The Civil War in America Part 8

Circulation of the Free Banks, secured by a deposit in the public Treasury, of State and New Orleans City Bonds, to the amount of, $3,793,873 The Chartered Banks hold of the same securities, 1,747,467 --------- $5,541,340

DEAD WEIGHT.

Chartered Banks--bills and mortgaged bonds and other a.s.sets, not realizable $14,140,925 in 90 days, Free Banks--bills and mortgaged bonds and other a.s.sets, not realizable in 90 days, 2,606,249 ---------- $16,747,174 ----------- Total $54,752,172 ----------- Remarks: Amount of coin, as above, $14,993,531

Amount of coin required by the Fundamental Bank Rules of Louisiana--one-third of the cash responsibilities, say, on $25,031,062, as above, $8,343,137 ---------- Surplus, $6,648,847 ---------- Amount of short notes maturing within a circle of 90 days, and exchange, as above, $17,471,124 Amount required to be held by the Fundamental Bank Rules--at least two-thirds, $16,687,378 ----------- Surplus, $783,771

LETTER XIII.

NATCHEZ, Miss., June 14.

ON the morning of the 3d of June, I left New Orleans in one of the steamers proceeding up the Mississippi, along that fertile but uninteresting region of reclaimed swamp lands called "the Coast," which extends along both banks for one hundred and twenty miles above the city. It is so called from the name given to it, "La Cote," by the early French settlers. Here is the favored land--alas! it is a fever-land too--of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonis.h.i.+ng, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained and green with wealth-producing crops. At the present moment the surface of the river is several feet higher than the land at each side, and the steamer moves on a level with the upper stories, or even the roofs of the houses, reminding one of such scenery as could be witnessed in the old days of treckshuyt in Holland. The river is not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, and is quite as richly colored. But then it is one hundred and eighty feet deep, and for hundreds of miles it has not less than one hundred feet of water. Thus deeply has it scooped out the rich clay and marl in its course, but as it flows out to join the sea it throws down the vast precipitates which render the bars so s.h.i.+fting and difficult, and bring the mighty river to such a poor exit. A few miles above the wharves and large levees of the city the country really appears to be a sea of light green, with sh.o.r.es of forest in the distance, about two miles away from the bank. This forest is the uncleared land, extending for a considerable way back, which each planter hopes to take into culture one day or other, and which he now uses to provide timber for his farm. Near the banks are houses of wood, with porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and sun-shades, generally painted white and green. There is a great uniformity of style, but the idea aimed at seems to be that of the old French chateau, with the addition of a colonnade round the ground story.

These dwellings are generally in the midst of small gardens, rich in semi-tropical vegetation, with glorious magnolias, now in full bloom, rising in their midst, and groves of live-oak interspersed. The levee is as hard and dry as the bank of a ca.n.a.l. Here and there it is propped up by wooden revelments. Between it and the uniform line of palings which guards the river face of the plantations there is a carriage-road. In the enclosure near each residence there is a row of small wooden huts, whitewashed, in which live the negroes attached to the service of the family. Outside the negroes who labor in the fields are quartered in similar constructions, which are like the small single huts, called "Maltese," which were plentiful in the Crimea. They are rarely furnished with windows; a wooden slide or a grated s.p.a.ce admits such light and air as they want. One of the most striking features of the landscape is its utter want of life. There were a few hors.e.m.e.n exercising in a field, some gigs and buggies along the levee roads, and little groups at the numerous landing-places, generally containing a few children in tom-fool costumes, as Zouaves, Cha.s.seurs, or some sort of infantry, but the slaves who were there had come down to look after luggage or their masters. There were no merry, laughing, chattering gatherings of black faces and white teeth, such as we hear about. Indeed, the negroes are not allowed hereabouts to stir out of their respective plantations, or to go along the road without pa.s.ses from their owners. The steamer J. L.

Cotten, which was not the less popular, perhaps, because she had the words "Low pressure" conspicuous on her paddle-boxes, carried a fair load of pa.s.sengers, most of whom were members of Creole families living on the coast. The proper meaning of the word "Creole" is very different from that which we attach to it. It signifies a person of Spanish or French descent born in Louisiana or in the Southern and tropical countries. The great majority of the planters here are French Creoles, and it is said they are kinder and better masters than Americans or Scotch, the latter being considered the most severe. Intelligent on most subjects, they are resolute in the belief that England must take their cotton or perish. Even the keenest of their financiers, Mr. Forstall, an Irish Creole, who is representative of the house of Baring, seems inclined to this faith, though he is prepared with many ingenious propositions, which would rejoice Mr. Gladstone's inmost heart, to raise money for the Southern Confederacy, and make them rich exceedingly. One thing has rather puzzled him. M. Baroche, who is in New Orleans, either as a looker-on or as an accredited _employe_ of his father or of the French Government, suggested to him that it would not be possible for all the disposable mercantile marine of England and France together to carry the cotton crop, which hitherto gave employment to a great number of American vessels, now tabooed by the South, and the calculations seem to bear out the truth of the remark. Be that as it may, Mr. Forstall is quite prepared to show that the South can raise a prodigious revenue by a small direct taxation, for which the machinery already exists in every parish of the State, and that the North must be prodigiously damaged in the struggle, if not ruined outright. One great source of strength in the South is its readiness--at least, its professed alacrity--to yield anything that it is asked. There is unbounded confidence in Mr.

Jefferson Davis. Wherever I go, the same question is asked: "Well, Sir, what do you think of our President? Does he not strike you as being a very able man?" In finance he is trusted as much as in war. When he sent orders to the New Orleans Banks, some time ago, to suspend specie payment, he exercised a power which could not be justified by any reading of the Southern Const.i.tution. All men applauded. The President of the United States is far from receiving any such support or confidence, and it need not be said any act of his of the same nature as that of Mr. Davis would have created an immense outcry against him. But the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy, and its unanimity is not greater than its confidence. One is rather tired of endless questions, "Who can conquer such men?" But the question should be, "Can the North conquer us?" Of the fustian about dying in their tracks and fighting till every man, woman and child is exterminated, there is a great deal too much, but they really believe that the fate which Poland could not avert, to which France as well as the nations she overran bowed the head, can never reach them. With their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they are at the wars, and England and France to take the latter and pay them for it, they believe they can meet the American world in arms. A glorious future opens before them. Illimitable fields tilled by mult.i.tudinous negroes open on their vision, and prostrate at the base of the mountain of cotton from which they rule the kings of the earth, the empires of Europe shall lie, with all their gold, their manufactures, and their industry, crying out, "Pray give us more cotton! All we ask is more!" But here is the boat stopping opposite Mr. Roman's--Ex-Governor of the State of Louisiana, and Ex-Commissioner from the Confederate Government at Montgomery to the Government of the United States at Was.h.i.+ngton. Not very long ago he could boast of a very handsome garden--the French Creoles love gardens--Americans and English do not much affect them; when the Mississippi was low one fine day, levee and all slid down the bank into the maw of the river, and were carried off. This is what is called the "caving in" of a bank; when the levee is broken through at high water it is said that a "creva.s.se" has taken place. The Governor, as he is called--once a captain always a captain--has still a handsome garden, however, though his house has been brought unpleasantly near the river.

His mansion and the out-offices stand in the shade of magnolias, green oaks, and other Southern trees. To the last Governor Roman was a Unionist, but when his State went he followed her, and now he is a Secessionist for life and for death, not extravagant in his hopes, but calm and resolute, and fully persuaded that in the end the South must win. As he does not raise any cotton, the consequences for him will be extremely serious should sugar be greatly depreciated; but the consumption of that article in America is very large, and, though the markets in the North and West are cut off, it is hoped, as no imported sugar can find its way into the States, that the South will consume all its own produce at a fair rate. The Governor is a very good type of the race, which is giving way a little before the encroachments of the Anglo-Saxons, and he possesses all the ease, candid manner, and suavity of the old French gentleman--of that school in which there are now few masters or scholars. He invited me to visit the negro quarters. "Go where you like, do what you please, ask any questions. There is nothing we desire to conceal." As we pa.s.sed the house, two or three young women flitted past in snow-white dresses with pink sashes, and no doubtful crinolines, but their head-dresses were not _en regle_--handkerchiefs of a gay color. They were slaves going off to a dance at the sugar-house; but they were in-door servants, and therefore better off in the way of clothes than their fellow slaves who labor in the field. On approaching a high paling at the rear of the house the sc.r.a.ping of fiddles was audible. It was Sunday, and Mr. Roman informed me that he gave his negroes leave to have a dance on that day. The planters who are not Catholics rarely give any such indulgence to their slaves, though they do not always make them work on that day, and sometimes let them enjoy themselves on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Entering a wicket gate, a quadrangular enclosure, lined with negro huts, lay before us. The bare ground was covered with litter of various kinds, amid which pigs and poultry were pasturing. Dogs, puppies, and curs of low degree scampered about on all sides; and deep in a pond, swinking in the sun, stood some thirty or forty mules, enjoying their day of rest. The huts of the negroes, belonging to the personal service of the house, were separated from the negroes engaged in field labor by a close wooden paling; but there was no difference in the shape and size of their dwellings, which consisted generally of one large room, divided by a part.i.tion occasionally into two bed-rooms. Outside the whitewash gave them a cleanly appearance; inside they were dingy and squalid--no gla.s.s in the windows, swarms of flies, some clothes hanging on nails in the boards, dressers with broken crockery, a bedstead of rough carpentry; a fireplace in which, hot as was the day, a log lay in embers; a couple of tin cooking utensils; in the obscure, the occupant, male or female, awkward and shy before strangers, and silent till spoken to. Of course there were no books, for the slaves do not read. They all seemed respectful to their master. We saw very old men and very old women, who were the canker-worms of the estate, and were dozing away into eternity mindful only of hominy, and pig, and mola.s.ses. Two negro fiddlers were working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd of little children were listening to the music, and a few grown-up persons of color--some of them from the adjoining plantations. The children are generally dressed in a little sack of coa.r.s.e calico, which answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean. It might be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant negro, or of the child up to six or seven years of age, is generally a fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not less happy than free-born children, although much more valuable--for once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance towards nine or ten years of age, they rise in value to 100 or more, even in times when the market is low and money is scarce. The women were not very well-favored, except one yellow girl, whose child was quite white, with fair hair and light eyes; and the men were disguised in such strangely cut clothes, their hats and shoes and coats were so wonderfully made, that one could not tell what they were like. On all faces there was a gravity which must be the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort, for those who ought to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world.

It struck me more and more, as I examined the expression of the faces of the slaves all over the South, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if not universal, characteristic of the race. Let a physiognomist go and see. Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated, for they had good clothing of its kind, good food, and a master who wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of it. Still, they all looked exceedingly sad, and even the old woman who boasted that she had held her old master in her arms when he was an infant, did not look cheerful, as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her ancient charge. The precincts of the huts were not clean, and the enclosure was full of weeds, in which poultry--the perquisites of the slaves--were in full possession. The negroes rear domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters.

The money they spend in purchasing tobacco, mola.s.ses, clothes and flour--whiskey, their great delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty hands were quartered in this part of the estate. The silence which reigned in the huts as soon as the fiddlers had gone off to the sugar-house was profound. Before leaving the quarter I was taken to the hospital, which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms contained several flock beds on rough stands, and five patients, three of whom were women. They sat listlessly on the beds, looking out into s.p.a.ce; no books to amuse them, no conversation--nothing but their own dull thoughts, if they had any. They were suffering from pneumonia and swellings of the glands of the neck; one man had fever. Their medical attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a pract.i.tioner, who is engaged by the term for his services. Negroes have now only a nominal value in the market--that the price of a good field hand is as high as ever, but there is no one to buy him at present, and no money to pay for him, and the trade of the slave-dealers is very bad. The menageries of the "Virginia negroes constantly on sale. Money advanced on all descriptions of property," &c., must be full--their pockets empty. This question of price is introduced incidentally in reference to the treatment of negroes. It has often been said to me that no one will ill-use a creature worth 300 or 400, but that is not a universal rule.

Much depends on temper, and many a hunting-field could show that if value be a guarantee for good usage, the slave is more fortunate than his fellow chattel, the horse. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton and corn, be the great end of man's mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, Slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous inst.i.tution. Sugar and cotton are, a.s.suredly, two great agencies in this latter world. The older got on well enough without them.

The sc.r.a.ping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, a large brick building with a factory-looking chimney, where the juice of the cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refiner. In a s.p.a.ce of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as many men were a.s.sembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish jig to the music of the negro musicians--a double shuffle and thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards--a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien, worthy of the minuet in _Don Giovanni_. At this time of year there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crus.h.i.+ng and boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but "involuntary servitude" could go through the toil and suffering required to produce sugar for us. This is not the place for an account of the processes and machinery used in the manufacture, which is a scientific operation, greatly improved by recent discoveries and apparatus.

In the afternoon the Governor's son came in from the company which he commands. He has been camping out with them to accustom them to the duties of actual war, and he told me that all his men were most zealous and exceedingly proficient. They are all of the best families around,--planters, large and small, their sons and relatives, and a few of the Creole population, who are engaged as hoopers and stavemakers.

One of the latter had just stained his hands with blood. He had reason to believe a culpable intimacy existed between his wife and his foreman.

A circ.u.mstance occurred which appeared to confirm his worst suspicions.

He took out his fire-lock, and, meeting the man, he shot him without uttering a word, and then delivered himself up to the authorities. It is probable his punishment will be exceedingly light, as divorce suits and actions for damages are not in favor in this part of the world. Although the people are Roman Catholics, it is by no means unusual to permit relations within the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the Church to intermarry, and the elastic nature of the rules which are laid down by the priesthood in that respect would greatly astonish the orthodox in Ireland or Bavaria. The whole of the planters and their dependents along "the coast" are in arms. There is but one sentiment, as far as I can see, among them, and that is, "We will never submit to the North." In the evening, several officers of M. Alfred Roman's company and neighbors came in, and out under the shade of the trees, in the twilight, illuminated by the flas.h.i.+ng fireflies, politics were discussed--all on one side, of course, with general conversation of a more agreeable character. The customary language of the Creoles is French, and several newspapers in French are published in the districts around us; but they speak English fluently.

Next morning, early, the Governor was in the saddle and took me round to see his plantation. We rode through alleys formed by the tall stalks of the maze out to the wide, unbroken fields--hedgeless, unwalled, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind.

Along the margin in the distance there is an unbroken boundary of forest extending all along the swamp lands, and two miles in depth. From the river to the forest there is about one mile and a half or more of land of the very highest quality--unfathomable, and producing from one to one and a half hogshead an acre. Away in the midst of the crops were white-looking ma.s.ses, reminding me of the sepoys and sowars as seen in Indian fields in the morning sun on many a march. As we rode towards them we overtook a cart with a large cask, a number of tin vessels, a bucket of mola.s.ses, a pail of milk, and a tub full of hominy or boiled Indian corn. The cask contained water for the use of the negroes, and the other vessel held the materials for their breakfast, in addition to which they generally have each a dried fish. The food looked ample and wholesome, such as any laboring man would be well content with every day. There were three gangs at work in the fields. One of them with twenty mules and plows, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds and clearing away the gra.s.s, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hand on the plantation.

The overseer, a sharp-looking Creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintended their labors, and, after a few directions and a salutation to the governor, rode off to another part of the farm. The negroes when spoken to saluted us and came forward to shake hands--a civility which must not be refused. With the exception of crying to their mules, however, they kept silence when at work. Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the gra.s.s in Indian corn--easy work enough. The third gang was of thirty-six or thirty-seven women, who were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate, their shoes ponderous and ill-made, so as to wear away the feet of their thick stockings. Coa.r.s.e straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to prevailed among these gangs also--not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If "Alcibiadev" or "Pompee" were called out, he came with outstretched hand to ask "how do you do," and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping _chapeaux de paille_ at their visitors. Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for anything else, and "suckers,"

as they are called, are permitted to go home to give their infants the breast at appointed periods in the day. I returned home _multa mec.u.m revolens_. After breakfast, in spite of a very fine sun, which was not unworthy of a January noon in Cawnpore, we drove forth to visit some planter friends of M. Roman, a few miles down the river. The levee road is dusty, but the gardens, white railings, and neat houses of the planters looked fresh and clean enough. There is a great difference in the appearance of the slaves' quarters. Some are neat, others are dilapidated and mean. As a general rule, it might be said that the goodness of the cottages was in proportion to the frontage of each plantation towards the river, which is a fair index to the size of the estate wherever the river bank is straight. The lines of the estate are drawn perpendicularly to the banks, so that the convexity or concavity of the bends determines the frontage of the plantation.

The absence of human beings in the fields and on the roads was remarkable. The gangs at work were hidden in the deep corn, and not a soul met us on the road for many miles except one planter in his gig. At one place we visited a very handsome garden, laid out with hot-houses and conservatories, ponds full of magnificent Victoria Regia in flower, orange trees, and many other tropical plants, native and foreign, date and other palms. The proprietor owns an extensive sugar refinery. We visited his factory and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for all but naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boiler, vat and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much at present, for sugar has been falling rapidly in New Orleans, and the three hundred thousand barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profit, which, on an average, may be taken at 11 a hogshead, without counting the mola.s.ses for the planter. All the planters hereabouts have sown an unusual quant.i.ty of Indian Corn, so as to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare. At night, after our return, a large bonfire was lighted on the bank to attract the steamer to call for my luggage, which she was to leave at a point on the opposite sh.o.r.e, fourteen miles higher up, and I perceived that there are regular patrols and watchmen at night who look after levees and the negroes; a number of dogs are also loosed, but I am a.s.sured by a gentleman, who has written me a long letter on the subject from Montgomery, that these dogs do not tear the negroes; they are taught merely to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a retriever well broken uses a wild duck. Next day I left the hospitable house of Governor Roman, full of regard for his personal character and of wishes for his happiness and prosperity, but a.s.suredly in no degree satisfied that even with his care and kindness even the "domestic inst.i.tution" can be rendered tolerable or defensible, if it be once conceded that the negro is a human being with a soul--or with the feelings of a man. On those points there are ingenious hypotheses and subtle argumentations in print "down South," which do much to comfort the consciences of the anthropoproprietors. The negro skull won't hold as many ounces as that of the white man's. Can there be a more potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own a creature who carries a smaller charge of snipe dust in his head? He is plantigrade and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibia'd Caucasian. He has a _rete mucosum_ and a colored pigment. Surely he cannot have a soul of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus--in sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that nature was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides the Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in the rice swamps, sugar canes, and maize-fields of the Southern Confederation. It's flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour sanctions Slavery because he does not say a word against it, and it's very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar been known, he might have been a planter! Besides, the negro is civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the African races except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans, Mobile, or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such vehemence, and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the "Jawdam?" If these high, physical, metaphysical, moral and religious reasonings do not satisfy you, and you venture to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise you not to come within reach of a ma.s.s meeting of our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the neighborhood.

As we jog along in an easy-rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people met us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending a service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people are supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr.

Shandy's homuncule was under certain circ.u.mstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good--or where it would be most desirable--very bad Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable, accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow weighing down his young life, that softened him to almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone by--of Paris and poetry, of England and London hotels, of the great _Careme_, and of poor Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics--_de omne scibili_. The storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents--the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by--not a boat on its broad surface. The road pa.s.sed by plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen belonging to small planters, with only some ten or twelve slaves, all told. The houses were poor and ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning's place, and drove to the overseer's--a large, heavy-eyed old man, who asked us into his house from out of the rain till the boat was ready--and the river did not look inviting--full of drift trees, swirls, and mighty eddies. In the plain room in which we sat there was a volume of Spurgeon's Sermons and Baxter's works. "This rain will do good to our corn," said the overseer. "The n.i.g.g.e.rs has had sceerce nothin' to do leetly, as they 'eve clearied out the fields pretty well." We drove down to a poor shed on the levee called the Ferry-house, attended by one stout, young slave who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed, and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small, round pole a little longer.

"What are those?" quoth I, "Dem's oars, Ma.s.sa," was my sable ferryman's brisk reply. "I'm very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them." "Golly, and dat's the trute, Ma.s.sa."

"There, go and get oars, will you?" While he was hunting about we entered the shed for shelter from the rain. We found "a solitary woman sitting" smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed, and morose--young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chickens about the size of sparrows, and at a cat no larger than a rat, which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four years of age, not over-dressed--indeed, half-naked, "not to put too fine a point upon it"--crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the uses of a small piece of silver presented to her--having no precise ideas on coinage or toffy--her parent took the obolus in charge with unmistakable decision; but, still, she would not stir a step to aid our Charon, who now insisted on the "key ov de oar-house." The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. Charon pushed his skiff into the water--there was a good deal of rain in it--in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep. I got in and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was caulked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world.

"Why, deuce take you" (I said at least that, in my wrath), "don't you see that the boat is leaky?" "See it now for true, Ma.s.sa. n.o.body able to tell dat till Ma.s.sa get in, tho'." Another skiff proved to be stanch. I bade good-bye to my friend, and sat down in my boat, which was soon forced up along the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view, from my lonely position, was curious, but not at all picturesque. The landscape had disappeared at once. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was const.i.tuted by a broad river--just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank and directly in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage gateway, and wickets of wood, painted white, in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road as far as the eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with cl.u.s.tering flowers, rose, jessamine, and creepers clinging to the pillars supporting the verandah. The proprietor, who had espied my approach, issued forth with a section of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house was larger and better than the residences even of the richest planters, though it was in need of some little repair, and had been built perhaps fifty years ago, but it had belonged to a wealthy family, who lived in the good old Irish fas.h.i.+on, and who built well, ate well, drank well, and--finally, paid very well. The view from the Belvedere was one of the most striking of its kind in the world. If an English agriculturist could see 6,000 acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of ta.s.selling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be cultivated for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least 20 an acre at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and Orange-grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful business.

When my eyes "uncurtained the early morning" I might have imagined myself in the magic garden of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and multifarious were the carols of the birds, which were the only happy colored people I saw in my Southern tour, notwithstanding the a.s.surances of the many ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to prove to me that the palm of terrestrial felicity must be awarded to their negroes.

As I stepped through my window upon the verandah, a sharp chirp called my attention to a mocking-bird perched upon a rose-bush beneath, whom my presence seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated behind my curtain, whence I observed her flight to a nest cunningly hid in a creeping rose trailed around a neighboring column of the house, where she imparted a breakfast of spiders and gra.s.shoppers to her gaping and clamorous offspring. While I was admiring the motherly grace of this melodious flycatcher, a servant brought coffee, and announced that the horses were ready, and that I might have a three-hours' ride before breakfast. At Houmas _les jours se suivent et se ressemblent_, and an epitome of the first will serve as a type for all, with the exception of such variations in the kitchen and cellar produce as the ingenuity and exhaustless hospitality of my host were never tired of framing.

If I regretted the absence of our English agriculturist when I beheld the 6,000 acres of cane and 1,600 of maize unfolded from the Belvedere the day previous, I longed for his presence still more, when I saw those evidences of luxuriant fertility attained without the aid of phosphates or guano. The rich Mississippi bottoms need no manure, a rotation of maize with cane affords them the necessary recuperative action. The cane of last year's plant is left in stubble, and renews its growth this spring under the t.i.tle of _ratoons_. When the maize is in ta.s.sel, cow-peas are dropped between the rows, and when the lordly stalk, of which I measured many twelve and even fifteen feet in height--bearing three and sometimes four ears--is topped to admit the ripening sun, the pea vine twines itself around the trunk, with a profusion of leaf and tendril that supplies the planter with the most desirable fodder for his mules in "rolling time," which is their season of trial. Besides this, the corn blades are culled and cured. These are the best meals of the Southern race-horse, and const.i.tute nutritious hay without dust. The cow-pea is said to strengthen the system of the earth for the digestion of a new crop of sugar-cane. A sufficient quant.i.ty of the cane of last season is reserved from the mill and laid in pits, where the ends of the stalk are carefully closed with earth until spring. After the ground has been ploughed into ridges these canes are laid in the endless tumuli, and not long after their interment a fresh sprout springs at each joint of these interminable flutes.

As we ride through the wagon roads, of which there are not less than thirty miles in this confederation of four plantations, held together by the purse and the life of our host, the unwavering exact.i.tude of the rows of cane, which run without deviation at right angles with the river down to the cane-brake, two miles off, proves that the negro would be a formidable rival in a plowing match. The cane has been "laid by"--that is, it requires no more labor--and will "lap," or close up, though the rows are seven feet apart. It feathers like a palm top; a stalk which was cut measured six feet, although from the ridges it was but waist high. On dissecting it near the root, we find five nascent joints, not a quarter of an inch apart. In a few weeks more these will shoot up like a spy-gla.s.s pulled out to its focus.

There are four lordly sugar-houses, as the grinding mills and boiling and crystalizing buildings are called, and near each is to be found the negro village, or "quarter," of that section of the plantation. A wide avenue, generally lined with trees, runs through these hamlets, which consist of twenty or thirty white cottages, single storied and divided into four rooms. They are whitewashed, and at no great distance might be mistaken for New England villages, with a town-hall which often serves in the latter for a "meeting-house," with, occasionally, a row of stores on the ground floor.

The people, or "hands," are in the field, and the only inhabitants of the settlements are scores of "picaninnies," who seem a jolly congregation, under the care of crones, who here, as in an Indian village, act as nurses to the rising generation destined from their births to the limits of a social Procrustean bed. The increase of property on the estate is about 5 per cent. per annum by the birth of children.

We ride an hour before coming upon any "hands" at work in the fields.

There is an air of fertile desolation that prevails in no other cultivated land. The regularity of the cane, its garden-like freedom from gra.s.s or weeds, and the _ad unguem_ finish and evenness of the furrows would seem the work of nocturnal fairies, did we not realize the system of "gang-labor" exemplified in a field we at length reach, where some thirty men and women were giving with the hoe the last polish to the earth around the cane, which would not be molested again until gathered for the autumnal banquet of the rolling-mills.

Small drains and larger ditches occur at almost every step. All these flow into a channel, some fifteen feet wide, which runs between the plantations and the uncleared forest, and carries off the water to a "bayou" still more remote. There are twenty miles of deep ditching before the plantation, exclusive of the ca.n.a.l, and as this is the contract work of "Irish navvies," the sigh with which our host alluded to this heavy item in plantation expenses, was expressive. The work is too severe for African thews, and experience has shown it a bad economy to overtask the slave. The sugar-planter lives in apprehension of four enemies. These are the river when rising, drought, too much or unseasonable rain, and frost. The last calls into play all his energies, and tasks his utmost composure. In Louisiana the cane never ripens as it does in Cuba, and they begin to grind as early in October as the amount of juices will permit. The question of a crop is one of early or late frost. With two months' exemption they rely, in a fair season, upon a hogshead of 1,200 pounds to the acre, and if they can run their mills until January, the increase is more than proportionate, each of its latter days in the earth adding saccharine virtue to the cane.

At an average of a hogshead to the acre, each working hand is good for seven hogsheads a year, which, at last year's prices, 8 cents per pound for ordinary qualities, would be a yield of 140 per annum for each full field hand.

Two hogsheads to the acre are not unfrequently, and even three have been, produced upon rich lands in a good season. Estimating the sugar at 70 per cent., and the refuse, _baga.s.se_, at 30 per cent., the latter would give us two tuns and a quarter to the acre, which open one's eyes to the tireless activity of nature in this semi-tropical region.

From the records of Houmas I find that, in 1857, the year of its purchase at about 300,000, it yielded a gross of $304,000, say 63,000, upon the investment.

In the rear of this great plantation there are 18,000 additional acres of cane-brake which are being slowly reclaimed, like the fields now rejoicing in crops, as fast as the furnace of the sugar-house calls for fuel. Were it desirable to accelerate the preparation of this reserve for planting, it might be put in tolerable order in three years at a cost of 15 per acre. We extended our ride into this jungle on the borders of which, in the unfinished clearing, I saw plantations of "negro corn," the sable cultivators of which seem to have disregarded the symmetry practised in the fields of their master, who allows them from Sat.u.r.day noon until Monday's c.o.c.kcrow for the care of their private interests, and in addition to this, whatever hours in the week they can economize by the brisk fulfilment of their allotted tasks. Some of these patches are sown broadcast, and the corn has sprung up like Zouave _tirailleurs_ in their most fantastic vagaries, rather than like the steady regimental drill of the cane and maize we have been traversing.

Corn, chickens, and eggs, are from time immemorial the perquisites of the negro, who has the monopoly of the two last named articles in all well ordered Louisiana plantations. Indeed, the white man cannot compete with them in raising poultry, and our host was evidently delighted when one of his negroes, who had brought a dozen Muscovy ducks to the mansion, refused to sell them to him except for cash. "But Louis, won't you trust me? Am I not good for three dollars?" "Good enough, Ma.s.sa; but dis n.i.g.g.e.r want de money to buy flour and coffee for him young family.

Folks at Donaldsonville will trust Ma.s.sa--won't trust n.i.g.g.e.r." The money was paid, and, as the negro left us, his master observed, with a sly, humorous twinkle, "That fellow sold forty dollars worth of corn last year, and all of them feed their chickens with my corn, and sell their own."

There are three overseers at Houmas, one of whom superintends the whole plantation, and likewise looks after another estate of 8,000 acres, some twelve miles down the river, which our host added to his possession two years since, at a cost of 150,000. In any part of the world, and in any calling, Mr. S---- (I do not know if he would like to see his name in print) would be considered an able man. Mr. S. attends to most of the practice requiring immediate attention. We visited one of those hospitals, and found half a dozen patients ill of fever, rheumatism, and indigestion, and apparently well cared for by a couple of stout nurses.

The truckle bedsteads were garnished with mosquito bars, and I was told that the hospital is a favorite resort, which its inmates leave with reluctance. The pharmaceutical department was largely supplied with a variety of medicines, quinine and preparations of sulphites of iron.

"Poor drugs," said Mr. S., "are a poor economy."

I have mentioned engineering as one of the requisites of a competent overseer. To explain this I must observe that Houmas is esteemed very high land, and that in its cultivated breadth there is only a fall of eight feet to carry off its surplus water. In the plantation of Governor Manning, which adjoins it, an expensive steam draining machine is employed to relieve his fields of this enc.u.mbrance, which is effected by the revolutions of a fan-wheel some twenty feet in diameter, which laps up the water from a narrow trough into which all the drainage flows, and tosses it into an adjoining bayou.

On Governor Manning's plantation we saw the process of clearing the primitive forest, of which 150 acres were sown in corn and cotton beneath the tall girdled trees that awaited the axe, while an equal breadth on the other side of a broad and deep ca.n.a.l was reluctantly yielding its tufted and fibrous soil, from which the jungle had just been removed, to the ploughs of some fifty negroes, drawn by two mules each. Another season of l.u.s.tration by maize or cotton, and the rank soil will be ready for the cane.

The cultivation of sugar differs from that of cotton in requiring a much larger outlay of capital. There is little required for the latter besides negroes and land, which may be bought on credit, and a year's clothing and provisions. There is a gambling spice in the chances of a season which may bring wealth or ruin--a bale to the acre, which may produce 7_d._ per pound. In a fair year the cotton planter reckons upon ten or twelve bales to the hand, in which case the annual yield of a negro varies from 90 to 120. His enemies are drought, excessive rains, the ball worm, and the army worm; his best friend "a long picking season."

There is more steadiness in the price of sugar, and a greater certainty of an average crop. But the cost of a sugar-house, with its mill, boilers, vacuum pans, centrifugal and drying apparatus, cannot be less than 10,000, and the consumption of fuel--thousands of cords of which are cut by the "hands"--is enormous. There were cases of large fortunes earned by planting sugar with large beginnings, but these had chiefly occurred among early settlers, who had obtained their lands for a song.

A Creole, who recently died at the age of fifty-five, in the neighborhood, and who began with only a few thousand dollars, had ama.s.sed more than $1,000,000 in twenty-five years, and two of his sons--skilful planters--were likely to die each richer than his father.

This year the prospects of sugar are dreary enough, at least while the civil war lasts, and my host, with a certainty of 6,500 hogsheads upon his various plantations, has none of a market. In this respect cotton has the advantage of keeping longer than sugar. At last year's prices, and with the United States protective tariff of 20 per cent to s.h.i.+eld him from foreign compet.i.tion, his crop would have yielded him over 100,000. But all the sweet teeth of the Confederate States army can hardly "make a hole" in the 450,000 hogsheads which this year is expected to yield in Louisiana and Texas. Under the new tariff of the Seceding States the loss of protection to Louisiana alone may be stated, within bounds, at $8,000,000 per annum--which is making the planters pay pretty dear for their Secession whistle.

When I arrived at Houmas there was the greatest anxiety for rain, and over the vast, level plateau every cloud was scanned with avidity. Now, a shower seemed bearing right down upon us, when it would break, like a flying soap-bubble, and scatter its treasures short of the parched fields in which we felt interested. The wind s.h.i.+fted and hopes were raised that the next thunder-cloud would prove less illusory. But no!

"Kenner" has got it all. On the fifth day, however, the hearts of all the planters and their parched fields were gladdened by half a day of general and generous rain, beneath which our host's cane fairly reeled and reveled. It was now safe for the season, and so was the corn. But "one man's meat is another's poison," and we heard more than one "Jeremiad" from those whose fields had not been placed in the condition which enabled those of our friend to carry off a potation of twelve hours of tropical rain with the ease of an alderman or a Lord Chancellor made happier or wiser by his three bottles of port.

What is termed _hacienda_ in Cuba, _rancho_ in Mexico, and "plantation"

elsewhere, is styled "habitation" by the Creoles of Louisiana, whose ancestors began more than a century ago to reclaim its jungles.

At last "_venit summa dies et inetuctabile tempus_." I had seen as much as might be of the best phase of the great inst.i.tution--less than I could desire of a most exemplary, kind-hearted, clear-headed, honest man. In the calm of a glorious summer evening, arrayed in all the splendor of scenery that belongs to dramas in Cloudland, where mountains of snow, peopled by "gorgons, and hydras, and chimaeras dire," rise from seas of fire that bear black barks, freighted with thunder, before the breeze of battle, we crossed the Father of Waters, waving an adieu to the good friend who stood on the sh.o.r.e, and turning our back to the home we had left behind us.

It was dark when the boat reached Donaldsonville, on the opposite "coast." I should not be surprised to hear that the founder of this remarkable city, which once contained the archives of the State, now transferred to Baton Rouge, was a North Briton. There is a simplicity and economy in the plan of the place not unfavorable to that view, but the motives which induced the Donaldson to found his Rome on the west of Bayou La Fourche from Mississippi must be a secret to all time. Much must the worthy Scot have been perplexed by his neighbors, a long-reaching colony of Spanish Creoles, who toil not and spin nothing but fis.h.i.+ng-nets, and who live better than Solomon, and are probably as well dressed, _minus_ the barbaric pearl and gold of the Hebrew potentate. Take the odd little, retiring, modest houses which grow in the hollows of Scarborough, add to them the least imposing mansions in the natural town of Folkestone, cast them broadsown over the surface of the Ess.e.x marshes, plant a few trees in front of them, then open a few "Cafe billiards" of the camp sort along the main street, and you have done a very good Donaldsonville. A policeman welcomes us on landing, and does the honors of the market, which has a beggarly account of empty benches, the Texan bull done into beef, and a coffee-shop. The policeman is a tall, lean, west country man; his story is simple, and he has it to tell. He was one of Dan Rice's company--a traveling Astley. He came to Donaldsonville, saw, and was conquered by one of the Spanish beauties, married her, became tavern keeper, failed, learned French, and was now constable of the parish. There was, however, a weight on his mind. He had studied the matter profoundly, but he was not near the bottom. How did the friends, relatives, and tribe of his wife live? No one could say. They reared chickens, and they caught fish; when there was a pressure on the planters, they turned out to work for 6_s._ 6_d._ a day, but those were rare occasions. The policeman had become quite gray with excogitating the matter, and he had "nary notion of how they did it."

Donaldsonville has done one fine thing. It has furnished two companies of soldiers--all Irishmen--to the wars, and a third is in the course of formation. Not much hedging, ditching, or hard work these times for Paddy? The blacksmith, a huge tower of muscle, claims exemption on the ground that "the divil a bit of him comes from Oireland; he nivir hird av it, barrin' from the buks he rid," and is doing his best to remain behind, but popular opinion is against him. As the steamer would not be up till toward dawn, or later, it was a relief to saunter through Donaldsonville to see society, which consisted of several gentlemen and various Jews playing games unknown to Hoyle, in oaken bar-rooms flanked by billiard tables. My good friend the doctor, whom I had met at Houmas, who had crossed the river to see patients suffering from an attack of Euchre, took us round to a little club, where I was introduced to a number of gentlemen, who expressed great pleasure at seeing me, shook hands violently, and walked away; and finally we melted off into a cloud of mosquitoes by the river bank, in a box prepared for them, which was called a bedroom. These rooms were built in wood on the stage close to the river. "Why can't I have one of these rooms?" asked I, pointing to a larger mosquito-box. "It's engaged by ladies." "How do you know?"

"_Parceque elles ont envoyes leur butin._" It was delicious to meet the French "plunder" for baggage--an old phrase so nicely rendered in the mouth of the Mississippi boatman. Having pa.s.sed a night of extreme discomfiture with the winged demons of the box, I was aroused toward dawn by the booming of the steam drum of the boat, dipped my head in water among drowned mosquitoes, and went forth upon the landing. The policeman had just arrived. His eagle eye lighted on a large flat, on the stern of which was inscribed, "Pork, corn, b.u.t.ter, beef," &c.

Several spry citizens were also on the platform. After salutations and compliments, policeman speaks: "When did _she_ come in?" (meaning flat).

First Citizen--"In the night, I guess." Second Citizen--"There's a lot of whiskey aboard, too." Policeman (with pleased surprise)--"You never mean it?" First Citizen--"Yes, Sir; one hundred and twenty gallons!"