to another house, which, though quite pretending, was shamefully kept. The landlord paid scarcely the smallest attention to the wants of his guests, turned his back when inquiries were made of him, and replied insolently to complaints and requests. His slaves were far his superiors in manners and morals; but, not being one quarter in number what were needed, and consequently not being able to obey one quarter of the orders that were given them, their only study was to disregard, as far as they would be allowed to, all requisitions upon their time and labour. The smallest service could only be obtained by bullying or bribing. Every clean towel that I got during my stay was a matter of special negotiation.

I was first put in a very small room, in a corner of the house, next under the roof. The weather being stormy, and the roof leaky, water was frequently dripping from the ceiling upon the bed and driving in at the window, so as to stand in pools upon the floor. There was no fire-place in the room; the ladies’ parlour was usually crowded by ladies and then friends, among whom I had no acquaintance, and, as it was freezing cold, I was obliged to spend most of my time in the stinking bar-room, where the landlord, all the time, sat with his boon companions, smoking and chewing and talking obscenely.

This crew of old reprobates frequently exercised their indignation upon Mrs. Stowe, and other “Infidel abolitionists;” and, on Sunday, having all attended church, afterwards mingled with their ordinary ribaldry laudations of the “evangelical” character of the sermons they had heard.

On the night I arrived, I was told that I would be provided, the next morning, with a room in which I could have a fire, and a similar promise was given me every twelve hours, for five days, before I obtained it; then, at last, I had to share it with two strangers.

When I left, the same petty sponging operation was practised upon me as at Petersburg. The breakfast, for which half a dollar had been paid, was not ready until an hour after I had been called; and, when ready, consisted of cold salt fish; dried slices of bread and tainted butter; coffee, evidently made the day before and half re-warmed; no milk, the milkman not arriving so early in the morning, the servant said; and no sooner was I seated than the choice was presented to me, by the agitated book-keeper, of going without such as this, or of losing the train, and so being obliged to stay in the house twenty-four hours longer.

Of course I dispensed with the breakfast, and hurried off with the porter, who was to take my baggage on a wheelbarrow to the station. The station was across the harbour, in Portsmouth. Notwithstanding all the haste I could communicate to him, we reached the ferry-landing just as the boat left, too late by three seconds. I looked at my watch; it lacked but twenty minutes of the time at which the landlord and the book-keeper and the breakfast-table waiter and the railroad company’s advertisements had informed me that the train left. “Nebber mine, massa,” said the porter, “dey won’t go widout ’ou—Baltimore boat haant ariv yet; dey doan go till dat come in, sueh.”

Somewhat relieved by this assurance, and by the arrival of others at the landing, who evidently expected to reach the train, I went into the market and got a breakfast from the cake and fruit stalls of the negro-women.

In twenty minutes the ferry-boat returned, and after waiting some time at the landing, put out again; but when midway across the harbour, the wheels ceased to revolve, and for fifteen minutes we drifted with the tide. The fireman had been asleep, the fires had got low, and the steam given out. I observed that the crew, including the master or pilot, and the engineer, were all negroes.

We reached the railroad station about half an hour after the time at which the train should have left. There were several persons, prepared for travelling, waiting about it, but there was no sign of a departing train, and the ticket-office was not open. I paid the porter, sent him back, and was added to the number of the waiters.

The delay was for the Baltimore boat, which arrived in an hour after the time the train was advertised, unconditionally, to start, and the first forward movement was more than an hour and a half behind time. A brakeman told me this delay was not very unusual, and that an hour’s waiting might be commonly calculated upon with safety.

The distance from Portsmouth to Welden, N.C., eighty miles, was run in three hours and twenty minutes—twenty-five miles an hour. The road, which was formerly a very poor and unprofitable one, was bought up a few years ago, mainly, I believe, by Boston capital, and reconstructed in a substantial manner. The grades are light, and there are few curves. Fare, 2¾ cents a mile.

At a way-station a trader had ready a company of negroes, intended to be shipped South; but the “servants’ car” being quite full already, they were obliged to be left for another train. As we departed from the station, I stood upon the platform of the rear car with two other men. One said to the other:—

“That’s a good lot of niggers.”

“Damn’d good; I only wish they belonged to me.”

I entered the car, and took a seat, and presently they followed, and sat near me. Continuing their conversation thus commenced, they spoke of their bad luck in life. One appeared to have been a bar-keeper; the other an overseer. One said the highest wages he had ever been paid were two hundred dollars a year, and that year he hadn’t laid up a cent. Soon after, the other, speaking with much energy and bitterness, said:—

“I wish to God, old Virginny was free of all the niggers.”

“It would be a good thing if she was.”

“Yes, sir; and, I tell you, it would be a damn’d good thing for us poor fellows.”

“I reckon it would, myself.”

* * * * *

When we stopped at Weldon, a man was shouting from a stage-coach, “Passengers for Gaston! Hurry up! Stage is waiting!” As he repeated this the third time, I threw up to him my two valises, and proceeded to climb to the box, to take my seat.

“You are in a mighty hurry, aint ye?”

“Didn’t you say the stage was waiting?”

“If ye’r goin’ ter get any dinner to-day, better get it here; won’t have much other chance. Be right smart about it, too.”

“Then you are not going yet?”

“You can get yer dinner, if ye want to.”

“You’ll call me, will you, when you are ready to go?”

“I shan’t go without ye, ye needn’t be afeard—go ’long in, and get yer dinner; this is the place, if anywar;—don’t want to go without yer dinner, do ye?”

Before arriving at Weldon, a handbill, distributed by the proprietors of this inn, had been placed in my hands, from which I make the following extracts:—

“We pledge our word of honour, as gentlemen, that if the fare at our table be inferior to that on the table of our enterprising competitor, we will not receive a cent from the traveller, but relinquish our claims to pay, as a merited forfeit, for what we would regard as a wanton imposition upon the rights and claims of the unsuspecting traveller.

“We have too much respect for the Ladies of our House, to make even a remote allusion to their domestic duties in a public circular. It will not however, be regarded indelicate in us to say, that the duties performed by them have been, and are satisfactory to us, and, as far as we know, to the public. And we will only add, in this connection, that we take much pleasure in superintending both our “Cook-House” and Table in person, and in administering in person to the wants of our guests.

“We have made considerable improvements in our House of late, and those who wish to remain over at Weldon, will find, with us, airy rooms clean beds, brisk fires, and attentive and orderly servants, with abundance of FRESH OYSTERS during the season, and every necessary and luxury that money can procure.

“It is not our wish to deceive strangers nor others; and if, on visiting our House, they do not find things as here represented, they can publish us to the world as impostors, and the ignominy will be ours.”

Going into the house, I found most of the passengers by the train at dinner, and the few negro boys and girls in too much of a hurry to pay attention to any one in particular. The only palatable viand within my reach was some cold sweet potatoes; of these I made a slight repast, paid the landlord, who stood like a sentry in the doorway, half a dollar, and in fifteen minutes, by my watch, from the time I had entered, went out, anxious to make sure of my seat on the box, for the coach was so small that but one passenger could be conveniently carried outside. The coach was gone.

“O, yes, sir,” said the landlord, hardly disguising his satisfaction; “gone—yes, sir, some time ago; you was in to dinner, was you, sir—pity! you’ll have to stay over till to-morrow now, won’t you?”

“I suppose so,” said I, hardly willing to give up my intention to sleep in Raleigh that night, even to secure a clean bed and fresh oysters. “Which road does the stage go upon?”

“Along the county road.”

“Which is that—this way through the woods?”

“Yes, sir.—Carried off your baggage did he?—Pity! Suppose he forgot you. Pity!”

“Thank you—yes, I suppose he did. Is it a pretty good road?”

“No, sir, ’taint first-rate—good many pretty bad slews. You might go round by the Petersburg Railroad, to-morrow. You’d overtake your baggage at Gaston.”

“Thank you. It was not a very fast team, I know. I’m going to take a little run; and, if I shouldn’t come back before night, you needn’t keep a bed for me. Good day, sir.”

In about half an hour I overhauled the coach: as I came up, the driver hailed me—

“Hallo! that you?”

“Why did not you wait for me, or call me when you wanted to go, as you promised?”

“Reckoned yer was inside—didn’t look in, coz I asked if ’twas all right, and somebody, this ’ere gentleman here”—[who had got my seat]—“‘Yes,’ says he, ‘all right;’ so I reckoned ’twas, and driv along. Mustn’t blame me. Ortn’t to be so long swallerin’ yer dinner—mind, next time!”

The road was as bad as anything under the name of a road can be conceived to be. Wherever the adjoining swamps, fallen trees, stumps, and plantation fences would admit of it, the coach was driven, with a great deal of dexterity, out of the road. When the wheels sunk in the mud, below the hubs, we were sometimes requested to get out and walk. An upset seemed every moment inevitable. At length, it came; and the driver, climbing on to the upper side, opened the door, and asked—

“Got mixed up some in here then, didn’t ye? Ladies, hurt any? Well, come, get out here; don’t want to stay here all night I reckon, do ye?—Aint nothing broke, as I see. We’ll right her right up. Nary durn’d rail within a thousan’ mile, I don’t s’pose; better be lookin’ roun’; got to get somethin’ for a pry.”

In four hours after I left the hotel at Weldon, the coach reached the bank of the Roanoke, a distance of fourteen miles, and stopped. “Here we are,” said the driver, opening the door.

“Where are we—not in Gaston?”

“Durned nigh it. That ere’s Gaston, over thar; and you jast holler, and they’ll come over arter you in the boat.”

Gaston was a mile above us, and on the other side of the river. Nearly opposite was a house, and a scow drawn up on the beach; the distance across the river was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile. When the driver had got the luggage off, he gathered his reins, and said—

“Seems to me them ther gol-durned lazy niggers aint a goin’ to come over arter you now; if they won’t you’d better go up to the railroad bridge, some of ye, and get a boat, or else go down here to Free Town; some of them cussed free niggers ’ll be glad of the job, I no doubt.”

“But, confound it, driver! you are not going to leave us here, are you? we paid to be carried to Gaston.”

“Can’t help it; you are clus to Gaston, any how, and if any man thinks he’s goin’ to hev me drive him up to the bridge to-night, he’s damnably mistaken, he is, and I aint a goin’ to do it not for no man, I ain’t.”

And away he drove, leaving us, all strangers, in a strange country, just at the edge of night, far from any house, to “holler.”

The only way to stop him was to shoot him; and, as we were all good citizens, and travelled with faith in the protection of the law, and not like knights-errant, armed for adventure, we could not do that.

Good citizens? No, we were not; for we have all, to this day, neglected to prosecute the fellow, or his employers. It would, to be sure, have cost us ten times any damages we should have been awarded; but, if we had been really good citizens, we should have been as willing to sacrifice the necessary loss, as knights-errant of old were to risk life to fight bloody giants. And, until many of us can have the nobleness to give ourselves the trouble and expense of killing off these impudent highwaymen of our time, at law, we have all got to suffer in their traps and stratagems.

We soon saw the “gol-durned lazy niggers” come to their scow, and after a scrutiny of our numbers, and a consultation among themselves, which evidently resulted in the conclusion that the job wouldn’t pay, go back.

When it began to grow dark, leaving me as a baggage-guard, the rest of the coach’s company walked up the bank of the river, and crossed by a railroad bridge to Gaston. One of them afterwards returned with a gang of negroes, whom he had hired, and a large freight-boat, into which, across the snags which lined the shore, we passed all the baggage. Among the rest, there were some very large and heavy chests, belonging to two pretty women, who were moving, with their effects; and, although they remained in our company all the next day, they not only neglected to pay their share of the boat and negro-hire, but forgot to thank us, or even gratefully to smile upon us, for our long toil in the darkness for them.

Working up the swollen stream of the Roanoke, with setting-poles and oars, we at length reached Gaston. When I bought my tickets at the station in Portsmouth, I said, “I will take tickets to any place this side of Raleigh at which I can arrive before night. I wish to avoid travelling after dark.” “You can go straight through to Raleigh, before dark,” said the clerk. “You are sure of that?” “Yes, sir.” On reaching Gaston, I inquired at what time the train for Raleigh had passed: “At three o’clock.”

According to the advertisement, it should have passed at two o’clock; and, under the most favourable circumstances, it could not have been possible for us, leaving Portsmouth at the time we did, to reach Gaston before four o’clock, or Raleigh in less than twenty-eight hours after the time promised. The next day, I asked one of the railroad men how often the connection occurred, which is advertised in the Northern papers, as if it were a certain thing to take place at Gaston. “Not very often, sir; it hain’t been once, in the last two weeks.” Whenever the connection is not made, all passengers whom these railroad freebooters have drawn into their ambush, are obliged to remain over a day, at Gaston; for, as is to be supposed, with such management, the business of the road will support but one train a day.

The route by sea, from Baltimore to Portsmouth, and thence by these lines, is advertised as the surest, cheapest, and most expeditious route to Raleigh. Among my stage companions, were some who lived beyond Raleigh. This was Friday. They would now not reach Raleigh till Saturday night, and such as could not conscientiously travel on Sunday, would be detained from home two days longer than if they had come the land route. One of them lived some eighty miles beyond Raleigh, and intended to proceed by a coach, which was to leave Saturday morning. He would probably be now detained till the following Wednesday, as the coach left Raleigh but twice a week.

The country from Portsmouth to Gaston, eighty miles, partly in Virginia, and partly in North Carolina, is almost all pine forest, or cypress swamp; and on the little land that is cultivated, I saw no indication of any other crop than maize. The soil is light and poor. Between Weldon and Gaston there are heavier soils, and we passed several cotton fields, and planters’ mansions. On the low, flat lands bordering the banks of the Roanoke, the soil is of the character of that of James River, fine, fertile, mellow loam; and the maize crop seemed to have been heavy.

Gaston is a village of some twenty houses, shops, and cabins, besides the railroad storehouses, the hotel, and a nondescript building, which may be either a fancy barn, or a little church, getting high. From the manner in which passengers are forced, by the management of the trains arriving here, to patronize it, the hotel, I presume, belongs to the railroad companies. It is ill-kept, but affords some entertainment from its travesty of certain metropolitan vulgarities. I was chummed with a Southern gentleman, in a very small room. Finding the sheets on both our beds had been soiled by previous occupants, he made a row about it with the servants, and, after a long delay, had them changed; then observing that it was probably the mistress’s fault, and not the servants’, he paid the negro, whom he had been berating, for his trouble.

Among our inside passengers, in the stage-coach, was a free coloured woman; she was treated in no way differently from the white ladies. My room-mate said this was entirely customary at the South, and no Southerner would ever think of objecting to it. Notwithstanding which, I have known young Southerners to get very angry because negroes were not excluded from the public conveyances in which they had taken passage themselves, at the North; and I have always supposed that when they were so excluded, it was from fear of offending Southern travellers, more than anything else.[25]

Sitting near some men lounging on the river-bank, I took notes of the following interesting information, delivered in a high-keyed, blatant drawl:—

“The best medicine there is, is this here Idee of Potasun. It’s made out of two minerals; one on ’em they gets in the mountains of Scotland—that’s the Idee; the other’s steel-filings, and they mixes them eschemically until they works altogether into a solid stuff like saltpetre. Now, I tell you that’s the stuff for medicine. It’s the best thing a man can ever put into his self. It searches out every narve in his body.”

The train by which we were finally able to leave Gaston arrived the next day an hour and a half after its advertised time. The road was excellent and the speed good, a heavy U rail having lately been substituted for a flat one. A new equipment of the road, throughout, is nearly complete. The cars of this train were very old, dirty, and with dilapidated and moth-eaten furniture. They furnished me with a comfort, however, which I have never been able to try before—a full-length lounge, on which, with my overcoat for a pillow, the car being warmed, and unintentionally well ventilated, I slept soundly after dark. Why night-trains are not furnished with sleeping apartments, has long been a wonder to me. We have now smoking-rooms and water-closets on our trains; why not sleeping, dressing, and refreshment rooms? With these additions, and good ventilation, we could go from New York to New Orleans, by rail, without stopping: as it is, a man of ordinary constitution cannot go a quarter that distance without suffering serious indisposition. Surely such improvements could not fail to be remunerative, particularly on lines competing with water communication.

The country passed through, so far as I observed, was almost entirely covered with wood; and such of it as was cultivated, very unproductive.

The city of Raleigh (old Sir Walter), the capital of North Carolina, is a pleasing town—the streets wide, and lined with trees, and many white wooden mansions, all having little court-yards of flowers and shrubbery around them. The State-house is, in every way, a noble building, constructed of brownish-gray granite, in Grecian style. It stands on an elevated position, near the centre of the city, in a square field, which is shaded by some tall old oaks, and could easily be made into an appropriate and beautiful little park; but which, with singular negligence, or more singular economy (while $500,000 has been spent upon the simple edifice), remains in a rude state of undressed nature, and is used as a hog-pasture. A trifle of the expense, employed with doubtful advantage, to give a smooth exterior face to the blocks of stone, if laid out in grading, smoothing, and dressing its ground base, would have added indescribably to the beauty of the edifice. An architect should always begin his work upon the ground.

It is hard to admire what is common; and it is, perhaps, asking too much of the citizens of Raleigh, that they should plant for ornament, or even cause to be retained about such institutions as their Lunatic Asylum, the beautiful evergreens that crowd about the town; but can any man walk from the Capitol oaks to the pine grove, a little beyond the Deaf and Dumb Institution, and say that he would not far rather have the latter than the former to curtain in his habitation? If he can in summer, let him try it again, as I did, in a soft winter’s day, when the evergreens fill the air with a balsamic odour, and the green light comes quivering through them, and the foot falls silently upon the elastic carpet they have spread, deluding one with all the feelings of spring.

The country, for miles about Raleigh, is nearly all pine forest, unfertile, and so little cultivated, that it is a mystery how a town of 2,500 inhabitants can obtain sufficient supplies from it to exist.

The public-house at which I stayed was, however, not only well supplied, but was excellently well kept, for a house of its class, in all other respects. The landlord superintended his business personally, and was always attentive and obliging to his guests; and the servants were sufficiently numerous, intelligent, and well instructed. Though I had no acquaintances in Raleigh, I remained, finding myself in such good quarters, several days. I think the house was called “The Burlinghame.”

After this stay, rendered also partly necessary for the repair of damages to my clothing and baggage on the Weldon stage, I engaged a seat one day on the coach, advertised to leave at nine o’clock for Fayetteville. At half-past nine, tired of waiting for its departure, I told the agent, as it was not ready to start, I would walk on a bit, and let them pick me up. I found a rough road—for several miles a clayey surface and much water—and was obliged to pick my way a good deal through the woods on either side. Stopping frequently, when I came to cultivated land, to examine the soil and the appearance of the stubble of the maize—the only crop—in three different fields I made five measurements at random, of fifty feet each, and found the stalks had stood, on an average, five feet by two feet one inch apart, and that, generally, they were not over an inch in diameter at the butt. In one old-field, in process of clearing for new cultivation, I examined a most absurd little plough, with a share not more than six inches in depth, and eight in length on the sole, fastened by a socket to a stake, to which was fitted a short beam and stilts. It was drawn by one mule, and its work among the stumps could only be called scratching. A farmer told me that he considered twenty-five bushels of corn a large crop, and that he generally got only as much as fifteen. He said that no money was to be got by raising corn, and very few farmers here “made” any more than they needed for their own force. It cost too much to get it to market, and yet sometimes they had to buy corn at a dollar a bushel, and waggon it home from Raleigh, or further, enough not having been raised in the country for home consumption. Cotton was the only crop they got any money for. I, nevertheless, did not see a single cotton-field during the day. He said that the largest crop of corn that he knew of, reckoned to be fifty bushels to the acre, had been raised on some reclaimed swamp, while it was still so wet that horses would mire on it all the summer, and most of it had been tended entirely with hoes.

After walking a few miles, the country became more flat, and was covered with old forests of yellow pine, and, at nine miles south of Raleigh, there were occasionally young long-leaved pines: exceedingly beautiful they are while young, the colour being more agreeable than that of any other pine, and the leaves, or “straw,” as its foliage is called here, long, graceful, and lustrous. As the tree gets older, it becomes of a stiffer character and darker colour.

I do not think I passed, in ten miles, more than half a dozen homesteads, and of these but one was at all above the character of a hut or cabin. The same remarkable appearance of listlessness, which I had noticed so often in Virginia, characterized the men who stood leaning against the logs of the hovels. They blinked at me as I passed, as if unable to withdraw their hands from their pockets to shade their eyes. Every dwelling sent its pack of curs to meet me, and as often as they opened cry, a woman, with a pipe in her mouth, would come to the door and call me off; the men and boys blinking on in rest and silence.

A little after one o’clock I reached “Banks’s,” a plantation where the stage horses are changed, eleven miles from Raleigh. Here I waited nearly an hour, till the coach arrived, when, fresh horses having been put on, I took an outside seat.

“There ain’t a man in North Car’lina could drive them horses up the hills without a whip,” said the driver. “You ought to get yesef a whip, massa,” said one of the negroes. “Durnation! think I’m going to buy whips! the best whip in North Car’lina wouldn’t last a week on this road.” “Dat’s a fac—dat ar is a fac; but look yeah, massa, ye let me hab yer stick, and I’ll make a whip for ye; ye nebber can make Bawley go widout it, no how.” The stick was a sapling rod, of which two or three lay on the coach top; the negro fastened a long leather thong to it. “Dah! ye can fetch old Bawley wi’ dat.” “Bawley” had been tackled in as the leader of the “spike team;” but, upon attempting to start, it was found that he couldn’t be driven in that way at all, and the driver took him out and put him to the pole, within reach of the butt of his stick, and another horse was put on the lead.

One negro now took the leader by the head, and applied a stick lustily to his flanks; another, at the near wheeler, did the same; and the driver belaboured Bawley from the box. But as soon as they began to move forward, and the negro let go the leader’s head, he would face about. After this had been repeated many times, a new plan of operations was arranged that proved successful. Leaving the two wheelers to the care of the negroes, the driver was enabled to give all his attention to the leader. When the wheelers started, of course he was struck by the pole, upon which he would turn tail and start for the stable. The negroes kept the wheelers from following him, and the driver with his stick, and another negro with the bough of a tree, thrashed his face; he would then turn again, and, being hit by the pole, start ahead. So, after ten minutes of fearful outcry, we got off.

“How far is it to Mrs. Barclay’s?” a passenger had asked. “Thirteen miles,” answered a negro; “but I tell ’ou, massa, dais a heap to be said and talk ’bout ’fore ’ou see Missy Barclay’s wid dem hosses.” There was, indeed.

“Bawley—_you!_ Bawley—Bawley! wha’ ’bout?—ah!”

“_Rock!_ wha’ you doin’?—(durned sick horse—an’t fit to be in a stage, nohow).”

“Bawley! you! g’up!”

“Oh! you dod-rotted Bob—_Bob!_—(he don’t draw a pound, and he an’t a gwine to)—_you_, Bob!—(well, he can’t stop, can he, as long as the wheelers keep movin’?) Bob! I’ll break yer legs, you don’t git out the way.”

“Oh, Bawley!—(no business to put such a lame hoss into the stage.) Blamnation, Bawley! Now, if you stop, I’ll kill you.”

“Wha’ ’bout, Rock? Dod burn that Rock! You stop if you dare! (I’ll be durned to Hux if that ’ere hoss arn’t all used up.)”

“You, _Bob!_ get out de way, or I’ll be——.”

“Oh! d’rot yer soul, Bawley—y’re gwine to stop! G’up! G’up! _Rock!_ You all-fired ole villain! Wha’ ’bout? (If they jus’ git to stoppin’, all hell couldn’t git the mails through to-night.)”

After about three miles of this, they did stop. The driver threw the reins down in despair. After looking at the wheels, and seeing that we were on a good piece of road, nothing unusual to hinder progress, he put his hands in his pockets, and sat quietly a minute, and then began, in a business-like manner, to swear, no longer confining himself to the peculiar idiomatic profanity of the country, but using real, outright, old-fashioned, uncompromising English oaths, as loud as he could yell. Then he stopped, and after another pause, began to talk quietly to the horses:

“You, Bob, you won’t draw? Didn’t you git enough last night? (I jabbed my knife into his face twice when we got into that fix last night;” and the wounds on the horse’s head showed that he spoke the truth.) “I swar, Bob, if I have to come down thar, I’ll cut your throat.”

He stopped again, and then sat down on the foot-board, and began to beat the wheelers as hard and as rapidly as possible with the butt of his stick. They started, and, striking Bob with the pole, he jumped and turned round; but a happy stroke on “the raw” in his face brought him to his place; and the stick being applied just in time to the wheelers, he caught the pole and jumped ahead. We were off again.

“Turned over in that ’ere mire hole last night,” said the driver. “Couldn’t do anythin’ with ’em—passengers camped out—thar’s were they had their fire, under that tree; didn’t get to Raleigh till nine o’clock this mornin’. That’s the reason I wern’t along after you any sooner—hadn’t got my breakfast; that’s the reason the hosses don’t draw no better to-day, too, I s’pose. _You_, Rock!—_Bawley!_—BOB!”

After two miles more, the horses stopped once more. The driver now quietly took the leader off (he had never drawn at all), and tied him behind the coach. He then began beating the near wheeler, a passenger did the same to Bawley—both standing on the ground—while I threw off my overcoat and walked on. For a time I could occasionally hear the cry, “Bawl-Rock!” and knew that the coach was moving again; gradually I outwalked the sound.

The road was a mere opening through a forest of the long-leafed pine; the trees from eight to eighteen inches in diameter, with straight trunks bare for nearly thirty feet, and their evergreen foliage forming a dense dark canopy at that height, the surface of the ground undulating with long swells, occasionally low and wet. In the latter case, there was generally a mingling of deciduous trees and a watercourse crossing the road, with a thicket of shrubs. The soil sandy, with occasionally veins of clay; the latter more commonly in the low ground, or in the descent to it. Very little grass, herbage, or underwood; and the ground covered, except in the road, with the fallen pine-leaves. Every tree, on one, two, or three sides, was scarified for turpentine. In ten miles, I passed half a dozen cabins, one or two small clearings, in which corn had been planted, and one turpentine distillery, with a dozen sheds and cabins clustered about it.

In about an hour after I left the coach, the driver, mounted on Bob, overtook me: he was going on to get fresh horses.

After dark, I had some difficulty in keeping the road, there being frequent forks, and my only guide the telegraph wire. I had to cross three or four brooks, which were now high, and had sometimes floated off the logs which, in this country, are commonly placed, for the teamsters, along the side of the road, where it runs through water. I could generally jump from stump to stump; and, by wading a little at the edges in my staunch Scotch shooting-boots, get across dry-shod. Where, however, the water was too deep, I always found, by going up or down stream, a short way, a fallen trunk across it, by which I got over.

I met the driver returning with two fresh horses; and at length, before eight o’clock, reached a long one-story cabin, which I found to be Mrs. Barclay’s. It was right cheerful and comforting to open the door, from the dark, damp, chilly night, into a large room, filled with blazing light from a great fire of turpentine pine, by which two stalwart men were reading newspapers, a door opening into a background of supper-table and kitchen, and a nice, stout, kindly-looking, Quaker-like old lady coming forward to welcome me.

As soon as I was warm, I was taken out to supper: seven preparations of swine’s flesh, two of maize, wheat cakes, broiled quails, cold roast turkey, coffee, and tea.

My bed-room was a house by itself, the only connection between it and the main building being a platform, or gallery, in front. A great fire burned here also in a broad fire-place; a stuffed easy-chair had been placed before it, and a tub of hot water, which I had not thought to ask for, to bathe my weary feet.

And this was a piny-woods stage-house! But genius will find its development, no matter where its lot is cast; and there is as much genius for inn-keeping as for poetry. Mrs. Barclay is a Burns in her way, and with even more modesty; for, after twenty-four hours of the best entertainment that could be asked for, I was only charged one dollar. I paid two dollars for my stage-coach privileges—to wit, riding five miles and walking twenty-one.

At three o’clock in the morning, the three gentlemen that I had left ten miles back at four o’clock the previous day, were dragged, shivering in the stage-coach, to the door. They had had no meal since breakfasting at Raleigh; and one of them was now so tired that he could not eat, but dropt prone on the floor before the fire and slept the half-hour they were changing horses, or rather resting horses, for no relay was left.

I afterwards met one of the company in Fayetteville. Their night’s adventure after I left them, and the continued cruelty to the horses, were most distressing. The driver once got off the box, and struck the poor, miserable, sick “Rock” with a rail, and actually knocked him down in the road. At another time, after having got fresh horses, when they, too, were “stalled,” he took them out of the harness and turned them loose, and, refusing to give any answer to the inquiries of the passengers, looked about for a dry place, and laid down and went to sleep on the ground. One of the passengers had then walked on to Mrs. Barclay’s, and obtained a pair of mules, with which the coach was finally brought to the house. The remainder kindled a fire, and tried to rest themselves by it. They were sixteen hours in coming thirty miles, suffering much from cold, and without food.

The next day I spent in visiting turpentine and rosin works, piny-wood farms, etc., under the obliging guidance of Mrs. Barclay’s son-in-law, and in the evening again took the coach. The horses were better than on the previous stage: upon my remarking this to the driver, he said that the reason was, that they took care of this team themselves (the drivers); on the last stage the horses were left to negroes, who would not feed them regularly, nor take any decent care of them. “Why, what do you think?” said he; “when I got to Banks’s, this morning, I found my team hadn’t been fed all day; they hadn’t been rubbed nor cleaned, nary durned thing done to ’em, and thar the cussed darkey was, fast asleep. Reckon I didn’t gin him a wakin’ up!”

“You don’t mean the horses that you drove up?”

“Yes, I do, and they hadn’t a cussed thing to eat till they got back to Barclay’s!”

“How was it possible for you to drive them back?”

“Why, I don’t suppose I could ha’ done it if I’d had any passengers: (you _Suze_!) shall lose a mail again to-night, if this mare don’t travel better, (durn ye, yer ugly, I believe). She’s a good mare—a heap of go in her, but it takes right smart of work to get it out. _Suze!_”

So we toiled on, with incessant shouting, and many strange piny-wood oaths, and horrid belabouring of the poor horses’ backs, with the butt-end of a hickory whip-stalk, till I really thought their spinal-columns must break. The country, the same undulating pine forest, the track tortuous among the trees, which frequently stood so close that it required some care to work between them. Often we made detours from the original road, to avoid a fallen tree, or a mire-hole, and all the time we were bouncing over protruding roots and small stumps. There was but little mud, the soil being sand, but now and then a deep slough. In one of these we found a waggon, heavily laden, stuck fast, and six mules and five negroes tugging at it. With our help it was got out of the way, and we passed on. Soon afterwards we met the return coach, apparently in a similar predicament; but one of the passengers, whom I questioned, replied: “No, not stalled, exactly, but somehow _the horses won’t draw_. We have been more than three hours coming about four miles.”

“How is it you have so many balky horses?” I asked the driver.

“The old man buys ’em up cheap, ’cause nobody else can do anything with ’em.”

“I should not think you could do much with them, either—except to kill them.”

“Well, that’s what the old man says he buys ’em for. He was blowing me up for losing the mail t’other night; I told him, says I, ‘You have to a’most kill them horses, ’fore you can make ’em draw a bit,’ says I. ‘Kill ’em, damn ’em, kill em, then; that’s what I buy ’em for,’ says he. ‘I buy ’em a purpose to kill; that’s all they are good for, ain’t it?’ says he. ‘Don’t s’pose they’re going to last for ever, do ye?’ says he.”

We stopped once, nearly half an hour, for some unexplained reason, before a house on the road. The door of the house was open, an enormous fire was burning in it, and, at the suggestion of the driver, I went in to warm myself. It was a large log-cabin, of two rooms, with beds in each room, and with an apartment overhead, to which access was had by a ladder. Among the inmates were two women; one of them sat in the chimney-corner smoking a pipe, and rocking a cradle; the other sat directly before the fire, and full ten feet distant. She was apparently young, but her face was as dry and impassive as a dead man’s. She was doing nothing, and said but little; but, once in about a minute, would suddenly throw up her chin, and spit with perfect precision into the hottest embers of the fire. The furniture of the house was more scanty and rude than I ever saw before in any house, with women living in it, in the United States. Yet these people were not so poor but that they had a negro woman cutting and bringing wood for their fire.

It must be remembered that this is a long-settled country, having been occupied by Anglo-Saxons as early as any part of the Free States, and that it is the main road between the capital of North Carolina and its chief sea-port.

There is nothing that is more closely connected, both as cause and effect, with the prosperity and wealth of a country, than its means and modes of travelling, and of transportation of the necessities and luxuries of life. I saw this day, as I shall hereafter describe, three thousand barrels of resin, worth a dollar and a half a barrel in New York, thrown away, a mere heap of useless offal, because it would cost more to transport it than it would be worth. There was a single waggon, with a ton or two of sugar, and flour, and tea, and axes, and cotton cloths, unable to move, with six mules, and five negroes at work upon it. Raleigh is a large distributing post-office, getting a very heavy mail from the North; here was all that is sent by one of its main radii, travelling one day two miles an hour, the next four miles, and on each occasion failing to connect with the conveyances which we pay to scatter further the intelligence and wealth transmitted by it. Barbarous is too mild a term to apply to the manner in which even this was done. The improvidence, if not the cruelty, no sensible barbarian could have been guilty of.

Afterwards, merely to satisfy my mind (for there is a satisfaction in seeing even scoundrelism consistently carried out, if attempted at all in a business), I called on the agent of the line at Fayetteville, stated the case, and asked if any part of what I had paid for my passage would be returned me, on account of the disappointment and delay which I had suffered from the inability of the proprietor to carry out his contract with me. The impudence of the suggestion, of course, only created amusement; and I was smilingly informed that the business was not so “lucky” that the proprietor could afford to pay back money that he had once got into his hands. What I had seen was regarded by no one, apparently, as at all unusual.

At one of the stations for changing horses, an old coloured man was taken into the coach. I ascertained from him that he was a blacksmith, and had been up the line to shoe the horses at the different stables. Probably he belonged (poor fellow!) to the man who bought horses to be killed in doing his work. After answering my inquiries, he lay down in the bottom of the coach, and slept until we reached Fayetteville. The next time we changed, the new driver inquired of the old one what passengers he had. “Only one gentleman, and old man Ned.”

“Oh! is old man along—that’s good—if we should turn over, or break down, or anything, reckon he could nigh about pray us up—he’s right smart at prayin’.”

“Well, I tell you, now, ole man can trot out as smart a prayer, when he’s a mind to go in for’t, as any man I ever heerd, durned if he can’t.”

The last ten miles we came over rapidly, smoothly, and quietly, by a plank-road, reaching Fayetteville about twelve, of a fine, clear, frosty night.

Entering the office or bar-room of the stage-house, at which I had been advised to stay while in Fayetteville, I found it occupied by a group of old soakers, among whom was one of perhaps sixteen years of age. This lad, without removing the cigar which he had in his mouth, went to the bar, whither I followed him, and, without saying a word, placed an empty tumbler before me.

“I don’t wish anything to drink,” said I; “I am cold and tired, and I would like to go to a room. I intend to stay here some days, and I should be glad if you could give me a private room with a fire in it.”

“Room with a fire in it?” he inquired, as he handed me the registry-book.

“Yes; and I will thank you to have it made immediately, and let my baggage be taken up.”

He closed the book, after I had written my name, and returned to his seat at the stove, leaving me standing, and immediately engaged in conversation, without paying any attention to my request. I waited some time, during which a negro came into the room, and went out again. I then repeated my request, necessarily aloud, and in such a way as to be understood, not only by the boy, but by all the company. Immediately all conversation ceased, and every head was turned to look at me. The lad paused a moment, spit upon the stove, and then—

“Want a room to yourself?”

“Yes, if convenient.”

No answer and no movement, all the company staring at me as if at a detected burglar.

“Perhaps you can’t accommodate me?”

“Want a fire made in your room?”

“Why, yes, if convenient; but I should like to go to my room, at any rate; I am very tired.”

After puffing and spitting for a moment, he rose and pulled a bell; then took his seat again. In about five minutes a negro came in, and during all this time there was silence.

“What’ll you drink, Baker?” said the lad, rising and going to the bar, and taking no notice of the negro’s entrance. A boozy man followed him, and made some reply; the lad turned out two glasses of spirits, added water to one, and drank it in a gulp.[26]

“Can this boy show me to my room?” I asked.

“Anybody in number eleven, Peter?”

“Not as I knows on, sar.”

“Take this man’s baggage up there.”

I followed the negro up to number eleven, which was a large back room in the upper story, with four beds in it.

“Peter,” said I, “I want a fire made here.”

“Want a fire, sar?”

“Yes, I want you to make a fire.”

“Want a fire, master, this time o’ night?”

“Why, yes; I want a fire. Where are you going with the lamp?”

“Want a lamp, massa?”

“Want a lamp? Certainly, I do.”

After about ten minutes, I heard a man splitting wood in the yard, and, in ten more, Peter brought in three sticks of green wood, and some chips; then, the little bed-lamp having burned out, he went into an adjoining room, where I heard him talking to some one, evidently awakened by his entrance to get a match; that failing, he went for another. By one o’clock, my fire was made.

“Peter,” said I, “are you going to wait on me, while I stay here?”

“Yes, sar; I ’tends to dis room.”

“Very well; take this, and, when I leave, I’ll give you another, if you take good care of me. Now, I want you to get me some water.”

“I’ll get you some water in de morning, sar.”

“I want some to-night—some water and some towels; don’t you think you can get them for me?”

“I reckon so, massa, if you wants ’em. Want ’em ’fore you go to bed?”

“Yes; and get another lamp.”

“Want a lamp?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Won’t the fire do you?”

“No; bring a lamp. That one won’t burn without filling; you need not try it.”

The water and the lamp came, after a long time.

In the morning, early, I was awakened by a knock at the door.

“Who’s there?”

“Me, massa; I wants your boots to black.”

I got up, opened the door, and returned to bed. Falling asleep, I was soon again awakened by Peter throwing down an armful of wood upon the floor. Slept again, and was again awakened, by Peter’s throwing up the window, to empty out the contents of the wash bowl, etc. The room was filled with smoke of the fat light wood: Peter had already made a fire for me to dress by; but I again fell asleep, and, when I next awoke, the breakfast bell was ringing. Peter had gone off, and left the window and door open, and the fire had burned out. My boots had been taken away, and the bell-wire was broken. I dressed, and walking to the bar-room, asked the bar-keeper—a complaisant, full-grown man—for my boots. He did not know where they were, and rang the bell for Peter. Peter came, was reprimanded for his forgetfulness, and departed. Ten minutes elapsed, and he did not return. I again requested that he should be called; and this time he brought my boots. He had had to stop to black them; having, he said, been too busy to do it before breakfast.

The following evening, as it grew too cold to write in my room, I went down, and found Peter, and told him I wanted a fire again, and that he might get me a couple of candles. When he came up, he brought one of the little bed-lamps, with a capacity of oil for fifteen minutes’ use. I sent him down again to the office, with a request to the proprietor that I might be furnished with candles. He returned, and reported that there were no candles in the house.

“Then, get me a larger lamp.”

“Aint no larger lamps, nuther, sar;—none to spare.”

“Then go out, and see if you can’t buy me some candles, somewhere.”

“Aint no stores open, Sunday, massa, and I don’t know where I can buy ’em.”

“Then go down, and tell the bar-keeper, with my compliments, that I wish to write in my room, and I would be obliged to him if he would send me a light, of some sort; something that will last longer, and give more light, than these little lamps.”

“He won’t give you none, massa—not if you hab a fire. Can’t you see by da light of da fire? When a gentlemen hab a fire in his room, dey don’t count he wants no more light ’n dat.”

“Well, make the fire, and I’ll go down and see about it.”

As I reached the foot of the stairs, the bell rang, and I went in to tea. The tea table was moderately well lighted with candles. I waited till the company had generally left it, and then said to one of the waiters—

“Here are two dimes: I want you to bring me, as soon as you can, two of these candles to number eleven; do you understand?”

“Yes, sar; I’ll fotch ’em, sar.”

And he did.

About eight o’clock, there was an alarm of fire. Going into the street, I was surprised to observe how leisurely the people were walking toward the house in flames, standing very prominently, as it did, upon a hill, at one end of the town. As I passed a church, the congregation was coming out; but very few quickened their step above a strolling pace. Arrived near the house, I was still more astonished to see how few, of the crowd assembled, were occupied in restraining the progress of the fire, or in saving the furniture, and at the prevailing stupidity, confusion, and want of system and concert of action, in the labour for this purpose. A large majority of those engaged were negroes. As I returned toward the hotel, a gentleman, walking, with a lady, before me, on the side walk, accosted a negro whom he met:

“What! Moses! That you? Why were you not here sooner?”

“Why, Mass Richard, I was singing, an’ I didn’ her de bells and——I see twant in our ward, sar, and so I didn’ see as dar was zactly ’casion for me to hurry myself to def. Ef eed a been in our ward, Mass Richard, I’d a rallied, you knows I would. Mose would ha rallied, ef eed a been in our ward—ha! ha! ha!—you knows it, Mass Richard!”

And he passed on, laughing comically, without farther reproof.

* * * * *

_Fayetteville._—The negroes employed in the turpentine business, to which during the last week I have been giving some examination, seem to me to be unusually intelligent and cheerful, decidedly more so than most of the white people inhabiting the turpentine forest. Among the latter there is a large number, I should think a majority, of entirely uneducated, poverty-stricken vagabonds. I mean by vagabonds, simply, people without habitual, definite occupation or reliable means of livelihood. They are poor, having almost no property but their own bodies; and the use of these, that is, their labour, they are not accustomed to hire out statedly and regularly, so as to obtain capital by wages, but only occasionally by the day or job, when driven to it by necessity. A family of these people will commonly hire, or “squat” and build, a little log cabin, so made that it is only a shelter from rain, the sides not being chinked, and having no more furniture or pretension to comfort than is commonly provided a criminal in the cell of a prison. They will cultivate a little corn, and possibly a few roods of potatoes, cow-peas, and coleworts. They will own a few swine, that find their living in the forest; and pretty certainly, also, a rifle and dogs; and the men, ostensibly, occupy most of their time in hunting. I am, mainly, repeating the statements of one of the turpentine distillers, but it was confirmed by others, and by my own observation, so far as it went.

A gentleman of Fayetteville told me that he had, several times, appraised, under oath, the whole household property of families of this class at less than $20. If they have need of money to purchase clothing, etc., they obtain it by selling their game or meal. If they have none of this to spare, or an insufficiency, they will work for a neighbouring farmer for a few days, and they usually get for their labour fifty cents a day, _finding themselves_. The farmers and distillers say, that they do not like to employ them, because they cannot be relied upon to finish what they undertake, or to work according to directions; and because, being white men, they cannot “drive” them. That is to say, their labour is even more inefficient and unmanageable than that of slaves.

That I have not formed an exaggerated estimate of the proportion of such a class, will appear to the reader more probable from the testimony of a pious colporteur, given before a public meeting in Charleston, in February, 1855. I quote from a Charleston paper’s report. The colporteur had been stationed at —— county, N.C.:—“_The larger portion_ of the inhabitants seemed to be totally given up to a species of mental hallucination, which carried them captive at its will. They nearly all believed implicitly in witchcraft, and attributed everything that happened, good or bad, to the agency of persons whom they supposed possessed of evil spirits.”

The majority of what I have termed turpentine-farmers—meaning the small proprietors of the long-leafed pine forest land—are people but a grade superior, in character or condition, to these vagabonds. They have habitations more like houses—log-cabins, commonly, sometimes chinked, oftener not—without windows of glass, but with a few pieces of substantial old-fashioned heir-loom furniture; a vegetable garden, in which, however, you will find no vegetable but what they call “collards” (colewort) for “greens;” fewer dogs, more swine, and larger clearings for maize, but no better crops than the poorer class. Their property is, nevertheless, often of considerable money value, consisting mainly of negroes, who, associating intimately with their masters, are of superior intelligence to the slaves of the wealthier classes.

Some of the larger proprietors, who are also often cotton planters, cultivating the richer low lands, are said to be gentlemen of good estate—intelligent, cultivated, and hospitable.

North Carolina has a proverbial reputation for the ignorance and torpidity of her people; being, in this respect, at the head of the Slave States. I do not find the reason of this in any innate quality of the popular mind; but, rather, in the circumstances under which it finds its development. Owing to the general poverty of the soil in the Eastern part of the State, and to the almost exclusive employment of slave labour on the soils productive of cotton; owing, also, to the difficulty and expense of reaching market with bulky produce from the interior and western districts, population and wealth is more divided than in the other Atlantic States; industry is almost entirely rural, and there is but little communication or concert of action among the small and scattered proprietors of capital. For the same reason, the advantages of education are more difficult to be enjoyed, the distance at which families reside apart preventing children from coming together in such numbers as to give remunerative employment to a teacher. The teachers are, generally, totally unfitted for their business; young men, as a clergyman informed me, themselves not only unadvanced beyond the lowest knowledge of the elements of primary school learning, but often coarse, vulgar, and profane in their language and behaviour, who take up teaching as a temporary business, to supply the demand of a neighbourhood of people as ignorant and uncultivated as themselves.

The native white population of North Carolina is 550,267 The whole white population under 20 years, is 301,106 Leaving white adults over 20 249,161 Of these there are natives who cannot read and write[27] 73,226

Being more than one-fourth of the native white adults.

But the aspect of North Carolina with regard to slavery, is, in some respects, less lamentable than that of Virginia. There is not only less bigotry upon the subject, and more freedom of conversation, but I saw here, in the institution, more of patriarchal character than in any other State. The slave more frequently appears as a family servant—a member of his master’s family, interested with him in his fortune, good or bad. This is a result of the less concentration of wealth in families or individuals, occasioned by the circumstances I have described. Slavery thus loses much of its inhumanity. It is still questionable, however, if, as the subject race approaches civilization, the dominant race is not proportionately detained in its onward progress. One is forced often to question, too, in viewing slavery in this aspect, whether humanity and the accumulation of wealth, the prosperity of the master, and the happiness and improvement of the subject, are not in some degree incompatible.

These later observations are made after having twice again passed through the State, once in a leisurely way on horseback. In some of the Western and Northern central parts of the State, there is much more enterprise, thrift, and comfort than in the Eastern part, where I had my first impressions.

* * * * *

I left Fayetteville in a steamboat (advertised for 8 o’clock, left at 8.45) bound down Cape Fear River to Wilmington. A description of the river, with incidents of the passage, will serve to show the character of most of the navigable streams of the cotton States, flowing into the Atlantic and the Gulf, and of the manner of their navigation.

The water was eighteen feet above its lowest summer stages; the banks steep, thirty feet high from the present water surface—from fifty to one hundred feet apart—and covered with large trees and luxuriant vegetation; the course crooked; the current very rapid; the trees overhanging the banks, and frequently falling into the channel—making the navigation hazardous. The river is subject to very rapid rising. The master told me that he had sometimes left his boat aground at night, and, on returning in the morning, found it floating in twenty-five feet water, over the same spot. The difference between the extremes of low stages and floods is as much as seventy feet. In summer, there are sometimes but eighteen inches of water on the bars: the boat I was in drew but fourteen inches, light. She was a stern-wheel craft—the boiler and engine (high pressure) being placed at opposite ends, to balance weights. Her burden was three hundred barrels, or sixty tons measurement. This is the character of most of the boats navigating the river—of which there are now twelve. Larger boats are almost useless in summer, from their liability to ground; and even the smaller ones, at low stages of water, carry no freight, but are employed to tow up “flats” or shallow barges. At this season of the year, however, the steamboats are loaded close to the water’s edge.

The bulk of our freight was turpentine; and the close proximity of this to the furnaces suggested a danger fully equal to that from snags or grounding. On calling the attention of a fellow-passenger to it, he told me that a friend of his was once awakened from sleep, while lying in a berth on one of these boats, by a sudden, confused sound. Thinking the boiler had burst, he drew the bed-clothing over his head, and laid quiet, to avoid breathing the steam; until, feeling the boat ground, he ran out, and discovered that she was on fire near the furnace. Having some valuable freight near by, which he was desirous to save, and seeing no immediate danger, though left alone on the boat, he snatched a bucket, and, drawing water from alongside, applied it with such skill and rapidity as soon to quench the flames, and eventually to entirely extinguish the fire. Upon the return of the crew, a few repairs were made, steam was got up again, and the boat proceeded to her destination in safety. He afterwards ascertained that three hundred kegs of gunpowder were stowed beneath the deck that had been on fire—a circumstance which sufficiently accounted for the panic-flight of the crew.

Soon after leaving, we passed the Zephyr, wooding up: an hour later, our own boat was run to the bank, men jumped from her fore and aft, and fastened head and stern lines to the trees, and we also commenced wooding.

The trees had been cut away so as to leave a clear space to the top of the bank, which was some fifty feet from the boat, and moderately steep. Wood, cut, split, and piled in ranks, stood at the top of it, and a shoot of plank, two feet wide and thirty long, conveyed it nearly to the water. The crew rushed to the wood-piles—master, passengers, and all, but the engineer and chambermaid, deserting the boat—and the wood was first passed down, as many as could, throwing into the shoot, and others forming a line, and tossing it, from one to another, down the bank. From the water’s edge it was passed, in the same way, to its place on board, with great rapidity—the crew exciting themselves with yells. They were all blacks, but one.

On a tree, near the top of the bank, a little box was nailed, on which a piece of paper was tacked, with this inscription:

“_Notic_

“_to all ‘persons takin wood from this landin pleas to leav a ticket payable to the subscriber, at $1,75 a cord as heretofore._

“_Amos Sikes._”

and the master—just before the wood was all on board—hastily filled a blank order (torn from a book, like a check-book, leaving a memorandum of the amount, etc.) on the owner of the boat for payment, to Mr. Sikes, for two cords of pine-wood, at $1 75, and two cords of light-wood, at $2—and left it in the box. The wood used had been measured in the ranks with a rod, carried for the purpose, by the master, at the moment he reached the bank.

Before, with all possible haste, we had finished wooding, the Zephyr passed us; and, during the rest of the day, she kept out of our sight. As often as we met a steamboat, or passed any flats or rafts, our men were calling out to know how far ahead of us she was; and when the answer came back each time, in an increasing number of miles, they told us that our boat was more than usually sluggish, owing to an uncommonly heavy freight; but still, for some time, they were ready to make bets that we should get first to Wilmington.

Several times we were hailed from the shore, to take on a passenger, or some light freight; and these requests, as long as it was possible, were promptly complied with—the boat being run up, so as to rest her bow upon the bank, and then shouldered off by the men, as if she had been a skiff.

There were but three through-passengers, besides myself. Among them, was a glue-manufacturer, of Baltimore—getting orders from the turpentine-distillers,—and a turpentine-farmer and distiller. The glue-manufacturer said that, in his factory, they had formerly employed slaves; had since used Irishmen, and now employed Germans. Their operations were carried on night and day, and one gang of the men had to relieve another. The slaves they had employed never would be _on hand_, when the hour for relieving came. It was also necessary to be careful that certain operations should be performed at a certain time, and some judgment and watchfulness was necessary, to fix this time: the slaves never could be made to care enough for the matter, to be depended upon for discretion, in this respect; and great injury was frequently done in consequence. Some of the operations were disagreeable, and they would put one another up to thinking and saying that they ought not to be required to do such dirty work—and try to have their owners get them away from it.

Irishmen, he said, worked very well, and to a certain extent faithfully, and, for a time, they liked them very much; but they found that, in about a fortnight, an Irishman always thought he knew more than his master, and would exercise his discretion a little too much, as well as often directly disregard his orders. Irishmen were, he said, “_too_ faithful”—that is, self-confident and officious.

At length, at a hurried time, they had employed one or two Germans. The Irishmen, of course, soon quarrelled with them, and threatened to leave, if they were kept. Whereupon, they were, themselves, all discharged, and a full crew of Germans, at much less wages, taken; and they proved excellent hands—steady, plodding, reliable, though they never pretended to know anything, and said nothing about what they could do. They were easily instructed, obeyed orders faithfully, and worked fairly for their wages, without boasting or grumbling.

The turpentine-distiller gave a good account of some of his men; but said he was sure they never performed half as much work as he himself could; and they sometimes would, of their own accord, do twice as much in a day, as could usually be got out of them. He employed a Scotchman at the “still;” but he never would have white people at ordinary work, because he couldn’t drive them. He added, with the utmost simplicity—and I do not think any one present saw, at the time, how much the remark expressed more than it was intended to—“I never can drive a white man, for I know I could never bear to be driven, myself, by anybody.”

The other passenger was “a North of England man,” as I suspected from the first words I heard from him—though he had been in this country for about twenty years. He was a mechanic, and employed several slaves; but testified strongly of the expensive character of their labour; and declared, without any reserve, that the system was ruinous in its effects upon the character and value of all classes of working men.

The country on the river-bank was nearly all wooded, with, occasionally, a field of corn, which, even in the low alluvial meadows, sometimes overflowed by the river, and enriched by its deposit, had evidently yielded but a very meagre crop—the stalks standing singly, at great distances, and very small. The greater part, even of these once rich low lands, that had been in cultivation, were now “turned out,” and covered either with pines or broom-sedge and brushwood.

At some seventy or eighty miles, I should think, below Fayetteville, the banks became lower, and there was much swamp land, in which the ground was often covered with a confusion of logs and sawn lumber, mingled with other rubbish, left by floods of the river. The standing timber was very large, and many of the trees were hung with the long, waving drapery of the tylandria, or Spanish moss, which, as well as the mistletoe, I here first saw in profusion. There was also a thick network among the trees, of beautiful climbing plants. I observed some very large grape-vines, and many trees of greater size than I ever saw of their species before. I infer that this soil, properly reclaimed, and protected from floods of the river, might be most profitably used in the culture of the various half-tropical trees and shrubs, of whose fruits we now import so large and costly an amount. The fig, I have been informed, grows and bears luxuriantly at Wilmington, seldom or never suffering in its wood, though a crop of fruit may be occasionally injured by a severe late spring frost. The almond, doubtless, would succeed equally well, so also the olive; but of none of these is there the slightest commercial value produced in North Carolina, or in all our country.

In the evening we passed many boats and rafts, blazing with great fires, made upon a thick bed of clay, and their crews singing at their sweeps. Twenty miles above Wilmington, the shores became marshy, the river wide, and the woody screen that had hitherto, in a great degree, hid the nakedness of the land, was withdrawn, leaving open to view only broad, reedy savannahs, on either side.

We reached Wilmington, the port at the mouth of the river, at half-past nine. Taking a carriage, I was driven first to one hotel and afterwards to another. They were both so crowded with guests, and excessive business duties so prevented the clerks from being tolerably civil to me, that I feared if I remained in either of them I should have another Norfolk experience. While I was endeavouring to ascertain if there was a third public-house, in which I might, perhaps, obtain a private room, my eye fell upon an advertisement of a new railroad line of passage to Charleston. A boat, to take passengers to the railroad, was to start every night, from Wilmington, at ten-o’clock. It was already something past ten; but being pretty sure that she would not get off punctually, and having a strong resisting impulse to being packed away in a close room, with any chance stranger the clerk of the house might choose to couple me with, I shouldered my baggage and ran for the wharves. At half-past ten I was looking at Wilmington over the stern of another little wheel-barrow-steamboat, pushing back up the river. When or how I was to be taken to Charleston, I had not yet been able to ascertain. The captain assured me it was all right, and demanded twenty dollars. Being in his power I gave it to him, and received in return a pocketful of tickets, guaranteeing the bearer passage from place to place; of not one of which places had I ever heard before, except Charleston.

The cabin was small, dirty, crowded, close, and smoky. Finding a warm spot in the deck, over the furnace, and to leeward of the chimney, I pillowed myself on my luggage and went to sleep.

The ringing of the boat’s bell awoke me, after no great lapse of time, and I found we were in a small creek, heading southward. Presently we reached a wharf, near which stood a locomotive and train. A long, narrow plank having been run out, half a dozen white men, including myself, went on shore. Then followed as many negroes, who appeared to be a recent purchase of their owner. Owing, probably, to an unusually low tide, there was a steep ascent from the boat to the wharf, and I was amused to see the anxiety of this gentleman for the safe landing of his property, and especially to hear him curse them for their carelessness, as if their lives were of much greater value to him than to themselves. One was a woman. All carried over their shoulders some little baggage, probably all their personal effects, slung in a blanket; and one had a dog, whose safe landing caused him nearly as much anxiety as his own did _his_ owner.

“Gib me da dog, now,” said the dog’s owner, standing half way up the plank.

“Damn the dog,” said the negro’s owner; “give me your hand up here. Let go of the dog; d’ye hear! Let him take care of himself.”

But the negro hugged the dog and brought him safely on shore.

After a short delay the train started: the single passenger car was a fine one (made at Wilmington, Delaware), and just sufficiently warmed. I should have slept again if it had not been that two of the six inmates were drunk—one of them uproariously.

Passing through long stretches of cypress swamps, with occasional intervals of either pine-barrens, or clear water ponds, in about two hours we came, in the midst of the woods, to the end of the rails. In the vicinity could be seen a small tent, a shanty of loose boards, and a large, subdued fire, around which, upon the ground, a considerable number of men were stretched out asleep. This was the camp of the hands engaged in laying the rails, and who were thus daily extending the distance which the locomotive could run.

The conductor told me that there was here a break of about eighty miles in the rail, over which I should be transferred by a stage coach, which would come as soon as possible after the driver knew that the train had arrived. To inform him of this, the locomotive trumpeted loud and long.

The negro property, which had been brought up in a freight car, was immediately let out on the stoppage of the train. As it stepped on to the platform, the owner asked, “Are you all here?”

“Yes, massa, we is all heah,” answered one. “Do dysef no harm, for we’s all heah,” added another, in an under tone.

The negroes immediately gathered some wood, and taking a brand from the railroad hands, made a fire for themselves; then, all but the woman, opening their bundles, wrapped themselves in their blankets and went to sleep. The woman, bare-headed, and very inadequately clothed as she was, stood for a long time alone, erect and statue-like, her head bowed, gazing in the fire. She had taken no part in the light chat of the others, and had given them no assistance in making the fire. Her dress too was not the usual plantation apparel. It was all sadly suggestive.

The principal other freight of the train was one hundred and twenty bales of Northern hay. It belonged, as the conductor told me, to a planter who lived some twenty miles beyond here, and who had bought it in Wilmington at a dollar and a half a hundred weight, to feed his mules. Including the steamboat and railroad freight, and all the labour of getting it to his stables, its entire cost to him would not be much less than two dollars a hundred, or at least four times as much as it would have cost to raise and make it in the interior of New York or New England. There are not only several forage crops which can be raised in South Carolina, that cannot be grown on account of the severity of the winter in the Free States, but, on a farm near Fayetteville, a few days before, I had seen a crop of natural grass growing in half-cultivated land, dead upon the ground; which, I think, would have made, if it had been cut and well treated in the summer, three tons of hay to the acre. The owner of the land said that there was no better hay than it would have made, but he hadn’t had time to attend to it. He had as much as his hands could do of other work at the period of the year when it should have been made.

Probably the case was similar with the planter who had bought this Northern hay at a price four times that which it would have cost a Northern farmer to make it. He had preferred to employ his slaves at other business.

The inference must be, either that there was most improbably-foolish, bad management, or that the slaves were more profitably employed in cultivating cotton, than they could have been in cultivating maize, or other forage crops.

I put the case, some days afterwards, to an English merchant, who had had good opportunities, and made it a part of his business to study such matters.

“I have no doubt,” said he, “that if hay cannot be obtained here, other valuable forage can, with less labour than anywhere at the North; and all the Southern agricultural journals sustain this opinion, and declare it to be purely bad management that neglects these crops, and devotes labour to cotton, so exclusively. Probably, it is so—at the present cost of forage. Nevertheless, the fact is also true, as the planters assert, that they cannot afford to apply their labour to anything else but cotton. And yet, they complain that the price of cotton is so low that there is no profit in growing it, which is evidently false. You see that they prefer buying hay to raising it at, to say the least, three times what it costs your Northern farmers to raise it. Of course, if cotton could be grown in New York and Ohio, it could be afforded at one-third the cost it is here—say at three cents per pound. And that is my solution of the slavery question. Bring cotton down to three cents a pound, and there would be more abolitionists in South Carolina than in Massachusetts. If that can be brought about, in any way—and it is not impossible that we may live to see it, as our railways are extended in India, and the French enlarge their free-labour plantations in Algiers—there will be an end of slavery.”

It was just one o’clock when the stage-coach came for us. There was but one passenger beside myself—a Philadelphia gentleman, going to Columbia. We proceeded very slowly for about three miles, across a swamp, upon a “corduroy road;” then more rapidly, over rough ground, being tossed about in the coach most severely, for six or eight miles further. Besides the driver, there was on the box the agent or superintendent of the coach line, who now opened the doors, and we found ourselves before a log stable, in the midst of a forest of large pines. The driver took out a horse, and, mounting him, rode off, and we collected wood, splitting it with a hatchet that was carried on the coach, and, lighting it from the coach lamp, made a fire. It was very cold, ice half an inch thick, and a heavy hoar frost. We complained to the agent that there was no straw in the coach bottom, while there were large holes bored in it, that kept our feet excessively cold. He said there was no straw to be had in the country. They were obliged to bed their horses with pine leaves, which were damp, and would be of no service to us. The necessity for the holes he did not immediately explain, and we, in the exercise of our Yankee privilege, resolved that they were made with reference to the habit of expectoration, which we had observed in the car to be very general and excessive.

In about half an hour the driver of the new stage came to us on the horse that the first had ridden away. A new set of horses was brought out and attached to the coach, and we were driven on again. An hour later, the sun rose; we were still in pine-barrens, once in several miles passing through a clearing, with a log farm-house, and a few negro huts about it; often through cypress swamps, and long pools of water. At the end of ten miles we breakfasted, and changed horses and drivers at a steam saw-mill. A few miles further on, we were asked to get on the top of the coach, while it was driven through a swamp, in which the water was over the road, for a quarter of a mile, to such a depth that it covered the foot-board. The horses really groaned, as they pushed the thin ice away with their necks, and were very near swimming. The holes in the coach bottom, the agent now told us, were to allow the water that would here enter the body to flow out. At the end of these ten miles we changed again, at a cotton planter’s house—a very neat, well-built house, having pine trees about it, but very poor, old, negro quarters.

Since the long ford we had kept the top, the inside of the coach being wet, and I had been greatly pleased with the driving—the coachman, a steady-going sort of a fellow, saying but little to his horses, and doing what swearing he thought necessary in English; driving, too, with great judgment and skill. The coach was a fine, roomy, old-fashioned, fragrant, leathery affair, and the horses the best I had seen this side of Virginia. I could not resist expressing my pleasure with the whole establishment. The new team was admirable; four sleek, well-governed, eager, sorrel cobs, and the driver, a staid, bronzed-faced man, keeping them tight in hand, drove quietly and neatly, his whip in the socket. After about fifteen minutes, during which he had been engaged in hushing down their too great impetuosity, he took out a large silver hunting-watch, and asked what time it was.

“Quarter past eleven,” said the agent.

“Twelve minutes past,” said the Philadelphian.

“Well, fourteen, only, I am,” said the agent.

“Thirteen,” said I.

“Just thirteen, I am,” said the driver, slipping back his watch to its place, and then, to the agent, “ha’an’t touched a hand of her since I left old Lancaster.”

Suddenly guessing the meaning of what had been for some time astonishing me—“You are from the North?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you, too, Mr. Agent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the coach, and the cattle, and all?”

“All from Pennsylvania.”

“How long have you been here?”

“We have been here about a fortnight, stocking the road. We commenced regular trips yesterday. You are the first passenger through, sir.”

It was, in fact, merely a transfer from one of the old National Road lines, complete. After a little further conversation, I asked, “How do you like the country, here?”

“Very nice country,” said the agent.

“It’s the cussedest poor country God ever created,” napped out the driver.

“You have to keep your horses on——”

“_Shucks!_[28] damn it.”

The character of the scenery was novel to me, the surface very flat, the soil a fine-grained, silvery white sand, shaded by a continuous forest of large pines, which had shed their lower branches, so that we could see from the coach-top, to the distance of a quarter of a mile, everything upon the ground. In the swamps, which were frequent and extensive, and on their borders, the pines gave place to cypresses, with great pedestal trunks, and protuberant roots, throwing up an awkward dwarf progeny of shrub, cypress, and curious bulbous-like stumps, called “cypress-knees.” Mingled with these were a few of our common deciduous trees, the white-shafted sycamore, the gray beech, and the shrubby black-jack oak, with broad leaves, brown and dead, yet glossy, and reflecting the sunbeams. Somewhat rarely, the red cedar, and more frequently than any other except the cypress, the beautiful American holly. Added to these, there was often a thick undergrowth of evergreen shrubs. Vines and creepers of various kinds grew to the tops of the tallest trees and dangled beneath and between their branches, in intricate net-work. The tylandria hung in festoons, sometimes several feet in length, and often completely clothed the trunks, and every branch of the trees in the low ground. It is like a fringe of tangled hair, of a light gray pearly colour, and sometimes produces exquisite effects when slightly veiling the dark green, purple, and scarlet of the cedar, and the holly with their berries. The mistletoe also grew in large, vivid, green tufts, on the ends of the branches of the oldest and largest trees. A small fine and wiry dead grass, hardly perceptible, even in the most open ground, from the coach-tops, was the only sign of herbage. Large black buzzards were constantly in sight, sailing slowly, high above the tree-tops. Flocks of larks, quails, and robins were common, as were also doves, swiftly flying in small companies. The red-headed woodpecker could at any time be heard hammering the old tree-trunks, and would sometimes show himself, after his rat-tat, cocking his head archly, and listening to hear if the worm moved under the bark. The drivers told me that they had on previous days, as they went over the road, seen deer, turkeys, and wild hogs.

At every tenth mile, or thereabout, we changed horses; and, generally, were allowed half an hour to stroll in the neighbourhood of the stable—the agent observing that we could reach the end of the staging some hours before the cars should leave to take us further; and, as there were no good accommodations for sleeping there, we would pass the time quite as pleasantly on the road. We dined at “Marion County House,” a pleasant little village (and the only village we saw during the day), with a fine pine-grove, a broad street, a court-house, a church or two, a school-house, and a dozen or twenty dwellings. Towards night, we crossed the Great Pedee of the maps, the _Big_ Pedee of the natives, in a flat boat. A large quantity of cotton, in bales, was upon the bank, ready for loading into a steamboat—when one should arrive—for Charleston.

The country was very thinly peopled; lone houses often being several miles apart. The large majority of the dwellings were of logs, and even those of the white people were often without glass windows. In the better class of cabins, the roof is usually built with a curve, so as to project eight or ten feet beyond the log-wall; and a part of this space, exterior to the logs, is enclosed with boards, making an additional small room—the remainder forms an open porch. The whole cabin is often elevated on four corner-posts, two or three feet from the ground, so that the air may circulate under it. The fire-place is built at the end of the house, of sticks and clay, and the chimney is carried up outside, and often detached from the log-walls; but the roof is extended at the gable, until in a line with its outer side. The porch has a railing in front, and a wide shelf at the end, on which a bucket of water, a gourd, and hand-basin, are usually placed. There are chairs, or benches, in the porch, and you often see women sitting at work in it, as in Germany.

The logs are usually hewn but little; and, of course, as they are laid up, there will be wide interstices between them—which are increased by subsequent shrinking. These, very commonly, are not “chinked,” or filled up in any way; nor is the wall lined on the inside. Through the chinks, as you pass along the road, you may often see all that is going on in the house; and, at night, the light of the fire shines brightly out on all sides.

Cabins, of this class, would almost always be flanked by two or three negro huts. The cabins of the poor whites, much the largest in number, were of a meaner sort—being mere square pens of logs, roofed over, provided with a chimney, and usually with a shed of boards, supported by rough posts, before the door.

Occasionally, where, near the banks of a water-course, the silvery sand was darkened by a considerable intermixture of mould, there would be a large plantation, with negro-quarters, and a cotton-press and gin-house. We passed half a dozen of these, perhaps, during the day. Where the owners resided in them, they would have comfortable-looking residences, not unlike the better class of New England farm-houses. On the largest, however, there was no residence for the owner, at all, only a small cottage, or whitewashed cabin, for the overseer. The negro-cabins, here, were the smallest I had seen—I thought not more than twelve feet square, inside. They stood in two rows, with a wide street between them. They were built of logs, with no windows—no opening at all, except the doorway, with a chimney of sticks and mud; with no trees about them, no porches, or shades, of any kind. Except for the chimney—the purpose of which I should not readily have guessed if I had seen one of them in New England—I should have conjectured that it had been built for a powder-house, or perhaps an ice-house—never for an animal to sleep in.

We stopped, for some time, on this plantation, near where some thirty men and women were at work, repairing the road. The women were in majority, and were engaged at exactly the same labour as the men; driving the carts, loading them with dirt, and dumping them upon the road; cutting down trees, and drawing wood by hand, to lay across the miry places; hoeing, and shovelling. They were dressed in coarse gray gowns, generally very much burned, and very dirty; which, for greater convenience of working in the mud, were reefed up with a cord drawn tightly around the body, a little above the hips—the spare amount of skirt bagging out between this and the waist-proper. On their legs were loose leggins, or pieces of blanket or bagging wrapped about, and lashed with thongs; and they wore very heavy shoes. Most of them had handkerchiefs, only, tied around their heads, some wore men’s caps, or old slouched hats, and several were bareheaded.

The overseer rode about among them, on a horse, carrying in his hand a raw-hide whip, constantly directing and encouraging them; but, as my companion and I, both, several times noticed, as often as he visited one end of the line of operations, the hands at the other end would discontinue their labour, until he turned to ride towards them again. Clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all their movements; pouting, grinning, and leering at us; sly, sensual, and shameless, in all their expressions and demeanour; I never before had witnessed, I thought, anything more revolting than the whole scene.

At length, the overseer dismounted from his horse, and, giving him to a boy to take to the stables, got upon the coach, and rode with us several miles. From the conversation I had with him, as well as from what I saw of his conduct in the field, I judged that he was an uncommonly fit man for his duties; at least ordinarily amiable in disposition, and not passionate; but deliberate, watchful, and efficient. I thought he would be not only a good economist, but a firm and considerate officer or master.

If these women, and their children after them, were always naturally and necessarily to remain of the character and capacity stamped on their faces—as is probably the opinion of their owner, in common with most wealthy South Carolina planters—I don’t know that they could be much less miserably situated, or guided more for their own good and that of the world, than they were. They were fat enough, and didn’t look as if they were at all overworked, or harassed by cares, or oppressed by a consciousness of their degradation. If that is all—as some think.

Afterwards, while we were changing at a house near a crossing of roads, strolling off in the woods for a short distance, I came upon two small white-topped waggons, each with a pair of horses feeding at its pole; near them was a dull camp fire, with a bake-kettle and coffee-pot, some blankets and a chest upon the ground, and an old negro sitting with his head bowed down over a meal sack, while a negro boy was combing his wool with a common horse-card. “Good evening, uncle,” said I, approaching them. “Good evening, sar,” he answered, without looking up.

“Where are you going?”

“Well, we ain’t gwine nower, master; we’s peddlin’ tobacco roun.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From Rockingham County, Norf Car’lina, master.”

“How long have you been coming from there?”

“’Twill be seven weeks, to-morrow, sar, sin we leff home.”

“Have you most sold out?”

“We had a hundred and seventy-five boxes in both waggons, and we’s sold all but sixty. Want to buy some tobacco, master?” (Looking up.)

“No, thank you; I am only waiting here, while the coach changes. How much tobacco is there in a box?”

“Seventy-five pound.”

“Are these the boxes?”

“No, them is our provision boxes, master. Show de gemman some of der tobacco, dah.” (To the boy.)

A couple of negroes here passed along near us; the old man hailed them:

“Ho dah, boys! Doan you want to buy some backey?”

“No.” (Decidedly.)

“Well, I’m sorry for it.” (Reproachfully.)

“Are you bound homeward, now?” I asked.

“No, master; wish me was; got to sell all our backey fuss; you don’t want none, master, does you? Doan you tink it pretty fair tobacco, sar? Juss try it: it’s right sweet, reckon you’ll find.”

“I don’t wish any, thank you; I never use it. Is your master with you?”

“No, sar; he’s gone across to Marion, to-day.”

“Do you like to be travelling about, in this way?”

“Yes, master; I likes it very well.”

“Better than staying at home, eh?”

“Well, I likes my country better dan dis; must say dat, master; likes my country better dan dis. I’se a free nigger in my country, master.”

“Oh, you are a free man, are you! North Carolina is a better country than this, for free men, I suppose.”

“Yes, master, I likes my country de best; I gets five dollar a month for dat boy.” (Hastily, to change the subject.)

“He is your son, is he?”

“Yes, sar; he drives dat waggon, I drives dis; and I haant seen him fore, master, for six weeks, till dis mornin’.”

“How were you separated?”

“We separated six weeks ago, sar, and we agreed to meet here, last night. We didn’, dough, till dis mornin’.”

The old man’s tone softened, and he regarded his son with earnestness.

“’Pears, dough, we was bofe heah, last night; but I couldn’t find um till dis mornin’. Dis mornin’ some niggars tole me dar war a niggar camped off yander in de wood; and I knew ’twas him, and I went an’ found him right off.”

“And what wages do you get for yourself?”

“Ten dollars a month, master.”

“That’s pretty good wages.”

“Yes, master, any niggar can get good wages if he’s a mind to be industrious, no matter wedder he’s slave or free.”

“So you don’t like this country as well as North Carolina?”

“No, master. Fac is, master, ’pears like wite folks doan’ ginerally like niggars in dis country; day doan’ ginerally talk so to niggars like as do in my country; de niggars ain’t so happy heah; ’pears like de wite folks was kind o’ different, somehow. I doan’ like dis country so well; my country suits me very well.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, myself, the niggars did not look so well here as they did in North Carolina and Virginia; they are not so well clothed, and they don’t appear so bright as they do there.”

“Well, master, Sundays dey is mighty well clothed, dis country; ’pears like dere an’t nobody looks better Sundays dan dey do. But Lord! workin’ days, seems like dey haden no close dey could keep on ’um at all, master. Dey is a’mos’ naked, wen deys at work, some on ’em. Why, master, up in our country, de wite folks—why, some on ’em has ten or twelve niggars; dey doan’ hev no real big plantation, like dey has heah, but some on ’em has ten or twelve niggars, may be, and dey juss lives and talks along wid ’em; and dey treats ’um most as if dem was dar own chile. Dey doan’ keep no niggars dey can’t treat so; dey won’t keep ’em, won’t be bodered wid ’em. If dey gets a niggar and he doan behave himself, day won’t keep him; dey juss tell him, sar, he must look up anudder master, and if he doan’ find hisself one, I tell ’ou, when de trader cum along, dey sells him, and he totes him away. Dey allers sell off all de bad niggars out of our country; dat’s de way all de bad niggar and all dem no-account niggar keep a cumin’ down heah; dat’s de way on’t, master.”

“Yes, that’s the way of it, I suppose; these big plantations are not just the best thing for niggers, I see that plainly.”

“Master, you wan’t raise in dis country, was ’ou?”

“No; I came from the North.”

“I tort so, sar; I knew ’ou wan’t one of dis country people; ’peared like ’ou was one o’ my country people, way ’ou talks; and I loves dem kine of people. Won’t you take some whisky, sar? Heah, you boy! bring dat jug of whisky dah, out o’ my waggon; in dah,—in dat box under dem foddar.”

“No, don’t trouble yourself, I am very much obliged to you; but I don’t like to drink whisky.”

“Like to have you drink some, master, if you’d like it. You’s right welcome to it. ’Pears like I knew you was one of my country people. Ever been in Greensboro,’ master? dat’s in Guilford.”

“No, I never was there. I came from New York, further North than your country.”

“New York, did ’ou, master? I heerd New York was what dey calls a Free State; all de niggars free dah.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“Not no slaves at all; well, I expec dat’s a good ting, for all de niggars to be free. Greensboro’ is a right comely town; tain’t like dese heah Souf Car’lina towns.”

“I have heard it spoken of as a beautiful town, and there are some fine people there.”

“Yes, dere’s Mr. —— ——, I knows him—he’s a mighty good man.”

“Do you know Mr. ——?”

“O yes, sar, he’s a mighty fine man, he is, master; ain’t no better kind of man dan him.”

“Well, I must go, or the coach will be kept waiting for me. Good-bye to you.”

“Far’well, master, far’well; ’pears like it’s done me good to see a man dat’s cum out of my country again. Far’well, master.”

* * * * *

We took supper at a neat log-cabin, standing a short distance off the road, with a beautiful evergreen oak, the first I had observed, in front of it. There was no glass in the windows, but drapery of white muslin restrained the currents of air, and during the day would let in sufficient light, while a blazing wood-fire both warmed and lighted the room by night. A rifle and powder-horn hung near the fire-place, and the master of the house, a fine, hearty, companionable fellow, said that he had lately shot three deer, and that there were plenty of cats, and foxes, as well as turkeys, hares, squirrels, and other small game in the vicinity. It was a perfectly charming little backwoods farm-house—good wife, supper, and all; but one disagreeable blot darkened the otherwise most agreeable picture of rustic civilization—we were waited upon at table by two excessively dirty, slovenly-dressed, negro girls. In the rear of the cabin were two hovels, each lighted by large fires, and apparently crowded with other slaves belonging to the family.

Between nine and ten at night, we reached the end of the completed railroad, coming up in search for that we had left the previous night. There was another camp and fire of the workmen, and in a little white frame-house we found a company of engineers. There were two trains and locomotives on the track, and a gang of negroes was loading cotton into one of them.

I strolled off until I reached an opening in the woods, in which was a cotton-field and some negro-cabins, and beyond it large girdled trees, among which were two negroes with dogs, barking, yelping, hacking, shouting, and whistling, after ’coons and ’possums. Returning to the railroad, I found a comfortable, warm passenger-car, and, wrapped in my blanket, went to sleep. At midnight I was awakened by loud laughter, and, looking out, saw that the gang of negroes had made a fire, and were enjoying a right merry repast. Suddenly, one raised such a sound as I never heard before; a long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle-call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then another, and then by several in chorus. When there was silence again, one of them cried out, as if bursting with amusement: “Did yer see de dog?—when I began eeohing, he turn roun’ an’ look me straight into der face; ha! ha! ha!” and the whole party broke into the loudest peals of laughter, as if it was the very best joke they had ever heard.

After a few minutes I could hear one urging the rest to come to work again, and soon he stepped towards the cotton bales, saying, “Come, brederen, come; let’s go at it; come now, eoho! roll away! eeoho-eeoho-weeioho-i!”—and the rest taking it up as before, in a few moments they all had their shoulders to a bale of cotton, and were rolling it up the embankment.

About half-past three, I was awakened again by the whistle of the locomotive, answering, I suppose, the horn of a stagecoach, which in a few minutes drove up, bringing a mail. A negro man and woman who had been sleeping near me, replenished the fire; two other passengers came in, and we started.

In the woods I saw a negro by a fire, while it was still night, shaving shingles very industriously. He did not even stop to look at the train. No doubt he was a slave, working by task, and of his own accord at night, that he might have the more daylight for his own purposes.

The negroes enjoy fine blazing fires in the open air, and make them at every opportunity. The train on this road was provided with a man and maid-servant to attend to the fire and wait on the passengers—a very good arrangement, by the way, yet to be adopted on our own long passenger trains. When we arrived at a junction where we were to change cars, as soon as all the passengers had left the train, they also left; but instead of going into the station-house with us, they immediately collected some pine branches and chips, and getting a brand from the locomotive, made a fire upon the ground, and seated themselves by it. Other negroes soon began to join them, and as they approached were called to: “Doan’ yer cum widout som’ wood! Doan’ yer cum widout som’ wood!” and every one had to make his contribution. At another place, near a cotton plantation, I found a woman collecting pine leaves into heaps, to be carted to the cattle-pens. She, too, had a fire near her. “What are you doing with a fire, aunty?” “Oh, jus’ to warm my hans wen dey gits cold, massa.” The weather was then almost uncomfortably warm.

We were running during the forenoon, for a hundred miles, or more, in a southerly direction, on nearly a straight course, through about the middle of the State of South Carolina. The greater part of this distance, the flat, sandy pine barrens continued, scarcely a foot of grading, for many miles at a time, having been required in the construction of the railroad. As the swamps, which were still frequent, were crossed on piles and tressel-work, the roads must have been built very cheaply—the land damages being nothing. We passed from the track of one company to that of another, several times during the day—the speed was from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, with long stoppages at the stations. A conductor said they could easily run forty miles, and had done it, including stoppages; but they were forbidden now to make fast time, from the injury it did the road—the superstructure being much more shaken and liable to displacement in these light sands than on our Northern roads. The locomotives that I saw were all made in Philadelphia; the cars were all from the Hartford, Conn., and Worcester, Mass., manufactories, and invariably, elegant and comfortable. The roads seemed to be doing a heavy freighting business with cotton. We passed at the turn-outs half a dozen trains, with nearly a thousand bales on each, but the number of passengers was always small. A slave country can never, it is evident, furnish a passenger traffic of much value. A majority of the passenger trains, which I saw used in the South, were not paying for the fuel and wages expended in running them.

For an hour or two we got above the sandy zone, and into the second, middle, or “wave” region of the State. The surface here was extremely undulating, gracefully swelling and dipping in bluffs and dells—the soil a mellow brown loam, with some indications of fertility, especially in the valleys. Yet most of the ground was occupied by pine woods (probably old-field pines, on exhausted cotton-fields). For a few miles, on a gently sloping surface of the same sort of soil, there were some enormously large cotton-fields.

I saw women working again, in large gangs with men. In one case they were distributing manure—ditch scrapings it appeared to be—and the mode of operation was this: the manure had been already carted into heaps upon the ground; a number of the women were carrying it in from the heap in baskets, on their heads, and one in her apron, and spreading it with their hands between the ridges on which the cotton grew last year; the rest followed with great, long-handled, heavy, clumsy hoes, and pulled down the ridges over the manure, and so made new ridges for the next planting. I asked a young planter who continued with me a good part of the day, why they did not use ploughs. He said this was rather rough land, and a plough wouldn’t work in it very well. It was light soil, and smooth enough for a parade ground. The fact is, in certain parts of South Carolina, a plough is yet an almost unknown instrument of tillage.

About noon we turned east, on a track running direct to Charleston. Pine barrens continued alternating with swamp, with some cotton and corn fields on the edges of the latter. A few of the pines were “boxed” for turpentine; and I understood that one or two companies from North Carolina had been operating here for several years. Plantations were not very often seen along the road through the sand; but stations, at which cotton was stored and loading, were comparatively frequent.

At one of the stations an empty car had been attached to the train; I had gone into it, and was standing at one end of it, when an elderly countryman with a young woman and three little children entered and took seats at the other. The old man took out a roll of deerskin, in which were bank-bills, and some small change.

“How much did he say ’twould be?” he inquired.

“Seventy cents.”

“For both on us?”

“For each on us.”

“Both on us, I reckon.”

“Reckon it’s each.”

“I’ve got jess seventy-five cents in hard money.”

“Give it to him, and tell him it’s all yer got; reckon he’ll let us go.”

At this I moved, to attract their attention; the old man started, and looked towards me for a moment, and said no more. I soon afterwards walked out on the platform, passing him, and the conductor came in, and collected their fare; I then returned, and stood near them, looking out of the window of the door. The old man had a good-humoured, thin, withered, very brown face, and there was a speaking twinkle in his eye. He was dressed in clothes much of the Quaker cut—a broad-brimmed, low hat; white cotton shirt, open in front, and without cravat, showing his hairy breast; a long-skirted, snuff-coloured coat, of very coarse homespun; short trousers, of brown drilling; red woollen stockings, and heavy cow-hide shoes. He presently asked the time of day; I gave it to him, and we continued in conversation, as follows:—

“Right cold weather.”

“Yes.”

“G’wine to Branchville?”

“I am going beyond there—to Charleston.”

“Ah—come from Hamburg this mornin’?”

“No—from beyond there.”

“Did ye?—where’d you come from?”

“From Wilmington.”

“How long yer ben comin’?”

“I left Wilmington night before last, about ten o’clock. I have been ever since on the road.”

“Reckon yer a night-bird.”

“What?”

“Reckon you are a night-bird—what we calls a night-hawk; keeps a goin’ at night, you know.”

“Yes—I’ve been going most of two nights.”

“Reckon so; kinder red your eyes is. Live in Charleston, do ye?”

“No, I live in New York.”

“New York—that’s a good ways, yet, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Reckon yer arter a chicken, up here.”

“No.”

“Ah, ha—reckon ye are.”

The young woman laughed, lifted her shoulder, and looked out of the window.

“Reckon ye’ll get somebody’s chicken.”

“I’m afraid not.”

The young woman laughed again, and tossed her head.

“Oh, reckon ye will—ah, ha! But yer mustn’t mind my fun.”

“Not at all, not at all. Where did _you_ come from?”

“Up here to ——; g’wine hum; g’wine to stop down here, next deeper. How do you go, w’en you get to Charleston?”

“I am going on to New Orleans.”

“Is New York beyond New Orleans?”

“Beyond New Orleans? Oh, no.”

“In New Orleans, is’t?

“What?”

“New York is somewhere in New Orleans, ain’t it?”

“No; it’s the other way—beyond Wilmington.”

“Oh! Been pretty cold thar?”

“Yes; there was a foot and a half of snow there, last week, I hear.”

“Lord o’massy! why! have to feed all the cattle!—whew!—ha!—whew! don’t wonner ye com’ away.”

“You are a farmer.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I am a farmer, too.”

“Be ye—to New York?”

“Yes; how much land have you got?”

“A hundred and twenty-five acres; how much have you?”

“Just about the same. What’s your land worth, here?”

“Some on’t—what we call swamp-land—kinder low and wet like, you know—that’s worth five dollars an acre; and mainly it’s worth a dollar and a half or two dollars—that’s takin’ a common trac’ of upland. What’s yours worth?”

“A hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars.”

“What!”

“A hundred and fifty to two hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Not an acre?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord! yer might as well buy niggers to onst. Do you work any niggers?”

“No.”

“May be they don’t have niggers—that is, slaves—to New York.”

“No, we do not. It’s against the law.”

“Yes, I heerd ’twas, some place. How do yer get yer work done?”

“I hire white men—Irishmen generally.”

“Do they work good?”

“Yes, better than negroes, I think, and don’t cost nearly as much.”

“What do yer have to give ’em?”

“Eight or nine dollars a month, and board, for common hands, by the year.”

“Hi, Lordy! and they work up right smart, do they? Why, yer can’t get any kind of a good nigger less’n twelve dollars a month.”

“And board?”

“And board em? yes; and clothe, and blank, and shoe ’em, too.”

He owned no negroes himself and did not hire any. “They,” his family, “made their own crap.” They raised maize, and sweet potatoes, and cow-peas. He reckoned, in general, they made about three barrels of maize to the acre; sometimes, as much as five. He described to me, as a novelty, a plough, with “a sort of a wing, like, on one side,” that pushed off, and turned over a slice of the ground; from which it appeared that he had, until recently, never seen a mould-board; the common ploughs of this country being constructed on the same principles as those of the Chinese, and only rooting the ground, like a hog or a mole—not cleaving and turning. He had never heard of working a plough with more than one horse. He was frank and good-natured; embarrassed his daughter by coarse jokes about herself and her babies, and asked me if I would not go home with him, and, when I declined, pressed me to come and see them when I returned. That I might do so, he gave me directions how to get to his farm; observing that I must start pretty early in the day—because it would not be safe for a stranger to try to cross the swamp after dark. The moment the train began to check its speed, before stopping at the place at which he was to leave, he said to his daughter, “Come, gal! quick now; gather up yer young ones!” and stepped out, pulling her after him, on to the platform. As they walked off, I noticed that he strode ahead, like an Indian or a gipsy man, and she carried in her arms two of the children and a bundle, while the third child held to her skirts.

A party of fashionably-dressed people took the train for Charleston—two families, apparently, returning from a visit to their plantations. They came to the station in handsome coaches. Some minutes before the rest, there entered the car, in which I was then again alone, and reclining on a bench in the corner, an old nurse, with a baby, and two young negro women, having care of half a dozen children, mostly girls, from three to fifteen years of age. As they closed the door, the negro girls seemed to resume a conversation, or quarrel. Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me, they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation, until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened, without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.[29]

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