University of Virginia Library

29. XXIX.

Yesterday was the Sabbath; one of those still,
bright, and sunny days which poetry and religion
have loved to challenge as peculiar to that sacred
time. To this beautiful conception, fact, aided
somewhat by fancy, does not, however, refuse its
sanction. A serene and awful majesty has ever
appeared to me as peculiarly belonging to the day
of rest. It seems blessed with a holier power than
is given to the common days of earth: a more hallowed
silence then reigns in the air and over nature
—a spirit of sanctity, like a “still small voice,”
breathes eloquently over the heart, from which better
feelings and purer thoughts ascend and hold
communion with the unseen world. A spell, like
a mantle of heavenly texture, seems thrown over
all; to break which, by the light notes of merry
music, or the sounds of gay discourse, would seem
like profanation. Such was this Sabbath morning.
The sun arose in the glory of his southern power,
“rejoicing to run his race.” Bathed in a sea of his
own created light, he poured, with lavish opulence,

floods of radiance over nature—illuminating, beautifying,
and enriching all on which he shone. I
had early rambled to the cliff, to get away from the
noise and bustle of the hotel, and to enjoy the luxuriant
beauty of the morning. The windows of
the dwellings, and the roofs and spires of the town,
reflected back the rising sun, whose beams glittered
from myriads of dew-drops that spangled the green
earth, converting its soft verdure into a carpet, studded
with innumerable gems. The city itself reposed,
as in a deep sleep, on the quiet hills upon
which it rested. The majestic Mississippi was
spread out before me like a vast sheet of liquid
steel—its unruffled bosom, dotted and relieved here
and there by a light skiff, or a huge steamer, booming
and puffing far away in the distance; while the
lofty, mural precipices which frowned menacingly
over its eastern shore, were reflected from its depth
with the accuracy and distinctness of a sub-marine
creation. The Louisianian forests, clothing the interminable
plains which stretch away to the west,
with an almost perennial green, were crested with
golden sun-light, and flashing as they waved in the
morning breeze, like a phosphorescent sea of mingled
green and light. Nature wore her richest garb,
and her every feature was eminently beautiful. There
was nothing to impair her loveliness, but that fallen,
guilty being, who should be a diadem of glory for
her brow, and the brightest ornament of her bosom
—Man! proud and sinful man, desecrating all that
is fair and pure wherever he treads—he alone defaced
the calm and hallowed character of the scene.

From a row of dilapidated yet inhabited dwellings
beneath me, at the base of the cliff, sounds of rude
merriment, mingled with the tones of loud dispute
and blasphemy, rose with appalling distinctness
upon the still air, breaking the Sabbath silence of
the hour, in harsh discord with its sacredness. The
streets of the lower town were alive with boatmen,
drayment, buyers and sellers, horsemen and hacks,
and scores of negroes, some wrestling, some fighting,
others running foot-races, playing quoits or
marbles, selling the products of their little gardens,
or, with greater probability, their predatory excursions;
while from all combined, a confused murmur,
not unlike the harmony which floated around
Babel, rolled upward to the skies—an incense far
from acceptable to Him, who has promulgated
amid the thunders of Sinai, “Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy.”

In “Natchez under the hill,” the Sabbath, as a
day of rest and public worship, is not observed according
to the strictest letter of the old “blue
laws.” On that day the stores are kept open and
generally filled with boatmen and negroes. With
the latter this day is a short jubilee, and, with the
peculiar skill of their race, they make the most of
it—condensing the occupation and the jollity of
seven days into one. It is customary for planters
in the neighbourhood to give their slaves a small
piece of land to cultivate for their own use, by
which, those who are industrious, generally make
enough to keep themselves and their wives in extra
finery and spending money throughout the year.

They have the Sabbath given them as a holiday,
when they are permitted to leave their plantations
and come into town to dispose of their produce, and
lay in their own little luxuries and private stores.
The various avenues to the city are consequently on
that day filled with crowds of chatting, laughing
negroes, arrayed in their Sunday's best, and adroitly
balancing heavily loaded baskets on their heads,
which, from long practice in this mode of conveyance,
often become indurated, like a petrification,
and as flat as the palm of the hand, distending at
the sides, and elongating in proportion to the depression,
causing a peculiar conformation of the
skull, which would set phrenology at defiance.
Others mounted on mules or miserable-looking
plough-horses, in whose presence Rosinante himself
would have looked sleek and respectable—burthened
with their marketable commodities, jog on
side by side, with their dames or sweethearts riding
“double-jaded”—as the Yankees term the mode—
behind them; while here and there market carts
returning from the city, (as this is also market
morning) or from the intersecting roads, pour in
upon the highway to increase the life, variety, and
motley character of its crowd. But this unpleasing
picture of a Sabbath morning, has brighter tints to
redeem the graver character of its moral shades.
Of all that picturesque multitude of holiday slaves,
two-thirds, the majority of whom are women, are
on their way to church, into whose galleries they
congregate at the hour of divine service in great
numbers, and worship with an apparent devoutness
and attention, which beings who boast intellects of
a higher order might not disdain to imitate. The
female slaves very generally attend church in this
country; but, whether to display their tawdry finery,
of which they are fond to a proverb, or for a better
purpose, I will not undertake to determine. The
males prefer collecting in little knots in the streets,
where, imitating the manners, bearing, and language
of their masters, they converse with grave faces and
in pompous language, selecting hard, high-sounding
words, which are almost universally misapplied, and
distorted, from their original sound as well as sense
to a most ridiculous degree—astounding their gaping
auditors “ob de field nigger class,” who cannot
boast such enviable accomplishments—parading
through the streets from mere listlessness, or gathering
around and filling the whiskey shops, spending
their little all for the means of intoxication. Though
negroes are proverbially lovers of whiskey, but few
are to be found among them who get drunk, unless
on Christmas holidays, when the sober ones are
most easily numbered; this is owing to the discipline
of plantations, the little means they have
wherewith to purchase, and last, though not least,
the fear of punishment—that “argumentum ad corporem,”
which leaves a stinging conviction behind
it, of the painful effects of “old rye” in the abstract
upon the body.

That a market should be held upon the Sabbath
in this city, is a “bend sinister” upon its escutcheon.
But this custom is defended, even by those
who admit its evil tendency, upon the plea “that

meats in this climate will not keep over night.”—
This is no doubt the case during a great part of
the year. A different system of things, in this respect,
is desirable; but the reason just mentioned,
combined with others, peculiar to a southern state
of society, renders any change at present very difficult.

There is, on the whole, with the exception alluded
to, very little difference between the observance
of the Sabbath here, and that in places of the
same size in New-England; and the quiet regularity
of its Sabbaths, if he could overlook the vast
preponderance of coloured population in the streets
just before church hour, would forcibly remind the
northerner of his own native town. But in the lower
town the face of things very sensibly changes,
though the difference is less perceptible now than
formerly. A few years since, its reputation was
every way so exceptionable, that, in a very witty
argument, a lawyer of this city demonstrated, that,
so far from being a part and portion of the city proper,
it was not even a part or portion of the state!
Where he ultimately consigned it I did not learn.
—It is true the city was not very tenacious of its
rights quoad its reprobate neighbour. But more
recently, its superior advantages for heavy grocery
business have induced many merchants, of high
respectability, to remove from the city to this spot,
whose presence has given it a better character.—
So much has it changed from its former reputation,
that where it was once considered disreputable to
reside, there are now extensive stores, kept by gentlemen

of excellent character, and a fine hotel,
lately erected, for the convenience of these merchants,
(most of whom, like the society which formerly
characterised the city, are bachelors) and for
passengers landing from, or waiting for, the steamboats.
There is also, I should have remarked in a
former letter, a commodious brick hotel on Main-street,
in the city, under the superintendence of a
young northerner, which, from its location in the
very centre of the city, independent of other qualifications,
is a convenient and agreeable temporary
residence for strangers, with the majority of whom
it is a general place of resort. Few towns, whose
inhabitants quadruple those of Natchez, can boast
such fine, commodious, and well-ordered hotels as
this, or a more luxurious table d'hote than is daily
spread, between one and two o'clock, in the long
dining-halls of most of them.

The “Landing,” which more popular term has
of late superseded the old notorious cognomination,
“Natchez under the Hill,” properly consists of
three dissimilar divisions. The northern is composed
mostly of wretched dwellings, low taverns, and
drinking shops, where are congregated free negroes,
more wretched than their brother bondmen, and
poor whites. At the termination of this division are
an excellent steam saw-mill and an oil-mill, where
oil of a superior quality for lamps is extracted from
cotton seed, heretofore a useless article, except for
manure, but now disposed of with considerable profit.
About the centre of this northern division is
suspended a strangely-constructed rail-way, springing

from the Levée to the summit of the cliff. It
was laid down, or rather built up, a short time since,
for the more convenient carriage of cotton to the
Landing; but has failed in its object, and is now
disused and neglected. Viewed from the Levée, it
is a striking feature, rising boldly from the feet of
the observer, a mammoth pile of frame-work, at an
angle of 45 degrees, and terminating at the height
of one hundred and sixty feet, upon the verge of
the bluff. The sides are closed up, and a portion
is occupied by stores or dwellings, while another
part is appropriated for a bowling alley. The noise
of the iron-wheeled cars rolling down the steep
track, with the roar of thunder, over the heads of
the players, must have been a novel accompaniment
to the sound of their own balls. The southern
division of the Landing consists of one short
street, parallel with the river, over which it hangs
on one side, while the houses on the other are overhung
by a spur of the cliff, which, like an avalanche,
threatens every moment to slide and overwhelm it.
This street is lined with dancing-houses, tippling-shops,
houses of ill-fame, and gambling-rooms.—
Here may always be heard the sound of the violin,
the clink of silver upon the roulette and faro-tables,
and the language of profanity and lewdness: and
the revellers, so far from being interrupted by the
intervention of the Sabbath, actually distinguish it
by a closer and more persevering devotion to their
unhallowed pursuits and amusements. The remaining
division of the Landing, which lies between the
other two, is a short street, extending from the base
of the cliff to the Levée, a great part of which it
comprises, and along an intersecting street, which
skirts the foot of the bluff as far as the rail-way:
here are congregated store-houses, boarding-houses,
and bachelors' halls—which many of the merchants
keep over their own stores, hiring or buying some
old black woman to officiate as the representative
of Monsieur Ude—the commodious hotel before
alluded to, conducted by a “Green Mountain boy,”
and wholesale and retail grocery and dry goods
stores. Neither of these kinds of goods is made,
by itself, the sole stock of a dealer, either here or
on the hill; but with the various articles in every
kind of commercial dealing they pile their shelves
and fill their warehouses; the whole forming a
mixed assortment, appropriately adapted to the peculiar
wants of their country, town, and steamboat
customers. These stores are all kept open upon
the Sabbath, on which day there is often more business
done than on any other. The blacks, who have
no other opportunity of making their little purchases,
crowd around the counters—the boatmen trade
off their cargoes, and the purchasers store them—
steamers are constantly arriving and departing, lading
and unlading—and the steam ferry-boat makes
its oft-repeated trip from shore to shore—all giving
a life, bustle, and variety to the scene, of a very unsabbath-like
character. The merchants plead the
necessity of supplying steamers. This is readily
admitted; but it has given rise to a train of unforeseen
evils, which have little relation to this basis of
the custom. The numerous drinking shops in the
other parts of the Landing are, on that day, as much
at least, if not more than on other days, filled with
a motley assemblage of black, white, and yellow,
drinking and carousing.

Nearly two hundred feet below me, as I stood
upon the bluff, and within the huge shadow of the
cliff, stretched a long, low building, over which
proudly waved the star-spangled banner, and to
whose inhabitants the sun, already high in the
heavens, had not yet risen. From this building
issued the sound of bestial revelry, drowning the
hum of business and the shouts of boyish merriment.
The coarse gray clothing (a shame to our army) of
most of those lounging about the door, designated it,
in conjunction with the flag over their heads, as a
rendezvous—even had not the martial eloquence of
a little, half-tipsy, dapper man in a gray doublet,
whose voice now and then reached my ear in the
intervals of the uproarious proceedings—expatiating
to a gaping crowd of grinning Africans—night-capped
or bare-headed white females, in slattern
apparel and uncombed locks—two or three straight,
blanketed, silent Indians—noisy boys and ragged
boatmen—upon the glories of a soldier's life, sufficiently
indicated its character.

“The sound of the church-going bell” pealed
idly over their heads, unheard, or if heard, disregarded;
and to the crowds which the eye of an observer
could take in from his elevation upon the
bluff, the divine institution of the Sabbath is invalid.