CHAPTER II.
A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI.

Vicksburg, March 18th.—I arrived at this place last night, about sunset, and was told that there was no hotel in the town except on the wharf-boat, the only house used for that purpose having been closed a few days ago on account of a difference of opinion between its owner and his tenant.

There are no wharves on the Mississippi, or any of the southern rivers. The wharf-boat is an old steamboat, with her paddle boxes and machinery removed and otherwise dismantled, on which steamboats discharge passengers and freight. The main deck is used as a warehouse, and, in place of the furnace, has in this case a dram shop, a chandler’s shop, a forwarding agency, and a telegraph office. Overhead, the saloon and state-rooms remain, and with the bar-room and clerk’s office, kitchen and barber’s shop, constitute a stationary though floating hostelry.

Though there were fifty or more rooms, and not a dozen guests, I was obliged, about twelve o’clock, to admit a stranger who had been gambling all the evening in the saloon, to occupy the spare shelf of my closet. If a disposition to enjoy occasional privacy, or to exercise a choice in one’s room-mates were a sure symptom of a monomania for incendiarism, it could not be more carefully thwarted than it is at all public-houses in this part of the world.

Memphis, March 20th.—I reached this place to-day in forty-eight horns by steamboat from Vicksburg.

Here, at the “Commercial Hotel,” I am favoured with an unusually good-natured room-mate. He is smoking on the bed—our bed—now, and wants to know what my business is here, and whether I carry a pistol about me; also whether I believe that it isn’t lucky to play cards on Sundays; which I do most strenuously, especially as this is a rainy Sunday, and his second cigar is nearly smoked out.

This is a first-class hotel, and has, of course, printed bills of fare, which, in a dearth of other literature, are not to be dropped at the first glance. A copy of to-day’s is presented on the opposite page.

Being in a distant quarter of the establishment when a crash of the gong announced dinner, I did not get to the table as early as some others. The meal was served in a large, dreary room exactly like a hospital ward; and it is a striking illustration of the celerity with which everything is accomplished in our young country, that beginning with the soup, and going on by the fish to the roasts, the first five dishes I inquired for—when at last I succeeded in arresting one of the negro boys—were “all gone;” and as the waiter had to go to the head of the dining-room, or to the kitchen, to ascertain this fact upon each demand, the majority of the company had left the table before I was served at all. At length I said I would take anything that was still to be had, and thereupon was provided immediately with some grimy bacon, and greasy cabbage. This I commenced eating, but I no sooner paused for a moment, than it was suddenly and surreptitiously removed, and its place supplied, without the expression of any desire on my part, with some other Memphitic chef d’œuvre, a close investigation of which left me in doubt whether it was that denominated “sliced potatoe pie,” or “Irish pudding.”

I congratulate myself that I have lived to see the day in which an agitation for reform in our GREAT HOTEL SYSTEM has been commenced, and I trust that a Society for the Revival of Village Inns will ere long form one of the features of the May anniversaries.

A stage-coach conveyed the railroad passengers from the hotel to the station, which was a mile or two out of town. As we were entering the coach the driver observed with a Mephistophelean smile that we “needn’t calk’late we were gwine to ride very fur,” and, as soon as we had got into the country he stopped and asked all the men to get out and walk, for, he condescended to explain, “it was as much as his hosses could do to draw the ladies and the baggage.” It was quite true; the horses were often obliged to stop, even with the diminished load, and as there was a contract between myself and the proprietors by which, for a stipulated sum of money by me to them in hand duly paid, they had undertaken to convey me over this ground, I thought it would have been no more than honest if they had looked out beforehand to have either a stronger team, or a better road, provided. As is the custom of our country, however, we allowed ourselves to be thus robbed with great good-nature, and waded along ankle-deep in the mud, joking with the driver and ready to put our shoulders to the wheels if it should be necessary. Two portmanteaus were jerked off in heavy lurches of the coach; the owners picked them up and carried them on their shoulders till the horses stopped to breathe again. The train of course had waited for us, and it continued to wait until another coach arrived, when it started twenty minutes behind time.

After some forty miles of rail, nine of us were stowed away in another stage coach. The road was bad, the weather foul. We proceeded slowly, were often in imminent danger of being upset, and once were all obliged to get out and help the horses drag the coach out of a slough; but with smoking, and the occasional circulation of a small black bottle, and a general disposition to be as comfortable as circumstances would allow, four hours of coaching proved less fatiguing than one of the ill-ventilated rail-cars.

Among the passengers was a “Judge,” resident in the vicinity, portly, dignified, and well-informed; and a young man, who was a personal friend of the member of Congress from the district, and who, as he informed me, had, through the influence of this friend, a promise from the President of honourable and lucrative employment under Government. He was known to all the other passengers, and hailed by every one on the road-side, by the title of Colonel. The Judge was ready to converse about the country through which we were passing, and while perfectly aware, as no one else seemed to be, that it bore anything but an appearance of prosperity or attractiveness to a stranger, he assured me that it was really improving in all respects quite rapidly. There were few large plantations, but many small planters or rather farmers, for cotton, though the principal source of cash income, was much less exclusively an object of attention than in the more southern parts of the State. A larger space was occupied by the maize and grain crops. There were not a few small fields of wheat. In the afternoon, when only the Colonel and myself were with him, the Judge talked about slavery in a candid and liberal spirit. At present prices, he said, nobody could afford to own slaves, unless he could engage them almost exclusively in cotton-growing. It was undoubtedly a great injury to a region like this, which was not altogether well adapted to cotton, to be in the midst of a slaveholding country, for it prevented efficient free labour. A good deal of cotton was nevertheless grown hereabouts by white labour—by poor men who planted an acre or two, and worked it themselves, getting the planters to gin and press it for them. It was not at all uncommon for men to begin in this way and soon purchase negroes on credit, and eventually become rich men. Most of the plantations in this vicinity, indeed, belonged to men who had come into the country with nothing within twenty years. Once a man got a good start with negroes, unless the luck was much against him, nothing but his own folly could prevent his becoming rich. The increase of his negro property by births, if he took good care of it, must, in a few years, make him independent. The worst thing, and the most difficult to remedy, was the deplorable ignorance which prevailed. Latterly, however, people were taking more pride in the education of their children. Some excellent schools had been established, the teachers generally from the North, and a great many children were sent to board in the villages—county-seats—to attend them. This was especially true of girls, who liked to live in the villages rather than on the plantations. There was more difficulty in making boys attend school, until, at least, they were too old to get much good from it.

The “Colonel” was a rough, merry, good-hearted, simple-minded man, and kept all the would-be sober-sides of our coach body in irrepressible laughter with queer observations on passing occurrences, anecdotes and comic songs. It must be confessed that there is no charge which the enemies of the theatre bring against the stage, that was not duly illustrated, and that with a broadness which the taste of a metropolitan audience would scarcely permit. Had Doctor —— and Doctor —— been with me they would thereafter for ever have denied themselves, and discountenanced in others, the use of such a means of travel. The Colonel, notwithstanding, was of a most obliging disposition, and having ascertained in what direction I was going, enumerated at least a dozen families on the road, within some hundred miles, whom he invited me to visit, assuring me that I should find pretty girls in all of them, and a warm welcome, if I mentioned his name.

He told the Judge that his bar-bill on the boat, coming up from New Orleans, was forty dollars—seventeen dollars the first night. But he had made money—had won forty dollars of one gentleman. He confessed, however, that he had lost fifteen by another, “but he saw how he did it. He did not want to accuse him publicly, but he saw it and he meant to write to him and tell him of it. He did not want to insult the gentleman, only he did not want to have him think that he was so green as not to know how he did it.”

While stopping for dinner at a village inn, a young man came into the room where we all were, and asked the coachman what was to be paid for a trunk which had been brought for him. The coachman said the charge would be a dollar, which the young man thought excessive. The coachman denied that it was so, said that it was what he had often been paid; he should not take less. The young man finally agreed to wait for the decision of the proprietor of the line. There was a woman in the room; I noticed no loud words or angry tones, and had not supposed that there was the slightest excitement. I observed, however, that there was a profound silence for a minute afterwards, which was interrupted by a jocose remark of the coachman about the delay of our dinner. Soon after we re-entered the coach, the Colonel referred to the trunk owner in a contemptuous manner. The Judge replied in a similar tone. “If I had been in the driver’s place, I should have killed him sure,” said the Colonel. With great surprise, I ventured to ask for what reason. “Did not you see the fellow put his hand to his breast when the driver denied that he had ever taken less than a dollar for bringing a trunk from Memphis?”

“No, I did not; but what of it?”

“Why, he meant to frighten the driver, of course.”

“You think he had a knife in his breast?”

“Of course he had, sir.”

“But you wouldn’t kill him for that, I suppose?”

“When a man threatens to kill me, you wouldn’t have me wait for him to do it, would you, sir?”

The roads continued very heavy; some one remarked, “There’s been a heap of rain lately,” and rain still kept falling. We passed a number of cotton waggons which had stopped in the road; the cattle had been turned out and had strayed off into the woods, and the drivers lay under the tilts asleep on straw.

The Colonel said this sight reminded him of his old camp-meeting days. “I used to be very fond of going to camp-meetings. I used to go first for fun, and, oh Lord! haint I had some fun at camp meetings? But after a while I got a conviction—needn’t laugh, gentlemen. I tell you it was sober business for me. I’ll never make fun of that. The truth just is, I am a melancholy case; I thought I was a pious man once, I did—I’m damn’d if I didn’t. Don’t laugh at what I say, now; I don’t want fun made of that; I give you my word I experienced religion, and I used to go to the meetings with as much sincerity and soberness as anybody could. That was the time I learned to sing—learned to pray too, I did; could pray right smart. I did think I was a converted man, but of course I ain’t, and I ’spose ’twarnt the right sort, and I don’t reckon I shall have another chance. A gentleman has a right to make the most of this life, when he can’t calculate on anything better than roasting in the next. Aint that so, Judge? I reckon so. You mustn’t think hard of me, if I do talk wicked some. Can’t help it.”

I was forced by the stage arrangements to travel night and day. The Colonel told me that I should be able to get a good supper at a house where the coach was to stop about midnight—“good honest fried bacon, and hot Christian corn-bread—nothing like it, to fill a man up and make him feel righteous. You get a heap better living up in this country than you can at the St. Charles, for all the fuss they make about it. It’s lucky you’ll have something better to travel on to-night than them French friterzeed Dutch flabbergasted hell-fixins: for you’ll have the——” (another most extraordinary series of imprecations on the road over which I was to travel).

Before dark all my companions left me, and in their place I had but one, a young gentleman with whom I soon became very intimately acquainted. He was seventeen years old, so he said; he looked older; and the son of a planter in the “Yazoo bottoms.” The last year he had “follered overseein’” on his father’s plantation, but he was bound for Tennessee, now, to go to an academy, where he could learn geography. There was a school near home at which he had studied reading and writing and ciphering, but he thought a gentleman ought to have some knowledge of geography. At ten o’clock the next morning the stage-coach having progressed at the rate of exactly two miles and a half an hour, for the previous sixteen hours, during which time we had been fasting, the supper-house, which we should have reached before midnight, was still ten miles ahead, the driver sulky and refusing to stop until we reached it. We had been pounded till we ached in every muscle. I had had no sleep since I left Memphis. We were passing over a hill country which sometimes appeared to be quite thickly inhabited, yet mainly still covered with a pine forest, through which the wind moaned lugubriously.

I had been induced to turn this way in my journey in no slight degree by reading the following description in a statistical article of De Bow’s Review:

And here among the hills of this Paradise of the South-west, we were, Yazoo and I—he, savagely hungry, as may be guessed from his observations upon “the finest people of the West,” among whose cabins in the pine-wood toiled our stage-coach.

The whole art of driving was directed to the discovery of a passage for the coach among the trees and through the fields, where there were fields, adjoining the road—the road itself being impassable. Occasionally, when the coachman, during the night, found it necessary, owing to the thickness of the forest on each side, to take to the road, he would first leave the coach and make a survey with his lantern, sounding the ruts of the cotton-waggons, and finally making out a channel by guiding-stakes which he cut from the underwood with a hatchet, usually carried in the holster. If, after diligent sounding, he found no passage sufficiently shallow, he would sometimes spend half an hour in preparing one, bringing rails from the nearest fence, or cutting brushwood for the purpose. We were but once or twice during the night called upon to leave the coach, or to assist in road-making, and my companion frequently expressed his gratitude for this—gratitude not to the driver but to Providence, who had made a country, as he thought, so unusually well adapted for stage-coaching. The night before, he had been on a much worse road, and was half the time, with numerous other passengers, engaged in bringing rails, and prying the coach out of sloughs. They had been obliged to keep on the track, because the water was up over the adjoining country. Where the wooden causeway had floated off, they had passed through water so deep that it entered the coach body. With our road of to-day, then, he could only express satisfaction; not so with the residents upon it. “Look at ’em!” he would say. “Just look at ’em! What’s the use of such people’s living? ’Pears to me I’d die if I couldn’t live better ’n that. When I get to be representative, I’m going to have a law made that all such kind of men shall be took up by the State and sent to the penitentiary, to make ’em work and earn something to support their families. I pity the women; I haint nuthin agin them; they work hard enough, I know; but the men—I know how ’tis. They just hang around groceries and spend all the money they can get—just go round and live on other people, and play keerds, and only go home to nights; and the poor women, they hev to live how they ken.”

“Do you think it’s so? It is strange we see no men—only women and children.”

“Tell you they’re off, gettin’ a dinner out o’ somebody. Tell you I know it’s so. It’s the way all these people do. Why there’s one poor man I know, that lives in a neighbourhood of poor men, down our way, and he’s right industrious, but he can’t get rich and he never ken, cause all these other poor men live on him.”

“What do you mean? Do they all drop in about dinner time?”

“No, not all on ’em, but some on ’em every day. And they keep borrowin’ things of him. He haint spunk enough to insult ’em. If he’d just move into a rich neighborhood and jest be a little sassy, and not keer so much about what folks said of him, he’d get rich; never knew a man that was industrious and sassy in this country that didn’t get rich, quick, and get niggers to do his work for him. Anybody ken that’s smart. Thar’s whar they tried to raise some corn. Warn’t no corn grew thar; that’s sartin. Wonder what they live on? See the stalks. They never made no corn. Plowed right down the hill! Did you ever see anything like it? As if this sile warn’t poor enough already. There now. Just the same. Only look at ’em! ’Pears like they never see a stage afore. This ain’t the right road, the way they look at us. No, sartin, they never see a stage. Lord God! see the babies. They never see a stage afore. No, the stage never went by here afore, I know. This damn’d driver’s just taken us round this way to show off what he can do and pass away the time before breakfast. Couldn’t get no breakfast here if he would stop—less we ate a baby. That’s right! step out where you ken see her good; prehaps you’ll never see a stage again; better look now, right sharp. Yes, oh yes, sartin; fetch out all the babies. Haint you got no more? Well, I should hope not. Now, what is the use of so many babies? That’s the worst on’t. I’d get married to-morrow if I wasn’t sure I’d hev babies. I hate babies, can’t bear ’em round me, and won’t have ’em. I would like to be married. I know several gals I’d marry if ’twarn’t for that. Well, it’s a fact. Just so. I hate the squallin’ things. I know I was born a baby, but I couldn’t help it, could I? I wish I hadn’t been. I hate the squallin’ things. If I had to hev a baby round me I should kill it.”

“If you had a baby of your own, you’d feel differently about it.”

“That’s what they tell me. I s’pose I should, but I don’t want to feel differently. I hate ’em. I hate ’em.”

The coach stopped at length. We got out and found ourselves on the bank of an overflowed brook. A part of the bridge was broken up, the driver declared it impossible to ford the stream, and said he should return to the shanty, four miles back, at which we had last changed horses. We persuaded him to take one of his horses from the team and let us see if we could not get across. I succeeded in doing this without difficulty, and turning the horse loose he returned. The driver, however, was still afraid to try to ford the stream with the coach and mails, and after trying our best to persuade him, I told him if he returned he should do it without me, hoping he would be shamed out of his pusillanimity. Yazoo joined me, but the driver having again recovered the horse upon which he had forded the stream, turned about and drove back. We pushed on, and after walking a few miles, came to a neat new house, with a cluster of old cabins about it. It was much the most comfortable establishment we had seen during the day. Truly a “sunny valley” home of northern Mississippi. We entered quietly, and were received by two women who were spinning in a room with three outside doors all open, though a fine fire was burning, merely to warm the room, in a large fire-place, within. Upon our asking if we could have breakfast prepared for us, one of the women went to the door and gave orders to a negro, and in a moment after, we saw six or seven black boys and girls chasing and clubbing a hen round the yard for our benefit. I regret to add that they did not succeed in making her tender. At twelve o’clock we breakfasted, and were then accommodated with a bed, upon which we slept together for several hours. When I awoke I walked out to look at the premises.

The house was half a dozen rods from the high road, with a square yard all about it, in one corner of which was a small enclosure for stock, and a log stable and corn-crib. There were also three negro cabins; one before the house, and two behind it. The house was a neat building of logs, boarded over and painted on the outside. On the inside, the logs were neatly hewn to a plane face, and exposed. One of the lower rooms contained a bed, and but little other furniture; the other was the common family apartment, but also was furnished with a bed. A door opened into another smaller log house in the rear, in which were two rooms—one of them the family dining-room; the other the kitchen. Behind this was still another log erection, fifteen feet square, which was the smoke-house, and in which a great store of bacon was kept. The negro cabins were small, dilapidated, and dingy; the walls were not chinked, and there were no windows—which, indeed, would have been a superfluous luxury, for there were spaces of several inches between the logs, through which there was unobstructed vision. The furniture in the cabins was of the simplest and rudest imaginable kind, two or three beds with dirty clothing upon them, a chest, a wooden stool or two made with an axe, and some earthenware and cooking apparatus. Everything within the cabins was coloured black by smoke. The chimneys of both the house and the cabins were built of splinters and clay, and on the outer side of the walls. At the door of each cabin were literally “heaps” of babies and puppies, and behind or beside it a pig-stye and poultry coop, a ley-tub, and quantities of home-carded cotton placed upon boards to bleach. Within each of them was a woman or two, spinning with the old-fashioned great wheel, and in the kitchen another woman was weaving coarse cotton shirting with the ancient rude hand-loom. The mistress herself was spinning in the living-room, and asked, when we had grown acquainted, what women at the North could find to do, and how they could ever pass the time, when they gave up spinning and weaving. She made the common every-day clothing for all her family and her servants. They only bought a few “store-goods” for their “dress-up” clothes. She kept the negro girls spinning all through the winter, and at all times when they were not needed in the field. She supposed they would begin to plant corn now in a few days, and then the girls would go to work out of doors. I noticed that all the bed-clothing, the towels, curtains, etc., in the house, were of homespun.

The proprietor, who had been absent on a fishing excursion, during the day, returned at dusk. He was a man of the fat, slow-and-easy style, and proved to be good-natured, talkative, and communicative. He had bought the tract of land he now occupied, and moved upon it about ten years before. He had made a large clearing, and could now sell it for a good deal more than he gave for it. He intended to sell whenever he could get a good offer, and move on West. It was the best land in this part of the country, and he had got it well fenced, and put up a nice house: there were a great many people that like to have these things done for them in advance—and he thought he should not have to wait long for a purchaser. He liked himself to be clearing land, and it was getting too close settled about here to suit him. He did not have much to do but to hunt and fish, and the game was getting so scarce it was too much trouble to go after it. He did not think there were so many cat in the creek as there used to be either, but there were more gar-fish. When he first bought this land he was not worth much—had to run in debt—hadn’t but three negroes. Now, he was pretty much out of debt and owned twenty negroes, seven of them prime field-hands, and he reckoned I had not seen a better lot anywhere.

During the evening, all the cabins were illuminated by great fires, and, looking into one of them, I saw a very picturesque family group; a man sat on the ground making a basket, a woman lounged on a chest in the chimney corner smoking a pipe, and a boy and two girls sat in a bed which had been drawn up opposite to her, completing the fireside circle. They were talking and laughing cheerfully.

The next morning when I turned out I found Yazoo looking with the eye of a connoisseur at the seven prime field-hands, who at half-past seven were just starting off with hoes and axes for their day’s work. As I approached him, he exclaimed with enthusiasm:—

“Aren’t them a right keen lookin’ lot of niggers?”

And our host soon after coming out, he immediately walked up to him, saying:—

“Why, friend, them yer niggers o’ yourn would be good for seventy bales of cotton, if you’d move down into our country.”

Their owner was perfectly aware of their value, and said everything good of them.

“There’s something ruther singlar, too, about my niggers; I don’t know as I ever see anything like it anywhere else.”

“How so, sir?”

“Well, I reckon it’s my way o’ treatin’ ’em, much as anything. I never hev no difficulty with ’em. Hen’t licked a nigger in five year, ’cept maybe sprouting some of the young ones sometimes. Fact, my niggers never want no lookin’ arter; they jus tek ker o’ themselves. Fact, they do tek a greater interest in the crops than I do myself. There’s another thing—I ’spose ’twill surprise you—there ent one of my niggers but what can read; read good, too—better ’n I can, at any rate.”

“How did they learn?”

“Taught themselves. I b’lieve there was one on ’em that I bought, that could read, and he taught all the rest. But niggers is mighty apt at larnin’, a heap more ’n white folks is.”

I said that this was contrary to the generally received opinion.

“Well, now, let me tell you,” he continued; “I had a boy to work, when I was buildin’, and my boys jus teachin’ him night times and such, he warn’t here more’n three months, and he larned to read as well as any man I ever heerd, and I know he didn’t know his letters when he come here. It didn’t seem to me any white man could have done that; does it to you, now?”

“How old was he?”

“Warn’t more’n seventeen, I reckon.”

“How do they get books—do you get them for them?”

“Oh no; get ’em for themselves.”

“How?”

“Buy ’em.”

“How do they get the money?”

“Earn it.”

“How?”

“By their own work. I tell you my niggers have got more money ’n I hev.”

“What kind of books do they get?”

“Religious kind a books ginerally—these stories; and some of them will buy novels, I believe. They won’t let on to that, but I expect they do it.”

They bought them of peddlers. I inquired about the law to prevent negroes reading, and asked if it allowed books to be sold to negroes. He had never heard of any such law—didn’t believe there was any. The Yazoo man said there was such a law in his country. Negroes never had anything to read there. I asked our host if his negroes were religious, as their choice of works would have indicated.

“Yes; all on ’em, I reckon. Don’t s’pose you’ll believe it, but I tell you it’s a fact; I haint heerd a swear on this place for a twelvemonth. They keep the Lord’s day, too, right tight, in gineral.”

“Our niggers is mighty wicked down in Yallerbush county,” said my companion; “they dance.”

“Dance on Sunday?” I asked.

“Oh, no, we don’t allow that.”

“What do they do, then—go to meeting?”

“Why, Sundays they sleep mostly; they’ve been at work hard all the week, you know, and Sundays they stay in their cabins, and sleep and talk to each other. There’s so many of ’em together, they don’t want to go visiting off the place.”

“Are your negroes Baptists or Methodists?” I inquired of our host.

“All Baptists; niggers allers want to be ducked, you know. They ain’t content to be just titch’d with water; they must be ducked in all over. There was two niggers jined the Methodists up here last summer, and they made the minister put ’em into the branch; they wouldn’t jine ’less he’d duck ’em.”

“The Bible says baptize, too,” observed Yazoo.

“Well, they think they must be ducked all under, or ’tain’t no good.”

“Do they go to meeting?”

“Yes, they hev a meeting among themselves.”

“And a preacher?”

“Yes; a nigger preacher.”

“Our niggers is mighty wicked; they dance!” repeated Yazoo.

“Do you consider dancing so very wicked, then?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t account so myself, as I know on, but they do, you know—the pious people, all kinds, except the ’Piscopers; some o’ them, they do dance themselves, I believe.”

“Do you dance in your country?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of dances—cotillions and reels?”

“Yes; what do you?”

“Well, we dance cotillions and reels too, and we dance on a plank; that’s the kind of dancin’ I like best.”

“How is it done?”

“Why, don’t you know that? You stand face to face with your partner on a plank and keep a dancin’. Put the plank up on two barrel heads, so it’ll kind o’ spring. At some of our parties—that’s among common kind o’ people, you know—it’s great fun. They dance as fast as they can, and the folks all stand round and holler, ‘Keep it up, John!’ ‘Go it, Nance!’ ‘Don’t give it up so!’ ‘Old Virginny never tire!’ ‘Heel and toe, ketch a fire!’ and such kind of observations, and clap and stamp ’em.”

“Do your negroes dance much?”

“Yes, they are mighty fond on’t. Saturday night they dance all night, and Sunday nights too. Daytime they sleep and rest themselves, and Sunday nights we let ’em dance and sing if they want. It does ’em good, you know, to enjoy theirselves.”

“They dance to the banjo, I suppose?”

“Banjos and violins; some of ’em has got violins.”

“I like to hear negroes sing,” said I.

“Niggers is allers good singers nat’rally,” said our host. “I reckon they got better lungs than white folks, they hev such powerful voices.”

We were sitting at this time on the rail fence at the corner of a hog-pen and a large half-cleared field. In that part of this field nearest the house, among the old stumps, twenty or thirty small fruit trees had been planted. I asked what sorts they were.

“I don’t know—good kinds tho’, I expect; I bought ’em for that at any rate.”

“Where did you buy them?”

“I bought ’em of a feller that came a peddlin’ round here last fall; he said I’d find ’em good.”

“What did you pay for them?”

“A bit apiece.”

“That’s very cheap, if they’re good for anything; you are sure they’re grafted, arn’t you?”

“Only by what he said—he said they was grafted kinds. I’ve got a paper in the housen he gin me, tells about ’em; leastways, he said it did. They’s the curosest kinds of trees printed into it you ever heerd on. But I did not buy none, only the fruit kinds.”

Getting off the fence I began to pick about the roots of one of them with my pocket-knife. After exposing the trunk for five or six inches below the surface, I said, “You’ve planted these too deep, if they’re all like this. You should have the ground dished about it or it won’t grow.” I tried another, and after picking some minutes without finding any signs of the “collar,” I asked if they had all been planted so deeply.

“I don’t know—I told the boys to put ’em in about two feet, and I expect they did, for they fancied to have apple-trees growin’.”

The catalogue of the tree-peddler, which afterwards came into my possession, quite justified the opinion my host expressed of the kinds of trees described in it. The reader shall judge for himself, and I assure him that the following is a literal transcript of it, omitting the sections headed “Ancebus new,” “Camelias,” “Rhododendrums,” “Bubbs Pæony,” “Rosiers,” “Wind’s flowers of the greatest scarcity,” “Bulbous Roots, and of various kinds of graines.”

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“But come,” said the farmer, “go in; take a drink. Breakfast’ll be ready right smart.”

“I don’t want to drink before breakfast, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not accustomed to it, and I don’t find it’s wholesome.”

Not wholesome to drink before breakfast! That was “a new kink” to our jolly host, and troubled him as much as a new “ism” would an old fogy. Not wholesome? He had always reckoned it warn’t very wholesome not to drink before breakfast. He did not expect I had seen a great many healthier men than he was, had I? and he always took a drink before breakfast. If a man just kept himself well strung up, without ever stretching himself right tight, he didn’t reckon damps or heat would ever do him much harm. He had never had a sick day since he came to this place, and he reckoned that this was owin’ considerable to the good rye whisky he took. It was a healthy trac’ of land, though, he believed, a mighty healthy trac’; everything seemed to thrive here. We must see a nigger-gal that he was raisin’; she was just coming five, and would pull up nigh upon a hundred weight.

“Two year ago,” he continued, after taking his dram, as we sat by the fire in the north room, “when I had a carpenter here to finish off this house, I told one of my boys he must come in and help him. I reckoned he would larn quick, if he was a mind to. So he come in, and a week arterwards he fitted the plank and laid this floor, and now you just look at it; I don’t believe any man could do it better. That was two year ago, and now he’s as good a carpenter as you ever see. I bought him some tools after the carpenter left, and he can do anything with ’em—make a table or a chest of drawers or anything. I think niggers is somehow nat’rally ingenious; more so ’n white folks. They is wonderful apt to any kind of slight.”

I took out my pocket-map, and while studying it, asked Yazoo some questions about the route East. Not having yet studied geography, as he observed, he could not answer. Our host inquired where I was going, that way. I said I should go on to Carolina.

“Expect you’re going to buy a rice-farm, in the Carolinies, aint you? and I reckon you’re up here speckylating arter nigger stock, aint you now?”

“Well,” said I, “I wouldn’t mind getting that fat girl of yours, if we can made a trade. How much a pound will you sell her at?”

“We don’t sell niggers by the pound in this country.”

“Well, how much by the lump?”

“Well, I don’t know; reckon I don’t keer about sellin’ her just yet.”

After breakfast, I inquired about the management of the farm. He said that he purchased negroes, as he was able, from time to time. He grew rich by the improved saleable value of his land, arising in part from their labour, and from their natural increase and improvement, for he bought only such as would be likely to increase in value on his hands. He had been obliged to spend but little money, being able to live and provide most of the food and clothing for his family and his people, by the production of his farm. He made a little cotton, which he had to send some distance to be ginned and baled, and then waggoned it seventy miles to a market; also raised some wheat, which he turned into flour at a neighbouring mill, and sent to the same market. This transfer engaged much of the winter labour of his man-slaves.

I said that I supposed the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as it progressed east, would shorten the distance to which it would be necessary to draw his cotton, and so be of much service to him. He did not know that. He did not know as he should ever use it. He expected they would charge pretty high for carrying cotton, and his niggers hadn’t any thing else to do. It did not really cost him anything now to send it to Memphis, because he had to board the niggers and the cattle anyhow, and they did not want much more on the road than they did at home.

He made a large crop of corn, which, however, was mainly consumed by his own force, and he killed annually about one hundred and fifty hogs, the bacon of which was all consumed in his own family and by his people, or sold to passing travellers. In the fall, a great many drovers and slave-dealers passed over the road with their stock, and they frequently camped against this house, so as to buy corn and bacon of him. This they cooked themselves.

There were sometimes two hundred negroes brought along together, going South. He didn’t always have bacon to spare for them, though he killed one hundred and fifty swine. They were generally bad characters, and had been sold for fault by their owners. Some of the slave-dealers were high-minded, honourable men, he thought; “high-toned gentlemen, as ever he saw, some of ’em, was.”

Niggers were great eaters, and wanted more meat than white folks; and he always gave his as much as they wanted, and more too. The negro cook always got dinner for them, and took what she liked for it; his wife didn’t know much about it. She got as much as she liked, and he guessed she didn’t spare it. When the field-hands were anywhere within a reasonable distance, they always came up to the house to get their dinner. If they were going to work a great way off, they would carry their dinner with them. They did as they liked about it. When they hadn’t taken their dinner, the cook called them at twelve o’clock with a conch. They ate in the kitchen, and he had the same dinner that they did, right out of the same frying-pan; it was all the same, only they ate in the kitchen, and he ate in the room we were in, with the door open between them.

I brought up the subject of the cost of labour, North and South. He had no apprehension that there would ever be any want of labourers at the South, and could not understand that the ruling price indicated the state of the demand for them. He thought negroes would increase more rapidly than the need for their labour. “Niggers,” said he, “breed faster than white folks, a ’mazin’ sight, you know; they begin younger.”

“How young do they begin?”

“Sometimes at fourteen, sometimes at sixteen, and sometimes at eighteen.”

“Do you let them marry so young as that?” I inquired. He laughed, and said, “They don’t very often wait to be married.”

“When they marry, do they have a minister to marry them?”

“Yes, generally one of their own preachers.”

“Do they with you?” I inquired of Yazoo.

“Yes, sometimes they hev a white minister, and sometimes a black one, and if there arn’t neither handy, they get some of the pious ones to marry ’em. But then very often they only just come and ask our consent, and then go ahead, without any more ceremony. They just call themselves married. But most niggers likes a ceremony, you know, and they generally make out to hev one somehow. They don’t very often get married for good, though, without trying each other, as they say, for two or three weeks, to see how they are going to like each other.”

I afterwards asked how far it was to the post-office. It was six miles. “One of my boys,” said our host, “always gets the paper every week. He goes to visit his wife, and passes by the post-office every Sunday. Our paper hain’t come, though, now, for three weeks. The mail don’t come very regular.” All of his negroes, who had wives off the place, left an hour before sunset on Saturday evening. One of them, who had a wife twenty miles away, left at twelve o’clock Saturday, and got back at twelve o’clock Monday.

“We had a nigger once,” said Yazoo, “that had a wife fifteen miles away, and he used to do so; but he did some rascality once, and he was afraid to go again. He told us his wife was so far off, ’twas too much trouble to go there, and he believed he’d give her up. We was glad of it. He was a darned rascally nigger—allers getting into scrapes. One time we sent him to mill, and he went round into town and sold some of the meal. The storekeeper wouldn’t pay him for’t, ’cause he hadn’t got an order. The next time we were in town, the storekeeper just showed us the bag of meal; said he reckoned ’twas stole; so when we got home we just tied him up to the tree and licked him. He’s a right smart nigger; rascally niggers allers is smart. I’d rather have a rascally nigger than any other—they’s so smart allers. He is about the best nigger we’ve got.”

“I have heard,” said I, “that religious negroes were generally the most valuable. I have been told that a third more would be given for a man if he were religious.” “Well, I never heerd of it before,” said he. Our host thought there was no difference in the market value of sinners and saints.

“Only,” observed Yazoo, “the rascalier a nigger is, the better he’ll work. Now that yer nigger I was tellin’ you on, he’s worth more’n any other nigger we’ve got. He’s a yaller nigger.”

I asked their opinion as to the comparative value of black and yellow negroes. Our host had two bright mulatto boys among his—didn’t think there was much difference, “but allers reckoned yellow fellows was the best a little; they worked smarter. He would rather have them.” Yazoo would not; he “didn’t think but what they’d work as well; but he didn’t fancy yellow negroes ’round him; would rather have real black ones.”

I asked our host if he had no foreman or driver for his negroes, or if he gave his directions to one of them in particular for all the rest. He did not. They all did just as they pleased, and arranged the work among themselves. They never needed driving.

“If I ever notice one of ’em getting a little slack, I just talk to him; tell him we must get out of the grass, and I want to hev him stir himself a little more, and then, maybe, I slip a dollar into his hand, and when he gits into the field he’ll go ahead, and the rest seeing him, won’t let themselves be distanced by him. My niggers never want no lookin’ arter. They tek more interest in the crop than I do myself, every one of ’em.”

Religious, instructed, and seeking further enlightenment; industrious, energetic, and self directing; well fed, respected, and trusted by their master, and this master an illiterate, indolent, and careless man! A very different state of things, this, from what I saw on a certain great cotton planter’s estate, where a profit of $100,000 was made in a single year, but where five hundred negroes were constantly kept under the whip, where religion was only a pow-wow or cloak for immorality, and where the negro was considered to be of an inferior race, especially designed by Providence to be kept in the position he there occupied! A very different thing; and strongly suggesting what a very different thing this negro servitude might be made in general, were the ruling disposition of the South more just and sensible.

About half-past eleven, a stage coach, which had come earlier in the morning from the East, and had gone on as far as the brook, returned, having had our luggage transferred to it from the one we had left on the other side. In the transfer a portion of mine was omitted and never recovered. Up to this time our host had not paid the smallest attention to any work his men were doing, or even looked to see if they had fed the cattle, but had lounged about, sitting upon a fence, chewing tobacco, and talking with us, evidently very glad to have somebody to converse with. He went in once again, after a drink; showed us the bacon he had in his smoke-house, and told a good many stories of his experience in life, about a white man’s “dying hard” in the neighbourhood, and of a tree falling on a team with which one of his negroes was ploughing cotton, “which was lucky”—that is, that it did not kill the negro—and a good deal about “hunting” when he was younger and lighter.

Still absurdly influenced by an old idea which I had brought to the South with me, I waited, after the coach came in sight, for Yazoo to put the question, which he presently did, boldly enough.

“Well; reckon we’re goin’ now. What’s the damage?”

“Well; reckon seventy-five cents’ll be right.”