University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXXIII.

June 3d.—At five o'clock this morning, having been awakened
an hour earlier by a wonderful chorus of riotous mocking-birds,
my old negro attendant brought in my bath of Mississippi
water, which, Nile-like, casts down a strong deposit,
and becomes as clear, if not so sweet, after standing. "Le
seigneur vous attend;" and already I saw, outside my window,
the Governor mounted on a stout cob, and a nice chestnut
horse waiting, led by a slave. Early as it was, the sun felt
excessively hot, and I envied the Governor his slouched hat
as we rode through the fields, crisp with dew. In a few minutes
our horses were traversing narrow alleys between the tall
fields of maize, which rose far above our heads. This corn,
as it is called, is the principal food of the negroes; and every
planter lays down a sufficient quantity to afford him, on an
average, a supply all the year round. Outside this spread vast
fields, hedgeless, wall-less, and unfenced, where the green cane
was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind—a lake
of bright green sugar-sprouts, along the margin of which, in
the distance, rose an unbroken boundary of forest, two miles
in depth, up to the swampy morass, all to be cleared and turned
into arable land in process of time. From the river front to
this forest, the fields of rich loam, unfathomable, and yielding
from one to one and a half hogsheads of sugar per acre under
cultivation, extend for a mile and a half in depth. In the
midst of this expanse white dots were visible like Sowers seen
on the early march in Indian fields, many a time and oft.
Those are the gangs of hands at work—we will see what
they are at presently. This little reminiscence of Indian life
was further heightened by the negroes who ran beside us to

whisk flies from the horses, and to open the gates in the plantation
boundary. When the Indian corn is not good, peas are
sowed, alternately, between the stalks, and are considered to
be of much benefit; and when the cane is bad, corn is sowed
with it, for the same object. Before we came up to the gangs
we passed a cart on the road containing a large cask, a bucket
full of molasses, a pail of hominy, or boiled Indian corn, and
a quantity of tin pannikins. The cask contained water for
the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their
breakfast; in addition to which, they generally have each a dried
fish. The food was ample, and looked wholesome; such as
any laboring man would be well content with. Passing along
through maize on one side, and cane at another, we arrived at
last at a patch of ground where thirty-six men and women
were hoeing.

Three gangs of negroes were at work: one gang of men,
with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through
the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds, and clearing
away the grass, 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 hands on the plantation. The overseer, a
sharp-looking creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintended
their labors, and, after a salutation to the Governor, to
whom he made some remarks on the condition of the crops,
rode off to another part of the farm. With the exception of
crying to their mules, the negroes kept silence at their work.

Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out
the grass in Indian corn. The third gang, of thirty-six women,
were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed
heavy for the climate; their shoes, ponderous and ill-made, had
worn away the feet of their thick stockings, which hung in
fringes over the upper leathers. Coarse 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 "Alcíbíade" or "Pompée" 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, at appointed periods
in the day, to give the infants the breast. The overseers
have power to give ten lashes; but heavier punishment ought
to be reported to the Governor; however, it is not likely a
good overseer would be checked, in any way, by his master.
The anxieties attending the cultivation of sugar are great, and
so much depends upon the judicious employment of labor, it
is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of experience
in directing it, and of power to insist on its application.
When the frost comes, the cane is rendered worthless—one
touch destroys the sugar. But if frost is the enemy of the
white planter, the sun is scarcely the friend of the black man.
The sun condemns him to slavery, because it is the heat which
is the barrier to the white man's labor. The Governor told
me that, in August, when the crops are close, thick-set, and
high, and the vertical sun beats down on the laborers, nothing
but a black skin and head covered with wool can enable a man
to walk out in the open field and live.

We returned to the house in time for breakfast, for which
our early cup of coffee and biscuit and the ride had been good
preparation. Here was old France again. One might
imagine a lord of the seventeenth century in his hall, but for
the black faces of the servitors and the strange dishes of
tropical origin. There was the old French abundance, the
numerous dishes and efflorescence of napkins, and the long-necked
bottles of Bordeaux, with a steady current of pleasant
small talk. I saw some numbers of a paper called "La
Misachibée," which was the primitive Indian name of the grand
river, not improved by the addition of sibilant Anglo-Saxon
syllables.

The Americans, not unmindful of the aid to which, at the
end of the War of Independence, their efforts were merely
auxiliary, delight, even in the North, to exalt France above
her ancient rival: but, as if to show the innate dissimilarity of
the two races, the French creoles exhibit towards the New
Englanders and the North an animosity, mingled with contempt,
which argues badly for a future amalgamation or
reunion. As the South Carolinians declare, they would rather
return to their allegiance under the English monarchy, so the
Louisianians, although they have no sentiment in common
with the people of republican and imperial France, assert

they would far sooner seek a connection with the old country
than submit to the yoke of the Yankees.

After breakfast, the Governor drove out by the ever-silent
levee for some miles, passing estate after estate, where grove
nodded to grove, each alley saw its brother. One could form
no idea, from the small limited frontage of these plantations,
that the proprietors were men of many thousands a year,
because the estates extend on an average for three or four
miles back to the forest. The absence of human beings on the
road was a feature which impressed one more and more. But
for the tall chimneys of the factories and the sugar-houses, one
might believe that these villas had been erected by some
pleasure-loving people who had all fled from the river banks
for fear of pestilence. The gangs of negroes at work were
hidden in the deep corn, and their quarters were silent and
deserted. We met but one planter, in his gig, until we arrived
at the estate of Monsieur Potier, the Governor's brother-in-law.
The proprietor was at home, and received us very kindly,
though suffering from the effects of a recent domestic calamity.
He is a grave, earnest man with a face like Jerome Bonaparte,
and a most devout Catholic; and any man more unfit to live in
any sort of community with New England Puritans one cannot
well conceive; for equal intensity of purpose and sincerity of
conviction on their part could only lead them to mortal strife.
His house was like a French chateau erected under tropical
influences, and he led us through a handsome garden laid out
with hot-houses, conservatories, orange-trees, and date-palms,
and ponds full of the magnificent Victoria Regia in flower.
We visited his refining factories and mills, but the heat from the
boilers, which seemed too much even for the all-out-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
boilers, vat, and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not
gaining much money at present, for sugar has been rapidly falling
in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually
in the South will fall short in the yield of profits, which on
an average may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting
the molasses for the planter. With a most perfect faith in
States' Rights, he seemed to combine either indifference or ignorance
in respect to the power and determination of the North
to resist secession to the last. All the planters hereabouts
have sowed an unusual quantity of Indian corn, to have food for

the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland
or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a 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, there are regular patrols and watchmen, who look
after the levee and the negroes. A number of dogs are also
loosed, but I am assured that the creatures do not tear the negroes;
they are taught "merely" to catch and mumble them,
to treat them as a well-broken retriever uses a wounded wild
duck.

At six, A. M., Moïse came to ask me if I should like a glass
of absinthe, or anything stomachic. At breakfast was Doctor
Laporte, formerly a member of the Legislative Assembly of
France, who was exiled by Louis Napoleon; in other words, he
was ordered to give in his adhesion to the new régime, or to take
a passport for abroad. He preferred the latter course, and now,
true Frenchman, finding the Emperor has aggrandized France
and added to her military reputation, he admires the man on
whom but a few years ago he lavished the bitterest hate.

The carriage is ready, and the word farewell is spoken at
last. M. Alfred Roman, my companion, has travelled in Europe,
and learned philosophy; is not so orthodox as many of
the gentlemen I have met who indulge in ingenious hypotheses
to comfort the consciences of the anthropo-proprietors. The negro
skull won't hold as many ounces of shot as the white man's.
Potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own
the creature! He is plantigrade, and curved as to the tibia!
Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for
the arch-footed, straight-tibiaed 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 shape 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 is flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour
sanctions slavery because he does not say a word against it, and
it is very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton
and sugar been known, the apostle might have been a planter!
Furthermore, 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 are bold enough to
venture still to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise
you not to come within reach of a mass 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 meet us coming
from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had
been attending the service for the repose of the soul of a lady
much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people must
be supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost
as Mr. Shandy's homunculus was under certain circumstances,
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 the service would be most desirable—
very bad Catholics. The dead, leaden uniformity of the
scenery forced one to converse, in order to escape profound
melancholy: the levee on the right hand, above which nothing
was visible but the sky; on the left plantations with cypress
fences, whitewashed and pointed wooden gates leading to the
planters' houses, and rugged gardens surrounded with shrubs,
through which could be seen the slave quarters. Men making
eighty or ninety hogsheads of sugar in a year lived in most
wretched tumble-down wooden houses not much larger than
ox sheds.

As we drove on, the storm gathered overhead, and the rain
fell in torrents—the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by—not
a boat on its broad surface.

At last we reached Governor Manning's place, and went to
the house of the overseer, a large heavy-eyed old man.

"This rain will do good to the corn," said the overseer.
"The niggers has had sceerce nothin' to do leetly, as they
'eve clearied out the fields pretty well."

At the ferry-house I was 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, Massa," 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,
Massa." "Then go and get oars, will you?" While he was
hunting about we entered the shed at the ferry 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 not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor.
A little girl, some four years of age, not overdressed—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 use
of a small piece of silver presented to her—having no precise
ideas in coinage or toffy—her parent took the obolus in
charge, with unmistakable decision; but still the lady would
not stir a step to aid our guide, 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 when it was found, and the
boat was ready, I was not sorry to quit the company of the
silent woman in black. The boatman pushed his skiff, in shape
a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep, into the
water—there was a good deal of rain in it. I got in too,
and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting
through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was
calked. 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 in the known world, for that healthful
exercise. "Why! deuce take you" (I said at least that, in
my wrath), "don't you see the boat is leaky?" "See it now
for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in
though." Another skiff proved to be more stanch. I bade
good-by to my friend Roman, and sat down in my boat, which
was forced by the negro against 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 world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, which
constricted the broad river, just as if one were sailing down
an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the
bank rose the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugarhouses,
and that was all to be seen save the sky.

A quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other
side. I ascended the bank, and across the road, directly in
front 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 far as the eye could see, and
guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An
avenue lined with trees, with branches close set, drooping and
overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the
porch of which was visible at the extremity of the lawn, with
clustering flowers, rose, jasmine, and creepers, clinging to the
pillars supporting the veranda. The view from the belvedere
on the roof was one of the most striking of its kind in the
world.

If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of
the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary,
and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling 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 turned up 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 sugarhouses,
which look like large public edifices in the distance.
My host was not ostentatiously proud in telling me that, in the
year 1857, he had purchased this estate for £300,000 and an
adjacent property, of 8000 acres, for £150,000, and that he
had left Belfast in early youth, poor and unfriended, to seek
his fortune, and indeed scarcely knowing what fortune meant,
in the New World. In fact, he had invested in these purchases
the geater part, but not all, of the profits arising from the
business in New Orleans, which he inherited from his master;
of which there still remained a solid nucleus in the shape of a
great woollen magazine and country house. He is not yet
fifty years of age, and his confidence in the great future of
sugar induced him to embark this enormous fortune in an
estate which the blockade has stricken with paralysis.

I cannot doubt, however, that he regrets he did not invest
his money in a certain great estate in the North of Ireland,

which he had nearly decided on buying; and, had he done
so, he would now be in the position to which his unaffected
good sense, modesty, kindliness, and benevolence, always adding
the rental, entitle him. Six thousand acres on this one
estate all covered with sugar-cane, and 16,000 acres more of
Indian corn, to feed the slaves;—these were great possessions,
but not less than 18,000 acres still remained, covered
with brake and forest and swampy, to be reclaimed and turned
into gold. As easy to persuade the owner of such wealth
that slavery is indefensible as to have convinced the Norman
baron that the Saxon churl who tilled his lands ought to be
his equal.

I found Mr. Ward and a few merchants from New Orleans
in possession of the bachelor's house. The service was performed
by slaves, and the order and regularity of the attendants
were worthy of a well-regulated English mansion. In
Southern houses along the coast, as the Mississippi above
New Orleans is termed, beef and mutton are rarely met with,
and the more seldom the better. Fish, also, is scarce, but
turkeys, geese, poultry, and preparations of pig, excellent
vegetables, and wine of the best quality, render the absence
of the accustomed dishes little to be regretted.

The silence which struck me at Governor Roman's is not
broken at Mr. Burnside's; and when the last thrill of the
mocking-bird's song has died out through the grove, a stillness
of Avernian profundity settles on hut, field, and river.