University of Virginia Library

33. XXXIII.

A few days since, in company with a northern
friend, I made an excursion to an extensive plantation
two hours' ride from the city. We left the hotel
at an early hour, exchanging our mattresses—
the universal southern bed—for more luxurious seats
in elastic Spanish saddles, upon delightfully cradling
pacers, and proceeded through one of the principal
streets, already alive with pedestrians and horsemen;
for, in a southern climate, evening and morning
constitute the day—the day itself being a “noon
of indolence,” where ice and shade are the only
blessings to be devoutly wished. Ambling along
at an easy gait toward the great southern road,
leading to New-Orleans, we passed, just on the
confines of the country, the residence of the Presbyterian
clergyman, and one of the most charming
retreats I have yet seen in the vicinity of Natchez,
whose suburbs are peculiarly rich in tasteful country
seats. Our eyes lingered over the luxuriant
shrubbery clustering about the edifice, entwining

around its columns and peeping in at the windows.
Clumps of foliage, of the deepest green, were enamelled
with flowers of the brightest hues; and every
tree was an aviary, from which burst the sweetest
melody. What a spot for the student! Among
flowers and vines and singing birds! What a freshness
must they fling around his heart! What a richness
must clothe even the language of sermons
composed in such pleasant shades—the cool wind
loaded with fragrance, leaping from among the trees
upon the brow, and playing refreshingly among
the hair!

Leaving, to the right, the romantic fort Rosalie,
rearing its green parapets in strong relief against
the sky—a prominent object amid the slightly elevated
surface of the surrounding country—we turned
into one of those pleasant roads which wind in
all directions through the rich scenery of this state.
The first mile we passed several neat dwellings, of
the cottage order; one of which, with a gallery in
front, and surrounded by a smooth, green slope, was
the residence of the Episcopalian clergyman. It
was a chaste and pretty mansion, though not so
luxuriantly embowered as the abode of the clergyman
above alluded to. A huge colonnaded structure,
crowning an abrupt eminence near the road,
struck our eyes with an imposing effect. It was
the abode of one of the wealthiest planters of this
state; who, like the majority of those whose families
now roll in their splendid equipages, has been the
maker of his fortune. The grounds about this edifice
were neglected; horses were grazing around

the piazzas, over which were strewed saddles, whips,
horse blankets, and the motley paraphernalia with
which planters love to lumber their galleries. On
nearly every piazza in Mississippi may be found a
wash-stand, bowl, pitcher, towel, and water-bucket,
for general accommodation. But the southern gallery
is not constructed, like those at the north, for
ornament or ostentation, but for use. Here they
wash, lounge, often sleep, and take their meals.—
Here will the stranger or visiter be invited to take
a chair, or recline upon a sofa, settee, or form, as
the taste and ability of the host may have furnished
this important portion of a planter's house. I once
called on a planter within an hour's ride of Natchez,
whose income would constitute a fortune for five or
six modest Yankees. I entered the front yard—a
green level, shaded with the relics of a forest—the
live oak, sycamore, and gum trees—through a narrow
wicket in a white-washed paling, the most
common fence around southern dwellings. In the
front yard were several sheep, colts, calves, two or
three saddle and a fine pair of carriage-horses, negro
children, and every variety of domestic fowl. The
planter was sitting upon the gallery, divested of
coat, vest, and shoes, with his feet on the railing,
playing, in high glee, with a little dark-eyed boy
and two young negroes, who were chasing each
other under the bridge formed by his extended
limbs. Three or four noble dogs, which his voice
and the presence of his servant, who accompanied
me to the house, kept submissive, were couching
like leopards around his chair. A litter of young
bull-headed pups lay upon a blanket under a window
opening into a bed-room, white with curtains
and valances; while a domestic tabby sat upon the
window-sill, gazing musingly down upon the rising
generation of her hereditary foes, perhaps with reflections
not of the most pleasing cast. A hammock,
suspended between an iron hook driven into the
side of the house and one of the slender columns
which supported the sloping roof of the gallery,
contained a youth of fourteen, a nephew of the
planter, fast locked in the embraces of Morpheus;
whose aid-de-camp, in the shape of a strapping
negress, stood by the hammock, waving over the
sleeper a long plume of gorgeous feathers of the
pea-fowl—that magnificent bird of the south, which
struts about the ground of the planter, gratifying the
eye with the glorious emblazonry upon his plumage
by day, and torturing the ear with his loud clamours
by night. A pair of noble antlers was secured to
one of the pillars, from whose branches hung broad-brimmed
hats, bridles, a sheep-skin covering to a
saddle, which reposed in one corner of the piazza,
a riding whip, a blanket coat or capote, spurs, surcingle,
and part of a coach harness. A rifle and a
shot-gun with an incredibly large bore, were suspended
in beckets near the hall entrance; while a
couple of shot-pouches, a game-bag, and other
sporting apparatus, hung beside them. Slippers,
brogans, a pillow, indented as though recently deserted,
a gourd, and a broken “cotton slate,” filled
up the picture, whose original, in some one or other
of its features, may be found in nearly every planter's
dwelling in this state.

There are many private residences, in the vicinity
of Natchez, of an equally expensive character with
the one which furnished the above description,
whose elegant interiors, contrasting with the neglected
grounds about them, suggest the idea of a
handsome city residence, accidentally dropped upon
a bleak hill, or into the midst of a partially cleared
forest, and there remaining, with its noble roof
grasped by the arms of an oak, and its windows
and columns festooned by the drooping moss, heavily
waving in the wind. Thus are situated many
of the planters' dwellings, separated from the adjacent
forests by a rude, white-washed picket, enclosing
around the house an unornamented green,
or grazing lot, for the saddle and carriage-horses,
which can regale their eyes at pleasure, by walking
up to the parlour windows and gazing in upon handsome
carpets, elegant furniture, costly mantel ornaments,
and side-boards loaded with massive plate;
and, no doubt, ruminate philosophically upon the
reflection of their figures at full-length in long, richly-framed
mirrors. Very few of the planters' villas,
even within a few miles of Natchez, are adorned
with surrounding ornamental shrubbery walks, or
any other artificial auxiliaries to the natural scenery,
except a few shade trees and a narrow, gravelled
avenue from the gate to the house. A long avenue
of trees, ornamenting and sheltering the approach
to a dwelling, is a rare sight in this state, though

very frequently seen in Louisiana. Yet, in no region
of the south can fine avenues of beautiful trees
be made with such facility as in Mississippi. No
state surpasses this in the beauty, variety, and rapid
growth of its ornamental shade trees; the laurel,
sycamore, locust, oak, elm, and white bay, with
the “pride of China,”—the universal shade tree in
the south-west—arrive here at the most perfect maturity
and beauty. Every plantation residence is
approached by an avenue, often nearly a mile in
length; yet so little attention is paid to this species
of ornament and comfort, in a climate where shade
is a synonym for luxury, that scarcely one of them
is shaded, except where, in their course through a
forest, nature has flung the broad arms of majestic
trees across the path.

The peculiarity of the dwellings of planters,
evinced in hiding the prettiest cottage imaginable
under the wild, gnarled limbs of forest trees, fringed
with long black moss, like mourning weeds, which
hangs over the doors and windows in melancholy
grandeur, may be traced, very naturally, to the
original mode of life of most of the occupants, who,
though now opulent, have arisen, with but few exceptions,
from comparative obscurity in the world
of dollars. Originally occupying log huts in the
wilderness, their whole time and attention were engaged
in the culture of cotton; and embellishment,
either of their cabins or grounds, was wholly disregarded.
When they became the lords of a domain
and a hundred slaves; for many retain their
cabins even till then—ostentation, as they saw the

elegancies of refined society displayed around them
—necessity, for fear of being entombed in the ruins
of their venerable log palaces—or a desire for
greater comfort—razed the humble cabin, and reared
upon its site the walls of an expensive and beautiful
fabric. Here the planter stops. The same causes
which originally influenced him to neglect the improvement
of his grounds, still continue to exist;
and though he may inhabit a building that would
grace an English park, the grounds and scenery
about it, with the exception of a paling enclosing
a green yard, are suffered to remain in their pristine
rudeness. Thus far, and with few exceptions,
no farther, have the wealthiest planters advanced.
Here they have taken a stand; and a motive cause,
equal to that which led to the first step from the
cabin to the more elegant mansion, must again operate,
or the finest villas in Mississippi will, for many
years to come, be surrounded, on one or more sides,
with the native forests, or stand in unpicturesque
contiguity with ploughed fields, cattle-pens, and the
several interesting divisions of a farm-yard.

You will judge, from this state of things, that the
Mississippi planters are not a showy and stylish
class, but a plain, practical body of men, who, in
general, regard comfort, and conformity to old habits,
rather than display and fashionable innovations;
and who would gaze with more complacency
upon an acre of their domain, whitened, like a newly-washed
flock, with cotton, than were it spread
out before them magnificent with horticulture, or
beautifully velveted with green. Still planters are

not destitute of taste; it is their principle to make
it yield to interest. “What a fine park you might
have around your house,” once remarked an English
gentleman to a planter in this state, as he surveyed
the finely undulating fields here and there
sprinkled with an oak, extending on every side
around the dwelling.

“Very true,” replied the southron, “but these
few acres yield me annually from ten to twelve
bales of cotton: this would be too great a sacrifice
for the mere gratification of the eye.”

“Still very true,” replied the Englishman, “but
this sense could be gratified without any sacrifice.
Your plantation consists of eight or nine hundred
acres, and not one half is under cultivation; a portion
of that now uncultivated might be substituted
for this.” To this the planter answered, that the
soil about his house would produce more to the
acre than the other, by at least one bale in every
ten, having been long under cultivation; and that
merely as a matter of taste, though no one admired
a fine park or lawn more than himself, he could
not devote it to this object.

This principle of the land economist, so devoutly
reverenced, will long preclude that desirable union
of taste and interest, which is the combined result
of wealth attained and enjoyed. The last state men
cannot be said to be in, who, however wealthy, never
relax their exertions in adding to their incomes;
which is, and ever will be the case with the planter,
and indeed every other man, so long as he can, by
his efforts, annually increase his revenue ten or

twenty thousand dollars. To the immense profit
which every acre and the labour of every slave
yield the planter, and to no other cause, is to be
referred the anomalous result manifested in neglecting
to improve their estates: for an acre, that
will yield them sixty dollars per annum, and a slave,
whose annual labour will yield from two to five
hundred dollars, are, by the laws which regulate
the empire of money, to be appropriated to the service
of interest, to the entire exclusion of the claims
of taste.

About a mile from Natchez, we passed, close by
the road-side, a family cemetery, whose white paling
was bursting with shrubbery. No mausoleum
gratefully relieving the eye, rose amid the luxuriant
foliage, enshrining the affection of the living or the
memory of the dead. On the opposite side of the
road stood a handsome mansion, though without
that noble expanse of lawn which is the finest feature
in the grounds of an English country residence.
Instead of a lawn, a small unimproved court-yard
intervened between the house and the road. Winding
round an extensive vegetable garden, attached
to the house, which is the only dwelling for more
than ten miles immediately on the road, we travelled
for an hour, either over a pleasantly rolling country,
with extensive cotton fields, spreading away
on either hand; or beneath forest trees, which, in
height and majesty, might vie with the “cedars of
Lebanon.” There is a grandeur in the vast forests
of the south, of which a northerner can form no adequate
conception. The trees spring from the ground

into the air, noble columns, from fifty to a hundred
feet in height, and, expanding like the cocoa, fling
abroad their limbs, which, interlocking, present a
canopy almost impervious to the sun, and beneath
which wind arcades of the most magnificent dimensions.
The nakedness of the tall shafts is relieved
by the luxuriant tendrils of the muscadine and woodbine
twining about them, in spiral wreaths, quite to
their summit, or hanging in immense festoons from
tree to tree. In these woods horsemen can advance
without obstruction, so spacious are the intervals
between the trees, so high the branches above them,
and so free from underwood is the sward. Of such
forest-riding the northerner knows nothing, unless
his lore in tales of Italian banditti may have enabled
him to form some idea of scenes with which his
own country refuses to gratify him. So much do
the northern and southern forests differ, that a fleet
rider will traverse the latter with more ease than
the woodman can the former.

Cut from the shaft of a southern forest tree, a
section forty or fifty feet in length, and plant the
mutilated summit in the earth, and its stunted appearance
would convey to a Mississippian a tolerably
correct idea of a forest tree in New-England; or
add to the low trunk of a wide spreading northern
oak, the column abstracted from its southern rival,
and northerners would form from its towering altitude,
a tolerable idea of a forest tree in Mississippi.
Hang from its heavy branches huge tassels of black
Carolina moss, from two to six feet in length—
suspend from limb to limb gigantic festoons of vines,

themselves but lesser trees in size, and clothe its
trunk with a spiral vestment of leaves, as though
a green serpent were coiled about it, and you will
have created a southern tree in its native majesty.
Imagine a forest of them lifting their tops to heaven
and yourself bounding away upon a fleet horse
beneath its sublime domes, with a noble stag, flying
down its glades like a winged creature, while the
shouts of hunters, the tramp of horses, and the baying
of hounds echo through its solemn corridors,
and then you will have some faint idea of the glory
of a southern forest and the noble character of its
enjoyments.[5]

Between three and four miles from Natchez we
crossed the St. Catharine, a deeply bedded and narrow
stream, winding through a fertile tract of country
in a very serpentine course, for nearly thirty
leagues before it empties into the Mississippi,
twenty miles below Natchez. This stream is celebrated
in the early history of this state, and still
possesses interest from the Indian traditions with
which it is associated. In numerous villages, formerly
scattered along its banks, and spread over the
beautiful hills among which it meanders, but not a
vestige of which now remains, it is supposed, on
the authority both of oral and written history, that
more than two hundred thousand Indians but a few

degrees removed from the refinements of civilized
life, dwelt peaceably under their own vine and fig-tree.
But where are they now? “Echo answers
—Where!”

Between five and six miles from town the road
passed through the centre of one of the most
extensive plantations in the country. For more than
a mile on either side, an immense cotton field spread
away to the distant forests. Not a fence, except
that which confined the road, (always degraded, in
the parlance of the country, when running between
two fences, to a “lane,”) was to be seen over the
whole cultivated surface of a mile square. The absence
of fences is a peculiarity of southern farms.
As their proprietors cultivate but one article as a
staple, there is no necessity of intersecting their
lands by fences, as at the north, where every farm is
cut up into many portions, appropriated to a variety
of productions. To a northern eye, a large extent
of cultivated country, without a fence, or
scarcely a dwelling, would present a singular appearance;
but a short residence in the south will
soon render one familiar with such scenery where
no other meets the eye. The few fences, however,
that exist on plantations, for defining boundaries,
confining public roads, and fencing in the pasture
lands—which, instead of broad green fields as in
New-England, are the woods and cane-brakes—are
of the most unsightly kind. With a gently undulating
surface and a diversity of vale and wood scenery
unrivalled, the natural loveliness of this state is
disfigured by zigzag, or Virginia fences, which

stretch along the sides of the most charming roads,
surround the loveliest cottages, or rudely encroach
upon the snowy palings that enclose them, and intersect
the finest eminences and fairest champaigns.
The Yankee farmer's stone and rail fences are bad
enough, but they are in character with the ruder
features of his country; but the worm fences and
arcadian scenery of the south are combinations undreamed
of in my philosophy. These crooked lines
of deformity obtruding upon the eye in every scene
—the numerous red banks and chasms caused by the
“wash,” and Congo and Mandingo nymphs and
swains, loitering around every fountain, rambling
through the groves, or reclining in the shades, are
in themselves sufficient to unruralise even “Araby
the blest.” Yet with all these harsh artificial features,
there is a picturesqueness—a quiet beauty in
the general aspect of the scenery, not unfrequently
strengthened into majesty, so indelibly stamped upon
it by nature that nothing less than a rail-road can
wholly deface it.

On the plantation alluded to above, through which
lay our road, I noticed within the fence a young
hedge, which, with an unparalleled innovation upon
the prescriptive right of twisted fences, had recently
been planted to supersede them. In a country where
the “chickasaw rose,” which is a beautiful hedge
thorn, grows so luxuriantly, it is worthy of remark
that the culture of the hedge, so ornamental and
useful as a field-fence, is altogether neglected.
Planters would certainly find it eventually for their
interest, and if generally adopted, the scenery of

this state would rival the loveliest sections of rural
England. Delaware, without any striking natural
beauties, by clustering green hedges around her
wheat-fields and farm-houses, has created an artificial
feature in her scenery which renders her naturally
tame aspect extremely rural, if not beautiful.
The hedge, however, will not be introduced
into this state to the exclusion of the rail-fence, until
the pine woods, dwindled here and there to a
solitary tree, refuse longer to deform in the shape
of rails, a country they were originally intended to
beautify.

The “quarters” of the plantation were pleasantly
situated upon an eminence a third of a mile from the
road, each dwelling neatly white-washed and embowered
in the China tree, which yields in beauty
to no other. This, as I have before remarked, is
the universal shade tree for cabin and villa in this
state. It is in leaf about seven months in the year,
and bears early in the spring a delicate and beautiful
flower, of a pale pink ground slightly tinged
with purple. In appearance and fragrance it resembles
the lilac, though the cluster of flowers is
larger and more irregularly formed. These after
loading the air with their fragrance for some days,
fall off, leaving green berries thickly clustering on
every branch. These berries become yellow in
autumn, and long after the seared leaf falls, hang in
clusters from the boughs, nor finally drop from
them until forced from their position by the young
branches and leaves in the succeeding spring. The
chief beauty of this tree consists in the richness and

arrangement of its foliage. From a trunk eight or
ten feet in height, the limbs, in the perfect tree,
branch irregularly upward at an angle of about 45°
or 50°. From these, which are of various lengths,
slender shoots extend laterally, bearing at their extremities
a thick tuft of leaves. These slender
branches radiate in all directions, each also terminating
in fine feathery tufts, which, being laid one
over the other like scales on armour, present an
almost impenetrable shield to the rays of the sun.
These young shoots throughout the season are constantly
expanding their bright parasols of leaves,
and as they are of a paler hue than the older leaves,
which are of a dark purple green, the variegated
effect, combined with the singularly beautiful arrangement
of the whole, is very fine. The rapid
growth of this tree is remarkable. A severed limb
placed in the ground, in the winter, will burst forth
into a fine luxuriant head of foliage in the spring.
From a berry slightly covered with soil, a weed, not
unlike the common pig wood, in the rapidity of its
growth and the greenness of its stalk, shoots up
during the summer four or five feet in height. During
the winter its stalks harden, and in the spring, in
a brown coat, and with the dignity of a young tree,
it proudly displays its tufts of pale, tapering leaves.
In three or four summers more it will fling its limbs
over the planter's cottage—and cast upon the ground
a broad and delightful shade. Divest a tree of the
largest size of its top, and in the spring the naked
stump will burst forth into a cloud of foliage. Such
is the tree which surrounds the dwellings and borders
the streets in the villages of the south-west—
the “vine” and the “fig tree” under which every
man dwells.

About two leagues from Natchez the road entered
an extensive forest, winding along upon a ridge
thickly covered with the polished leaved magnolia
tree (M. grandiflora)—the pride of southern forests.
This tree is an evergreen, and rises from the ground
often to the height of seventy feet, presenting an exterior
of ever-green leaves, and large white flowers.
Its leaves appearing like “two single laurel-leaves
rolled into one,” are five or six inches in length, of
a dark green colour, the under side of a rich brown,
and the upper beautifully glazed, and thick like
shoe leather. The flower is magnificent. In June
it unfolds itself upon the green surface of the immoveable
cone in fine relief. When full blown it
is of a great size; some of them cannot be placed
in a hat without crushing them. Its petals are a
pure white, shaped and curved precisely like a
quarter-section of the rind of an orange, and nearly
as thick, and perfectly smooth and elastic. They
are frequently used by boarding-school misses to
serve as billets doux, for which, from their fragrance
and unsullied purity, they are admirably
fitted. They are so large that I have written upon
one of them with a lead pencil in ordinary handwriting,
a stanza from Childe Harold. It must be
confessed that the writing as well as the material is
of a very ephemeral kind; but for this reason the
material is perhaps the more valuable when pressed
into the service of Don Cupid. They are so fragrant

that a single flower will fill a house with the
most agreeable perfume; and the atmosphere for
many rods in the vicinity of a tree in full flower is
so heavily impregnated, that a sensation of faintness
will affect one long remaining within its influence.

The remainder of our ride was through a fine
forest, occasionally opening into broad cotton fields.
Once on ascending a hill we caught, through a vista
in the woods over broad fields, a glimpse of the cypress
forests of Louisiana, spread out like a dark
sea to the level horizon. The Mississippi rolled
through the midst unseen. As we rode on we
passed roads diverging to the right and left from the
highway, leading to the hidden dwellings of the
planters. A large gate set into a rail fence usually
indicates the vicinity of a planter's residence in the
south—but the plantation roads here turned into the
forests, through which they romantically wound till
lost in their depths. Any of these roads would
have conducted us to the villa of some wealthy
planter. There can be little ostentation in a people
who thus hide their dwellings from the public road.
Jonathan, on the other hand, would plant his house
so near the highway as to have a word from his
door with every passenger. Deprive him of a view
of the public road, and you deprive him of his greatest
enjoyment—the indulgence of curiosity. About
nine miles from town the forest retreated from the
road, and from the brow of a hill, the brown face of
a cliff rose above the tops of the trees about a
league before us. To the eye so long accustomed
to the unvarying green hue of the scenery—the

rough face of this cliff was an agreeable relief. It
was one of the white cliffs alluded to in a former
letter. Shortly after losing sight of this prominent
object, we turned into a road winding through the
woods, which conducted us for a quarter of an
hour down and up several precipitious hills, across
two deep bayous, through an extensive cotton field
in which the negroes were industriously at work
without a “driver” on an “overseer,” and after winding
a short distance bordered by young poplars
round the side of a hill, passed through a first, then
a second gateway, and finally brought us in front of
the dwelling house of our host, and the termination
of our interesting ride.