University of Virginia Library

24. XXIV.

The rich and luxuriant character of the scenery,
which charms and attracts the eye of the traveller
as he ascends the Mississippi from New-Orleans
to Baton Rouge, is now changed. A broad, turbid
flood, rolling through a land of vast forests, alone
meets the eye, giving sublime yet wild and gloomy
features to the scene. On looking from the cabin
window, I see only a long, unbroken line of cotton
trees, with their pale green foliage, as dull and void
of interest as a fog-bank. The opposite shore presents
the same appearance; and so it is, with the
occasional relief of a plantation and a “landing
place,” comprising a few buildings, the whole distance
to Natchez. A wretched cabin, now and
then, varies the wild appearance of the banks—the

home of some solitary wood-cutter. Therefore, as
I cannot give you descriptions of things abroad, I
must give you an account of persons on board.

There are in the cabin about forty passengers, of
both sexes. Two of the most genteel-looking
among them, so far as dress goes, I am told, are
professed “black-legs;” or, as they more courteously
style themselves, “sporting gentlemen.”—
There is an organized body of these ci-devant gentry
upon the river, who have local agents in every
town, and travelling agents on board the principal
steamboats. In the guise of gentlemen, they “take
in” the unwary passenger and unskilful player, from
whom they often obtain large sums of money. I
might relate many anecdotes illustrative of their
mode of operating upon their victims; but I defer
them to some future occasion. As the same sportsmen
do not go twice in the same boat, the captains
do not become so familiar with their persons as to
refuse them passage, were they so inclined. It is
very seldom, however, when they are known, that
they are denied a passage, as gambling is not only
permitted but encouraged on most of the boats, by
carrying a supply of cards in the bar, for the use of
the passengers. Even the sanctity of the Sabbath
is no check to this amusement: all day yesterday
the tables were surrounded with players, at two of
which they were dealing “faro;” at the third playing
“brag.” And this was on the Sabbath! Indeed
the day was utterly disregarded by nearly every individual
on board. Travelling is a sad demoralizer.
My fellow-passengers seemed to have adopted the

sailors' maxim, “no Sunday off soundings.” Their
religion was laid by for shore use. One good, clever-looking
old lady, was busily engaged all the
morning hemming a handkerchief; when some one
remarked near her, “This time last Sunday we
made the Balize.”—“Sunday! to-day Sunday!”
she exclaimed, in the utmost consternation, “Is to-day
Sunday, sir?”

“It is indeed, madam.”

“Oh, me! what a wicked sinner I am! O dear,
that I should sew on Sunday!”—and away she tottered
to her state-room, amidst the pitiless laughter
of the passengers, with both hands elevated in horror,
and ejaculating, “Oh me! what a wicked sinner!
How could I forget!” In a short time she
returned with a Bible; and I verily believe that she
did not take her eyes from it the remainder of the
day, unless it might be to wipe her spectacles.—
Good old soul! she was leaven to the whole lump
of our ungodly company.

There are several French gentlemen; one important
looking personage, who bears the title of
general, and seems amply to feel the dignity it confers;
three or four Mississippi cotton planters, in
large, low-crowned, broad-brimmed, white fur hats,
wearing their clothes in a careless, half sailor-like,
half gentleman-like air, dashed with a small touch
of the farmer, which style of dressing is peculiar to
the Mississippi country gentleman. They are talking
about negroes, rail-roads, and towing shipping.
There is also a travelling Yankee lawyer, in a plain,
stiff, black coat, closely buttoned up to his chin,

strait trowsers, narrow hat, and gloves—the very
antipodes, in appearance, to the non chalant, easy,
care-for-nothing air of his southern neighbours. A
Methodist minister, in a bottle-green frock coat,
fancy vest, black stock, white pantaloons and white
hat, is sitting apart by the stove, deeply engaged
upon the pages of a little volume, like a hymn-book.
Any other dress than uniform black for a minister,
would, at the north, be deemed highly improper,
custom having thus so decided; but here they wear
just what Providence sends them or their own taste
dictates. There are two or three fat men, in gray
and blue—a brace of bluff, manly-looking Germans
—a lynx-eyed, sharp-nosed New-York speculator—
four old French Jews, with those noble foreheads,
arched brows, and strange-expressioned eyes, that
look as though always weeping—the well-known
and never to be mistaken characteristics of this remarkable
people. The remainder of our passengers
present no peculiarities worth remarking. So I
throw them in, tall and short, little and big, and all
sorts and sizes, to complete the motley “ensemble”
of my fellow-travellers.

Among the ladies, besides the aged sinner of the
pocket-handkerchief, are a beautiful, dark-eyed,
dark-haired Virginian, and an intelligent, young
married lady from Vermont, accompanied by her
only child, a handsome, spirited boy, between four
and five years of age. The little fellow and I soon
became great friends; in testimony whereof, he is
now teasing me to allow him to scrawl his enormous
pot-hooks over my sheet, by way of assisting

me in my letter. An apology for his rudeness, by
his mother, opened the way for a conversation;
during which I discovered that she possessed a
highly cultivated mind, great curiosity, as a stranger
in a strange land, and her full share of Yankee inquisitiveness.
She was always upon the “guard,”
resolved that nothing worthy of observation should
escape her inquiring eye. She was a pure New-England
interrogative. So far as it was in my
power, it afforded me pleasure to reply to her questions,
which, as a stranger to southern scenery,
manners and customs, it was very natural she should
put to any one. With a southerner I might have
journied from Montreal to Mexico, without being
questioned so often as I have been in this short
passage from New-Orleans. But unless we can
answer their innumerable questions, (which, by the
way, are most usually of a strongly intelligent cast),
travelling Yankee ladies are certainly, unless young
and pretty, a little annoying. I mean, always, the
inquisitive ones; for there are some who are far
from being so. When a northerner is not inquisitive,
the fact may generally be ascribed to intellectual
dullness, or an uncultivated mind: in a southerner,
to constitutional indolence and love of quiet,
which are enemies to one jot more corporeal or
mental exertion than is absolutely requisite to enable
them to glide through existence. I do not rank my
fellow-traveller in the class of the troublesome inquisitives—though
full of curiosity, compared with
the “daughters of the sun,”—but she is no more so
than any intelligent person should be in a strange,
and by no means uninteresting country.

“The general” is quite the lion on board. It
would amuse you to observe the gaping mouths,
fixed eyes, and attentive looks around, when the
general speaks. He is the oracle—the ne plus ultra
of excellence—the phenix of generals!

By this time you must be wearied with my prosing
about persons of whom you know nothing,
and are probably waiting for more interesting subjects
for description. Thus far, with the exception
of one bluff, with a few buildings perched upon its
summit, there has been no variety in the monotony
of the gloomy forests which overhang the river.

“Ellis's cliffs, which present the wildest and most
romantic scenery upon the Mississippi below St.
Louis, are now in sight. They rise proudly from
the river, and compared with the tame features of
the country, are invested with the dignity of mountains.
They exhibit a white perpendicular face to
the river, and are about one hundred and fifty feet in
height. Gold and silver ore have been lately found in
the strata of the cliffs; but not in sufficient purity and
quantity to induce the proprietors to excavate in
search of them. Here are discovered the first stones
—small pebbles of recent formation—that are seen
on ascending the river. The surrounding country,
which is nearly on a level with the summit of the
cliffs, recedes pleasantly undulating from the river,
rich with highly cultivated cotton plantations, and
ornamented with the elegant residences of the

planters. It is said that few countries in the world
possess a more beautifully diversified surface—or
one more pleasantly distributed in hills and valleys.
In the vicinity also, of this romantic spot, Chateaubriand
has laid some of the scenes of his wild and
splendid fiction “Atala.”

We are now within twenty miles of Natchez.
The river is here very circuitous, making the distance
much greater than by land. The shores continue
to exhibit the peculiarly gloomy and inhospitable
features which, with the occasional exception
of a high bluff, plantation or village, they present
nearly to the mouth of the Ohio. The loud and
startling report of a cannon in the bows of the boat,
making her stagger and tremble through every
beam, is the signal that our port is in sight—a pile
of gray and white cliffs with here and there a church
steeple, a roof elevated above its summit, and a
light-house hanging on the verge! At the foot of
the bluffs are long straggling lines of wooden buildings,
principally stores and store-houses; the Levée
is fringed with flat boats and steamers, and
above all, tower majestically the masts of two or
three ships. The whole prospect from the deck
presents an interesting scene of commercial life and
bustle. But this is not Natchez! The city proper
is built upon the summit level, the tops of whose
buildings and trees can be seen from the boat,
rising higher than the cliff. The ascent from the
lower town, or as it is commonly designated, “under
the hill,” is by an excavated road, of moderate elevation.
The whole appearance of the place from

the deck is highly romantic. On our left, opposite
Natchez, is Vidalia, in Louisiana, a pleasant village
of a few houses, built on one street parallel with
the river. Here, in a pleasant grove above the
town, is the “field of honour,” where gentlemen
from Mississippi occasionally exchange leaden cards
—all in the way of friendship.

On our right, a few hundred yards below Natchez,
crowning a noble eminence, stand the ruins of Fort
Rosalie, celebrated in the early history of this country.
Its garrison early in the last century was massacred,
by the Natchez tribe, to a single man, who escaped
by leaping from the precipice. Here is the principal
scene of Chateaubriand's celebrated romance.
The position of the fort, in a military point of view,
commanding, as it does, a great extent of river and
country, is well chosen. Beyond the fort, a peep
at rich woods, green hills, and tasteful country-seats,
is agreeably refreshing to the eye, so long accustomed
to gaze upon melancholy forests, and dead
flats covered with cane-brakes. Indeed, the mournful
character of the forests along the Mississippi, is
calculated to fill the mind with gloom. The long
black moss, well known at the north as the “Carolina
moss,” hangs in immense fringes from every
limb, frequently enveloping the whole tree in its
sombre garb. The forests thus clothed present a
dismal yet majestic appearance. As the traveller
gazes upon them his mind partakes of their funereal
character, and the imagination is ready to assent to
the strong and highly poetical remark of a gentleman
on board, with whom I was promenading the

“guard,” who observed that it would seem that the
Deity was dead, and that nature had clothed herself
in mourning.

25. XXV.

Since the date of my last letter, a period sufficiently
long to enable me to make my observations
with correctness has elapsed; and from memoranda
collected during the interval, I shall prepare this
and subsequent letters from this place.

We landed last evening at the Levée, amid the
excitement, noise, and confusion which always attend
the arrival or departure of a steamer in any
place. But here the tumult was varied and increased
by the incessant jabbering, hauling, pulling,
kicking and thumping, of some score or two of
ebony-cheeked men and urchins, who were tumbling
over each other's heads to get the first trunk.

“Trunk, massa—trunk! I take you baggage.”

“You get out, for a nigger!” exclaimed a tall,
strapping fellow, as black as night, to his brother
ebony. “I'm the gemman, massa, what care de

trunk.” “Dis nigger, him know noffing, massa—
I'm what's always waits on um gentlemans from de
boats!” roared another; and stooping to take one
of the handles, the other was instantly grappled by
a rival, and both giving a simultaneous jerk, the
subject of the contest flew violently from their hands,
and was instantly caught up by the first “gemman,”
and borne off in triumph. This little by-play
was acted, with variations, in every part of the cabin,
where there was either a gentleman or a trunk
to form the subject.

On landing, there was yet another trial of the
tympanum.

“Carriage, massa—mighty bad hill to walk up!”
was vociferated on all sides; and

“No, no, no!” was no argument with them for
a cessation of attack; denial only made them more
obstinate; and, like true soldiers, they seemed to
derive courage from defeat.

Forcing my way through the dingy crowd—for
four out of five of them were black, and, “by the
same token,” as ragged as Falstaff's regiment, of
shirtless memory—I followed my athletic pioneer;
who, with my heavy baggage poised accurately upon
his head, moved as rapidly and carelessly along
the thronged Levée as though he carried no weight
but his own thick cranium. On looking round me
for a moment, on landing, I was far from agreeably
impressed with the general appearance of the buildings.
This part of the town is not properly Natchez
—and strangers passing up and down the river, who
have had the opportunity of seeing only this place,

have, without dreaming of the beautiful city over
their heads, gone on their way, with impressions
very inaccurate and unfavourable. These impressions,
derived only, but justly, from this repulsive
spot, have had a tendency to depreciate the city,
and fasten upon it a bad name, which it is very far
from meriting. Like the celebrated “Five Points,”
in New-York, “Natchez under the Hill,” as it has
been aptly named, has extended its fame throughout
the United States, in wretched rhyme and viler
story. For many years it has been the nucleus of
vice upon the Mississippi. But, for two or three
years past, the establishment of respectable mercantile
houses, and an excellent hotel, combined
with an efficient police, and a spirit of moral reform
among the citizens, has, in a great measure, redeemed
the place—changed its repulsive character
and cancelled its disgraceful name. Though now
on the high way of reform, there is still enough of
the cloven-hoof visible, to enable the stranger to
recognise that its former reputation was well earned.

The principal street, which terminates at the ascent
of the hill, runs parallel with the river, and is
lined on either side with a row of old wooden houses;
which are alternately gambling-houses, brothels,
and bar-rooms: a fair assemblage! As we
passed through the street—which we gained with
difficulty from the boat, picking our way to it as
we could, through a filthy alley—the low, broken,
half-sunken side-walks, were blocked up with fashionably-dressed
young men, smoking or lounging,
tawdrily arrayed, highly rouged females, sailors,

Kentucky boatmen, negroes, negresses, mulattoes,
pigs, dogs, and dirty children. The sounds of
profanity and Bacchanalian revels, well harmonizing
with the scene, assailed our ears as we passed hastily
along, through an atmosphere of tobacco smoke
and other equally fragrant odours. After a short
walk we emerged into a purer air, and in front of
a very neat and well-conducted hotel. From near
this place, extending along the Levée to the north,
commences the mercantile part of the “landing,”
lined with stores and extensive warehouses, in which
is transacted a very heavy business. The whole of
this lower town is built upon a reclaimed flat, from
one to two hundred yards broad, and half a mile in
length; bounded upon one side by the river, and on
the other by the cliff or bluff, upon which Natchez
stands, and which rises abruptly from the Batture,
to the height of one hundred and sixty feet. This
bluff extends along the river, more or less varied
and broken, for several miles; though at no point
so abrupt and bold as here, where it bears the peculiar
characteristics of the wild scenery of “Dover
cliffs.” The face of the cliff at Natchez is not a
uniform precipice, but, apparently by the provident
foresight of nature, broken by an oblique shelf or
platform, gradually inclining from the summit to
the base. With but a little excavation, a fine road
has been constructed along this way, with an inclination
sufficiently gentle to enable the heaviest
teams to ascend with comparative ease. One side
of the road is of course bounded by a perpendicular
cliff; the other by empty air and a dizzy precipice:
so that the unwary foot-traveller, involved amid the
ascent and descent of drays, carriages, horsemen,
and porters, enjoys a tolerably fair alternative of being
squeezed uncomfortably close against the bluff,
or pitched, with a summerset, into some of the
yawning chimneys on the flats beneath. For the
whole length of this ascent, which is nearly a quarter
of a mile, there is no kind of guard for the protection
of the passengers. Yet, I have been told,
no lives have ever been lost here. One poor fellow,
a short time since, having taken a drop too
much, and reeling too near the verge, lost his equilibrium,
and over he went. But it is hard to kill a
drunkard, except with the “pure spirit” itself; and
the actor in this “drop scene” being “a gem of
sweet Erin,” stuck to the sod, and slid comfortably,
though rapidly, to the bottom. The next moment
he was seen gathering himself up out of a sand-heap,
with “By St. Pathrick! but that was a jewel
of a lape!—and it's my bright new baiver castor
that's smashed by it to smitherins.”

On arriving at the summit of the hill, I delayed
a moment, for the double purpose of taking breath
and surveying the scene spread out around me.
Beneath lay the roofs of warehouses, stores, and
dwellings, scattered over a flat, sandy surface, which
was bordered, on the water side, by hundreds of
up-country flat-boats, laden with the produce of the
rich farming states bordering the Ohio and “Upper
Mississippi.” Lower down, steamers were taking
in and discharging freight; while the mingled
sounds of the busy multitude rose like the hum of

a hive upon the car. Immediately opposite me lay
two ships, which, with their towering masts, gay
flags, and dark hulls, agreeably relieved the otherwise
long and unbroken line of boats. To the north
the river spreads its noble bosom till lost in the distance;
while the continuous line of cliffs, extending
along its shore like a giant wall, seem to speak
in the language of power, “thus far shalt thou flow
and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be
stayed.” To the south, the view is confined by the
near projection of the obtruding cliffs. Yet the river
stretches boldly out many miles on its course
toward the sea, till lost to sight within the bosom of
the distant forests which bound the southern horizon.
To the west, the eye travels over the majestic
breadth of the river, here a mile wide, and rests for
a moment upon level and richly cultivated fields
beyond, a quiet village and noble forests, which
spread away to the west like a vast sea of waving
foliage, till they blend with the bending sky, forming
a level and unbroken horizon. Turning from
this scene of grandeur and beauty to the east,
Natchez, mantled with rich green foliage like a garment,
with its handsome structures and fine avenues,
here a dome and there a tower, lies immediately
before me. It is the very contrast to its straggling
namesake below. The city proper consists
of six streets, at right angles with the river, intersected
by seven others of the same length, parallel
with the stream. The front, or first parallel street,
is laid out about one hundred yards back from the
verge of the bluff, leaving a noble green esplanade
along the front of the city, which not only adds to
its beauty, but is highly useful as a promenade and
parade ground. Shade trees are planted along the
border, near the verge of the precipice, beneath
which are placed benches, for the comfort of the
lounger. From this place the eye commands one
of the most extensive prospects to be found on the
Mississippi. To a spectator, standing in the centre
of this broad, natural terrace, the symmetrical arrangement
of the artificial scenery around him is
highly picturesque and pleasing.

On his right, to the south, a noble colonnaded structure,
whose heavy appearance is gracefully relieved
by shrubbery, parterres, and a light latticed summer-house,
crowning a gentle eminence in the rear,
and half suspended over the precipice, strikes his
eye with a fine effect. From this admirable foreground,
gently sloping hills, with here and there a
white dwelling, half concealed in foliage, spread
away into the country. Between this edifice and
the forest back ground rise the romantic ruins of
Fort Rosalie, now enamelled with a rich coating of
verdure. On his left, at the northern extremity of
the esplanade, upon the beautiful eminence, gradually
yet roundly swelling away from the promenade,
stands another private residence, nearly resembling
and directly opposite to the other, its
lofty colonnades glancing in the sun—a magnificent
garden spreading out around it, luxuriant with foliage—diversified
with avenues and terraces, and
adorned with grottoes and summer-houses. Imagine
these handsome residences, flanking the city,

and forming the extreme northern and southern terminations
of the broad terrace before the town,
with the mighty flood of the Mississippi rolling
some hundred feet beneath you—the dark forests
of Louisiana stretching away to infinity in the west,
with Natchez—its streets alive with promenaders,
gay equipages and horsemen—immediately before
you, and you will form some idea of this beautiful
city and its environs from this point. But as the
spot upon which the town is built, originally a cluster
of green hills, has been, by levelling and filling,
converted into a smooth surface, with a very slight
inclination to the verge of the cliff, a small portion
only of the city is visible. The buildings on the
front street face the river, and, with the exception
of one or two private houses, with galleries and
shrubbery, reminding one of the neat and beautiful
residences on the “coast,”[1] possess no peculiar
interest. The town is entered from the parade by
rude bridges at the termination of each street, spanning
a dry, dilapidated brick aqueduct of large dimensions,
which has been constructed along the
whole front of the city, but is now, from some unknown
cause, suffered to fall to ruin. It was probably
intended as a reservoir and conductor of the
water which, after heavy rains, rushes violently
down the several streets of the city.

As I was crossing from the bluff to the entrance
of one of the principal streets—a beautiful avenue

bordered with the luxuriant China tree, whose dark
rich foliage, nearly meeting above, formed a continued
arcade as far as the eye could penetrate—my
attention was arrested by an extraordinary group,
reclining in various attitudes under the grateful
shade of the ornamental trees which lined the way.
With his back firmly planted against a tree, as
though there existed a sympathetic affinity between
the two, sat an athletic Indian with the neck
of a black bottle thrust down his throat, while the
opposite extremity pointed to the heavens. Between
his left forefinger and thumb he held a corncob,
as a substitute for a stopper. By his side, his
blanket hanging in easy folds from his shoulders,
stood a tall, fine-looking youth, probably his son,
his raven hair falling in masses over his back, with
his black eyes fixed upon the elder Indian, as a faithful
dog will watch each movement of his intemperate
master. One hand supported a rifle, while
another was carelessly suspended over his shoulder.
There was no change in this group while I remained
in sight; they were as immoveable as
statues. A little in the rear, lay several “warriors”
fast locked in the arms of Bacchus or Somnus, (probably
both,) their rifles lying beside them. Near
them a knot of embryo chiefs were gamboling in all
the glorious freedom of “sans culottes.” At a little
distance, half concealed by huge baskets apparently
just unstrapped from their backs, filled with the
motley paraphernalia of an Indian lady's wardrobe,
sat, cross-legged, a score of dark-eyed, brown-skinned
girls and women, laughing and talking in
their soft, childish language, as merrily as any ladies
would have done, whose “lords” lay thus supine
at their feet. Half a score of miserable,
starved wretches, “mongrel, whelp and hound,”
which it were an insult to the noble species to term
dogs, wandering about like unburied ghosts “seeking
what they might devour,” completed the novel
and picturesque ensemble of the scene.

On the opposite side of the way was another of a
different character, but not less interesting. Seated
in a circle around their bread and cheese, were half
a dozen as rough, rude, honest-looking countrymen
from the back part of the state, as you could find
in the nursery of New-England's yeomanry. They
are small farmers—own a few negroes—cultivate a
small tract of land, and raise a few bales of cotton,
which they bring to market themselves. Their
carts are drawn around them forming a barricade to
their camp, for here, as is customary among them,
instead of putting up at taverns, they have encamped
since their arrival. Between them and
their carts are their negroes, who assume a “cheek
by jowl” familiarity with their masters, while jokes,
to season their homely fare, accompanied by astounding
horse-laughs, from ivory-lined mouths that
might convey a very tolerable idea of the crater of
Etna, pass from one group to the other, with perfect
good will and a mutual contempt for the nicer
distinctions of colour.

Crossing the narrow bridge, I entered at once
into the body of the city, which is built as compactly
within itself and aloof from the suburbs as

though it were separated from them by a wall; and
in a few moments, after traversing two sides of a
well-built square on fine side walks, I arrived at
the “Mansion house,” an extensive and commodious
brick edifice said to be one of the best hotels
in the south west—except Bishop's—agreeably impressed
with this, my first coup d'œil of a city, so
extensively celebrated for the opulence, taste and
hospitality of its inhabitants.

26. XXVI.

To the northerner, to whom every verdant hill is
a magazine of health, every mountain torrent and
limpid river are leaping and flowing with life, who
receives a new existence as the rays of the summer's
sun fall upon his brow, and whose lungs expand
more freely and whose pulse beats more
strongly under the influence of every breeze, Natchez
has been, till within a very short period, associated
with miasma and marshes over which the
yellow fever, like a demon king, held undisputed
sway. This idea is not without foundation. Like

New-Orleans, this city has been the grave of many
young and ambitious adventurers. Pestilence has
here literally “walked at noonday.” The sun, the
source and preserver of life and health, in its path
over this devoted city, has “become black as sackcloth,”
and “the moon that walketh in brightness,”
shedding her calm and gentle light upon the earth,
has been “turned into blood,” poisoning the atmosphere
with exhalations of death, and converting the
green earth into a sepulchre. But this is a record
of the past. The angel of vengeance has gone by,
leaving health and peace to exercise their gentle dominion
over this late theatre of his terrible power.
No city in our happy country is more blessed with
health than is now, this so often depopulated
place. For several years past its catalogue of mortality
has been very much smaller than that of many
towns in Vermont and Maine, containing the same
number of inhabitants. Even that insatiable destroyer,
the Asiatic cholera, which has strewn both
hemispheres with the bones of its victims, has passed
over this city without leaving a trace of his progress,
except among the blacks and a few imprudent
strangers. Not a citizen fell a victim to it.
If any place demanded a dispensation of mercy it
was this—if past misfortunes can challenge an exemption
from farther infliction.

Main-street is the “Broadway” of Natchez. It
extends from the river to the eastern extremity of
the city, about half a mile in length, dividing the
town into nearly equal portions, north and south.
This street is to Natchez what Chartres-street is

to New-Orleans, though on a much smaller scale.
Here are all the banks and most of the dry goods
and fancy stores. Here, consequently, is the centre
of business, and, to the ladies, that of attraction;
although the stores are not turned inside out every
morning, to adorn their fronts and create zigzags
on the side-walks, to the great edification of the
shopmen, who are the operators, and the little comfort
of gouty or hurrying pedestrians. In passing up
this street, which is compactly built with handsome
brick blocks, generally but two stories in height,
the stranger is struck with the extraordinary number
of private carriages, clustered before the doors
of the most fashionable stores, or millineries, rolling
through the street, or crossing and recrossing
it from those by which it is intersected, nearly every
moment, from eleven till two on each fair day. But
few of these equipages are of the city: they are
from the plantations in the neighbourhood, which
spread out from the town over richly cultivated
“hill and dale,”—a pleasant and fertile landscape—
far into the interior. Walk with me into this street
about noon on a pleasant day in December. It is
the only one nearly destitute of shade trees; but
the few it boasts are shedding their yellow leaves,
which sprinkle the broad, regular, and well-constructed
side-walks, and the warm sun shines down
cheerily and pleasantly upon the promenaders.—
Here, at the corner, surrounded by a crowd, is an
auction store. Upon a box by the door stands a
tall, fine-looking man. But he is black; ebony
cannot be blacker. Of the congregation of human
beings there, he is the most unconcerned. Yet he
has a deeper interest in the transactions of the moment
than all the rest—for a brief space will determine
whom, among the multitude, he is to call
master! The auctioneer descants at large upon his
merits and capabilities.—“Acclimated, gentlemen!
a first-rate carriage-driver—raised by Col. —
Six hundred dollars is bid. Examine him, gentlemen—a
strong and athletic fellow—but twenty-seven
years of age.” He is knocked off at seven
hundred dollars; and with “There's your master,”
by the seller, who points to the purchaser, springs
from his elevation to follow his new owner; while
his place is supplied by another subject. These
scenes are every-day matters here, and attract no
attention after beholding them a few times; so
powerful is habit, even in subduing our strongest
prejudices. But the following dialogue, overheard
by me, between two well-dressed, smart-looking
blacks near by, one seated listlessly upon his
coach-box, the other holding the bridle of his master's
horse—though brief, contains a volume of meaning,
in illustrating the opinions and views of the
blacks upon the state of their degraded race.

“You know dat nigger, they gwine to sell,
George?”

“No, he field nigger; I nebber has no 'quaintance
wid dat class.”

“Well, nor no oder gentlemens would. But he's
a likely chap. How much you tink he go for?”—
“I a'n't much 'quainted wid de price of such kind o'

peoples. My master paid seven hundred dollar
for me, when I come out from ole Wirginney—dat
nigger fetch five hun'red dollar I reckon.”

“You sell for only seben hun'red dollars!” exclaimed
the gentleman upon the coach-seat, drawing
himself up with pride, and casting a contemptuous
glance down upon his companion: “my
massa give eight hundred and fifty silver dollars for
me. Gom! I tink dat you was more 'spectable
nigger nor dat.” At this turn of the conversation
the negro was struck off at seven hundred, at which
the colloquist of the same price became highly chagrined;
but, stepping upon the stirrup, and raising
himself above the crowd, that he might see “the
fool massa what give so much for a miserable good-for-nothing
nigger, not wort' his corn,” consoled
himself with the reflection that the buyer was “a
man what made no more dan tirty bale cotton;
while my master make tree hun'red, and one of de
firs' gemmans too!”

Thus, though denied the privileges of his desired
“caste,” by the estimation of his personal value,
he aspired to it by a conclusive argument, in the
eye of a negro, viz. his master's wealth and rank in
society. Can individuals, who are thus affected at
the sale of their fellow-men, and who view their
state of bondage in this light, feel deeply their own
condition, or be very sensitive upon the subject of
equal rights? Yet thus do negroes view slavery.
Thus do they converse upon it; and are as tenacious
of the limited privileges, (yet to them unlimited,
because they know, and can therefore aspire

to no other) which, like flowers, are entwined
among the links of their moral bondage. There is
one, proud that his chain weighs down a few more
gold pieces than that of his fellow, while the latter
is in no less degree mortified at the deficiency in
weight of his own. Do such men “pine in bondage”
and “sigh for freedom?” Freedom, of which
they know nothing, and cannot, therefore, feel the
deprivation; a freedom of which they have heard
only, as the orientals of their fabled genii, but to
which generally they no more think of aspiring than
the subjects of the caliph to the immortality and
winged freedom of these imaginary beings. These
two negroes I have seen repeatedly since, and am
assured that they are as intelligent, well informed,
and “respectable,” as any of their class; none of
whom, allowing a very few exceptions, entertain
higher or different views of their state as slaves, or
of their rank in the scale of human beings. Do not
mistake me: I am no advocate for slavery; but
neither am I a believer in that wild Garrisonian
theory, which, like a magician's wand, is at once to
dissolve every link that binds the slave to his master,
and demolish at one blow a system that has
existed, still gaining in extent and stability, for
centuries. The familiar French proverb, “imagination
gallops while the judgment advances only
on a walk,” is most applicable to these visionary
theorists who would build Rome in a day.

Opposite to the auction store are a cluster of gay
carriages, to and from which fair beings, not quite
angels, are “ascending and descending,” to look

over all the “pretty things” in the richly lined
stores. Was there ever a fancy store that ladies
were not hovering near? “A new store”—“new
goods,”—“less than cost!” What magic words!
What visions of silks and satins, gros de Swiss and
gros de Naples, challys and shawls, Grecian laces
and Paris gloves, with a thousand other charming
etceteras, float before their delighted fancies, in
every form of grace and ornament that the imagination
can picture or a refined taste invent. Ladies
are ladies all the world over; and where is the place
in which they do not love “to shop?” In this far
corner of the south and west, you are prepared to
give fashion credit for but few devotees, and those
only partial and half-souled worshippers. But you
must not forget that these are southerners; and the
southerner is never found unfashionable or deficient
in taste. The moving galaxy of grace and beauty
that floats down Chesnut-street, cannot at any time
present more fashionable and elegantly-dressed
promenaders than now enliven the street, or than
that fair bevy of young ladies clustered round yonder
carriage door, all chattering together, with their
sweet pleasant voices, to a pale, beautiful, and interesting
girl within, apparently an invalid. So far
as I can judge, as much of “the ton,” in dress and
society, prevails here as in Philadelphia, where
many residents of the city and country spend a portion
of every summer—certainly more than at New-Orleans,
which is by far the most unfashionable
city in the United States. The gentlemen of Natchez
are less particular in their dress, though much
more punctilious than they were five or six years
since, when there was not to be found what would
be termed a “fashionable man,” (according to the
acceptation of the term in New-York) among the
residents of this city. And where is the southern
gentleman that ever dressed fashionably? They
dress well and richly, but seldom fashionably.
Their garments hang upon them loosely, as though
made for larger men; and they wear them with a
sort of free and easy air, enviable but inimitable by
the stiffer and more formal northerner. The southerner,
particularly the planter, would wear with a
native and matchless grace the flowing toga of imperial
Rome. Though destitute of that fashionable
exterior which the tailor supplies, and for which,
in general, they have a most sovereign indifference
and contempt, they possess—I mean the genuine,
native-born, well-educated southerner—an “air distingué,”
and in the highest degree aristocratic,
which is every where the most striking feature of
their appearance.

That knot of gentlemen issuing from a plain
brick building—one of the banks—is composed of
bank directors. Their decisions have elevated or
depressed the mercury in many an anxious breast.
Two or three faces resemble those one often sees
in Wall-street, or on Change, in Boston. The resemblance
is so striking that one is quite sure at
the first glance that he has seen them there. But
no: they are merchants of this city—thorough-going
commercial men. The resemblance is only that of
a species. Merchants resemble each other everywhere.

Their features are strongly marked and
characteristic. It has been said that a Boston merchant
may be known all the world over. It has
been proved that a sea-faring life, especially when
commenced in early years, has a tendency to produce
a physical change in the organ of vision.
That a mercantile life, long and intently pursued,
has a tendency to stamp a peculiar character upon
the features, is equally certain, in the opinion of
those whose habits of observation may have led
them to such physiognomical investigations. Among
the remainder, are two or three in white blanket
coats, broad-brimmed white hats, with slender riding-whips
in their hands, who will be readily designated
as planters. A circumstance that very soon arrests
the attention of the stranger, is the number of gentlemen
with riding-whips in their hands to be met
with in all parts of the city, particularly on days
when any public meeting is held. Every third or
fourth person is thus, to a northerner, singularly
armed. At the north few ride except in gigs. But
here all are horsemen; and it is unusual to see a
gentleman in a gig or carriage. If his wife rides
out, he attends her à cheval. Instead of gigs,
therefore, which would fill the streets of a northern
town, saddle-horses, usually with high pummelled
Spanish saddles, and numerous private carriages, in
which are the ladies of the family, drawn by long-tailed
horses, throng the streets and line the outside
of the pavé. At least a third of the persons who
fill the streets are planters and their families from
the country, which every day pours forth its hundreds
from many miles around the city, that like a
magnet attracts all within its influence.

There are several public buildings in this street
of which I shall make more particular mention
hereafter. My object now is merely to give you
some idea of things as, when presented to it in the
novel hues of “first impressions,” they strike the
eye of a stranger.

27. XXVII.

First impressions, if preserved, before the magnifying
medium of novelty through which they are
seen becomes dissipated, are far more lively and
striking than the half-faded scenes which memory
slowly and imperfectly brings up from the past.
Yet, if immediately recorded, while the colours are
fresh and glowing, there is danger of drawing too
much upon the imagination in the description, and
exaggerating the picture. On the other hand, if the
impressions are suffered to become old and faint,
invention is too apt to be called in unconsciously,
to fill up and complete the half-forgotten and defective

sketch. The medium is safer and more accurate.
A period of time sufficiently long should
be suffered to elapse, that the mind, by subsequent
observation, may be enabled to correct and digest
its early impressions, exercise its judgment without
a bias, and from more matured experience, be prepared
to form its opinions, and make its comparisons
with certainty. How far I have attained this desirable
medium, the general character and justice of
my descriptions must alone determine.

The deficient perception of architectural beauty,
in the composition of American minds, has frequently,
and with some truth, been a subject upon
which foreign tourists love to exercise their castigating
pens—weapons always wielded fearlessly
and pitilessly against every thing on this side of the
Atlantic. The very small number of handsome
public buildings in the United States, and the total
contempt for order or style which, (with but here
and there an honourable exception,) they evince,
would give a very plausible foundation for this animadversion,
did not Americans redeem their reputation
in this point, by the pure and correct taste they
universally exhibit in the construction of their private
residences. Herein, they are not surpassed by
any other nation. Natchez, like most of the minor
cities of this country, cannot boast of any public
buildings remarkable for harmonious conformity to
the rules or orders of architecture. They are, nevertheless,
well deserving of notice, highly ornamental
to the city, and reflect honour upon the public spirit
of its citizens. The Agricultural bank is unquestionably

the finest structure in the city. It has been erected
very recently on the south side of Main-street, presenting
a noble colonnaded front, of the modernized
Grecian style; being built somewhat after the model
of the United States bank at Philadelphia;
though brick and stucco are here substituted for
marble, and heavy pillars for the graceful column.
It is entered from the street by a broad and spacious
flight of steps, leading to its lofty portico, from
which three large doors give admission into its vast
hall, decidedly the finest room south or west of
Washington. The whole structure is a chaste and
beautiful specimen of architecture. It is partially
enclosed by a light, iron railing. To a stranger this
edifice is a striking object, and, contrasted with the
buildings of less pretension around it, will call
forth his warmest admiration. The other banks, of
which there are, in all, three, including a branch of
the United States bank, are plain brick buildings,
undistinguished from the adjoining stores, except
by a colder and more unfurnished appearance, and
the absence of signs. A short distance above this
fine building is the Masonic Hall; a large square
edifice, two lofty stories in height. Its front is
beautifully stuccoed, and ornamented with white
pilasters. The hall is in the second story; a large,
plain, vaulted apartment, almost entirely destitute
of the splendid furniture and rich decorations which
characterise such places at the north. Here masonry,
with its imposing forms, ceremonies, and
honours, is yet preserved in all its pristine glory.
The first story of the building is used as an academy—the
only one in this state. It is a well-conducted
institution, and its pupils are thoroughly instructed
by competent officers, who are graduates
of northern colleges, as are most of the public and
private instructors of this state. The number of
students is generally large. Those who are destined
for professional life, after completing their
preparatory course here, usually enter some one of
the colleges at the north. Yale, Princeton, and
Harvard annually receive several from this state;
either from this academy or from under the hands
of the private tutors, who are dispersed throughout
the state, and from whom a great majority of the
planters' sons receive their preparatory education.
But on the subject of education in this country, I
shall speak more fully hereafter. I could not pass
by this institution, which reflects so much honour
upon the city, without expressing my gratification
at its flourishing condition and high character. It
is the more gratifying from being unexpected at the
south, which, till very lately, has been wholly dependent
upon the northern seminaries or private institutions
for the education of her sons. To see
here an institution that cannot be surpassed by any
of the same rank in other states, must not only be
pleasing to the friends of education, but particularly
so to the citizens of this state, to whom it is ably
demonstrated, by the success of this academy, that
literature is not an exotic, though its germs may
heretofore have been transplanted from another soil.
There is a female seminary also in the city, which,
though of a very respectable character, is not so
celebrated and flourishing as many others in the
state.

On the south side of the next square is an old
“burying-ground,” crowning an eminence whose
surface is covered with fragments of grave-stones
and dismantled tombs. The street is excavated
through it to its base, leaving a wall or bank of
earth nearly thirty feet in height; upon the verge
of which crumbling tombs are suspended, threatening
to fall upon the passenger beneath. It has not
been used for many years as a place of burial; the
present cemetery being about a mile above the city,
in a delightful spot among the green hills which
cluster along the banks of the river. This old cemetery
is a striking but disagreeable feature in the
midst of so fair a city. Adjoining it, on the eastern
side, and nearly at the extremity of the street and
also of the city, stands the theatre; a large, commodious
building, constructed of brick, with arched
entrances and perfectly plain exterior. The citizens
of Natchez are not a play-going community; consequently
they take little pride in the possession of
a fine theatre. Its interior, however, is well arranged,
convenient, and handsomely painted and
decorated. Its boards are supplied, for two or three
months during every season, by performers from
New-Orleans or New-York. Just beyond the theatre
is the termination of Main-street, here intersected
by another, from which, to the right and left,
fine roads extend into the country—one to Washington,
a pleasant village six miles distant, formerly
the seat of government of the territory and the location

of the public offices; but now a retired, unassuming
and rural spot, boasting of a well-endowed
college and female seminary—of which, more
hereafter. Of the other public buildings of Natchez,
the Presbyterian church is the finest and most
imposing. It stands on a commanding site, overlooking
the public square, a pleasant green flat, in
the centre of which is the court-house. It is constructed
of bricks, which are allowed to retain their
original colour; and surrounded by buff-coloured
pilasters of stucco work, which is here generally
substituted for granite in facings. It is surmounted,
at the west end, by a fine tower of successive stories;
on one side of which is a clock, conspicuous
from the most distant parts of the city and suburbs.
—You are aware, probably, that there are in this
country no Congregationalists, so called; Presbyterians
supply the place of this denomination in the
ecclesiastical society of all the south and west. The
prevailing denomination, however, in this state, as
in all this section of the United States, is that of
the Methodists, which embraces men of all classes,
including a large proportion of planters. I now
merely allude to this and other subjects of the kind,
as I intend, in subsequent letters, to treat of them
more at large.

The court-house is a fine, large, square building,
opposite to the church, surmounted by a cupola.
It is surrounded by a beautiful, though not spacious,
green. On the streets which bound the four sides
of it are situated the lawyers' and public offices,
which are generally plain, neat, wooden buildings,

from one to two stories in height. Should they be
denominated from the state of those who occupy
them, they would be correctly designated “bachelors'
halls.” Shade trees half embower them and
the court-house in their rich foliage. Opposite to
the south side of the square is the county prison;
a handsome two story brick building, resembling,
save in its grated tier of windows in the upper story,
a gentleman's private dwelling. There is a fine
Episcopalian church in the south-east part of the
town, adding much to its beauty. It is built of
brick, and surmounted by a vast dome, which has
a rather heavy, overgrown appearance, and is evidently
too large for the building. It has a neat
front, adorned with a portico of the usual brick pillars.
There are not many Episcopalians here; but
the few who are of this denomination are, as every
where else in the United States, generally of the
wealthy and educated class. There is also a Methodist
church adjoining the Masonic hall; a plain,
neat building, remarkable only for its unassuming
simplicity, like all others of this denomination in
America.

The light-house upon the bluff, at the north-west
corner of the city, is well deserving of notice, though
not properly ranked under the public buildings of
Natchez. It is a simple tower, about forty feet in
height, commanding a section of the river, north
and south, of about twelve miles. But the natural
inquiry of the stranger is, “What is its use?” A
light-house on a river bank, three hundred miles
from the sea, has certainly no place in the theory

of the utilitarian. The use of it its projectors must
determine. Were a good telescope placed in its
lantern it would make a fine observatory, and become
a source of amusement as well as of improvement
to the citizens, to whom it is now merely a
standing monument, in proof of the proverb, that
“wisdom dwelleth not in all men.” The hotels
are very fine. Parker's, on one of the front squares,
near the bluff, is a handsome, costly, and very extensive
building, three stories in height, with a stuccoed
front, in imitation of granite, and decidedly the
largest edifice in the city. Its rooms are large,
spacious, and elegantly furnished; suited rather for
gentlemen and their families, who choose a temporary
residence in town, than for transient travellers
and single men, who more frequently resort to the
“Mansion-house.” This is not so large a structure
as the former, though its proprietor is enlarging it,
on an extensive scale. It has long been celebrated
as an excellent house. Its accommodations for ladies
are also very good, their rooms opening into
ventilated piazzas, or galleries, as they are termed
here, which are as necessary to every house in this
country as fire-places to a northern dwelling. These
galleries, or more properly verandas, are constructed—not
like the New-England piazza, raised on
columns half the height of the building, with a flat
roof, and surrounded by a railing—but by extending
a sloping roof beyond the main building, supported
at its verge by slender columns; as the houses are
usually of but one story in this country, southerners
having a singular aversion to mounting stairs. Such
porticoes are easily constructed. No house, particularly
a planter's, is complete without this gallery,
usually at both the back and front; which furnishes
a fine promenade and dining-room in the
warm season, and adds much to the lightness and
beauty of the edifice.

There is another very good hotel here, equivalent
to Richardson's, in New-Orleans, or the Elm-street
house in Boston, where the country people usually
put up when they come in from the distant counties
to dispose of their cotton. It fronts on “Cottonsquare,”
as a triangular area, formed by clipping off
a corner of one of the city squares, is termed; which
is filled every day, during the months of November,
December, and January, with huge teams
loaded with cotton bales, for which this is the peculiar
market place.

The “City hotel,” lately enlarged and refurnished,
is now becoming quite a place of fashionable
resort.

28. XXVIII.

Until within a very short period, the society of
Natchez has exhibited one peculiar characteristic,
in the estimation of a northerner, in whose migrating
land “seven women,” literally fulfilling the prediction,
“take hold of one man;” a prediction which
has, moreover, been fulfilled, according to the redoubtable
and most classical Crockett, in the west;
but by no means in this place, or in any of the embryo
cities, which are springing up like Jonah's
gourd, along the banks of the great “father of waters.”
The predominance of male population in the
countless villages that are dotting the great western
valley, rising up amidst the forests, one after another,
as stars come out at evening, and almost in as
rapid succession, is a necesary consequence of the
natural laws of migration. In the old Atlantic and
New-England states, the sons, as they successively
grow up to manhood, take the paternal blessing and
their little patrimony, often all easily packed and
carried in a knapsack, but oftener in their heads,

and bend their way to the “great west,” to seek
their fortunes, with them no nursery tale, but a
stern and hardly earned reality:—there to struggle
—prosper or fail—with blighted hopes go down to
early graves, or, building a fire-side of their own,
gather around it sons, who, in their declining years,
shall, in their turn, go forth from the paternal roof
to seek beyond the mountains of the Pacific shore
a name, a fire-side, and a home of their own. And
such is human life!

To this migratory propensity is to be attributed
the recent peculiar state of society in this city, and
throughout the whole western country. The sons
are the founders of these infant emporiums, but the
daughters stay at home in a state of single blessedness—blessings
(?) to the maternal roof, till some
bold aspirants for the yoke of hymen return, after
spying out the land, take them under their migratory
wings and bear them to their new home. But
unluckily for six out of every seven of the fair
daughters of the east, the pioneers of the west feel
disposed to pass their lives in all the solitary dignity
of the bachelor state. Wrapped up in their speculations,
their segars and their “clubs,” not even a
second Sabine device could move them to bend their
reluctant necks to the noose. Those, however,
who do take to themselves “helpmeets,” are more
gallant and chivalrous than their Roman predecessors
in their mode of obtaining them, not demurring
to travel, like Cœlebs, many hundred leagues to the
land of steady habits, to secure the possession of
some one of its lovely flowers. The concentrating

of a great number of young gentlemen for a permanent
residence in one spot, without a suitable proportion
of the gentler sex to enliven and relieve the
rougher shades of such an assemblage, must produce
a state of society, varying essentially from that
in communities where the division is more equal.
Hotels, or offices of professional business must be
their residences—their leisure hours must be spent
in lounging at each other's rooms like college students,
(to whose mode of life their's is not dissimilar,)
or in the public rooms of the hotels, cafés, or gambling
houses. Habits difficult to eradicate are contracted,
of dark and fatal consequences to many;
and a rude, cavalier bearing is thereby imperceptibly
acquired, more congenial with the wild, free spirit
of the middle ages, than the refinement of modern
times. The bold and rugged outlines natural to the
sterner character of man, can only be softened by
that refining influence which the cultivated female
mind irresistibly exerts upon society. Wherever
woman—
has exercised this gentle sway, the ruder attributes
of man have been subdued and blended with the
soft and lovely virtues so eminently her own. Second
to Christianity, of which it is a striking effect,
the exalted rank to which man has elevated woman,
from that degrading and tyrannical subjugation to
which she has in Pagan nations, in all ages, from the
pride and ignorance of her soi disant “lords,” been
subjected, has contributed more to the mental and
personal refinement, dignity and moral excellence of
men, than any other agency that has operated with a
moral tendency directly upon the human mind. To
the absence of this purifying influence, is to be attributed
in a very great degree, that loose, immoral,
and reckless state of society, peculiar to all border
settlements and new towns, originating generally
from communities of men. In such places that
mysterious, yet indisputable power, exercised by the
other sex upon society, is unknown; and men,
throwing the reins upon the necks of their passions,
plunge into vice and dissipation, unchecked and unrestrained.
In such a state the duello had its origin—
that blessed relic of that blessed age, when our thick-skulled
ancestors broke each other's heads with mace
and battle axe, for “faire ladye's love,” or mere pleasant
pastime—and a similar state of things will always
preserve and encourage it. Hence the prevalence
of this practice in the newly settled south and
west, where the healthful restraint of female society
has been till within a few years unknown. But as
communities gain refinement through its influence,
this mode of “healing honour's wounds,” so unwise,
unsatisfactory and sinful, gradually becomes
less and less popular—till finally it is but a “theme
of the past.” To this state of disuse and oblivion
it is rapidly advancing in this portion of the south-west,
which, according to the theory before advanced,
is an indication of the growing refinement,
and moral and intellectual improvement of the community.
Natchez has been, you are well aware,
celebrated for the frequency and sanguinary character
of its single combats; and this reputation it has
once justly merited. Till within a few years, duels
were alarmingly frequent. But more recently
public opinion has changed, and the practice is now
almost abandoned. The society has emerged from
its peculiar bachelor cast, to that social and refined
character, which constitutes the charm of well organized
and cultivated communities. But a short
time since, there were not three married men to
ten unmarried. The latter predominating, gave the
tone to society, which was, as I have before observed,
that of a university, so far as habits and
manners were concerned. And the resemblance
was still greater, as a large majority of the young
men were graduates of northern seminaries, or well
informed young merchants. The social or domestic
circle, so dear to every New-Englander, in which
he delights to mingle wherever he reposes after his
wanderings, was neglected or unvalued; and the
young ladies, of whom there was found here and
there one, (for their appearance in this desert of men
was with the unfrequency of “Angel's visits,”) were
compelled to pine neglected, and

Such was the state of society here formerly, varied
only, at long intervals, by a public ball at some
one of the hotels, got up to kill ennui, a plant which,
in such a soil, flourishes vigorously. But now “a
change has come o'er the spirit of the town.” A refined,
intellectual, and highly educated class of females,
both exotic and natural plants, enrich and
diversify the moral features of the former lonely

and monotonous scene: and as the vine entwining
around the oak relieves with lines of grace and
beauty its harsh, rugged outlines, so woman here,
as every where, has assumed her brilliant sceptre,
waved it over the heterogeneous mass, and “bidden
it to live.”

The society of Natchez, now, is not surpassed by
any in America. Originally, and therein differing
from most western cities, composed of intelligent
and well-educated young men, assembled from every
Atlantic state, but principally from New-England
and Virginia, it has advanced in a degree proportionate
to its native powers. English and Irish
gentlemen of family and fortune have here sought
and found a home—while the gentilhomme of sunny
France, and the dark-browed don of “old Castile,”
dwell upon the green hills that recede gently
undulating from the city; or find, in their vallies,
a stranger's unmarbled and unhonoured grave.

The citizens of Natchez are, however, so inseparably
connected with the neighbouring planters,
that these last are necessarily included in the general
term “society of Natchez.” The two bodies
united may successfully challenge any other community
to produce a more intelligent, wealthy, and,
I may say, aristocratic whole. But I do not much
like the term applied to Americans; though no
other word will express so clearly that refinement
and elegance to which I allude, and which everywhere
indicate the opulence and high breeding of
their possessors. This is not so manifest, however,
in the external appearance of their dwellings, as it

is in their mode or style of living. To this their
houses, especially the residences of those who have
made their wealth, and who yet occupy the same
cabins, but little improved, which they originally
erected, present a sad contrast. Many of the wealthiest
planters are lodged wretchedly; a splendid
sideboard not unfrequently concealing a white-washed
beam—a gorgeous Brussels carpet laid over
a rough-planked floor—while uncouth rafters, in
ludicrous contrast to the splendour they look down
upon, stretch in coarse relief across the ceiling.—
These discrepancies, however, always characteristic
of a new country, are rapidly disappearing; and
another generation will be lodged, if not like princes,
at least, like independent American gentlemen.
—Many of these combinations of the old and new
systems still exist, however, of a highly grotesque
nature; some of the most characteristic of which I
may mention more particularly hereafter.

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.

30. XXX.

After a long voyage, the sound of a Sabbath
bell, borne over the waves from a white tower, far
inland among the green hills of my native land,
awed, like a voice from heaven, every spirit on
board of our ship, from the commander to the
rudest mariner, striking a chord long untouched in
many hearts, and awakening associations of innocence
and childhood, of home and heaven. As
one after another, each clear-toned peal rolled solemnly
over the sea, every footfall was involuntarily
hushed, the half uttered jest or oath was arrested on
the tongue—the turbulent spirit was quieted and
subdued—every rough weather-beaten visage was
softened, and for the remainder of that day—long,
long after its dying notes had floated like spiritual
music over our ship, and died away in the distant
“fields of the ocean,”—each one on board felt himself
a better man.

Sensations nearly allied to these were awakened

in my breast, as I stood upon the cliff, the Sabbath
morning preceding the date of my last letter, contrasting
the calm rich beauty of nature, with the
dark scenes of vice, misery and impiety beneath me,
by the sudden pealing of the church bell, ringing
out its loud melody over the city, awakening the
slumbering echoes from
and calling man to the worship of his Maker. My
thoughts, by a natural association, went backward
many a long year, and dwelt upon a sweet sequestered
valley, far away among the northern hills,
with its chaste temple, whose snow-white slender
spire, like the finger of undying hope, pointed man
to his home in heaven, where, in early boyhood,
we were first taught to worship the Great Being
who made us; to the venerable figure of that silver-headed
man of God, whose eloquence, at one time
sublime, and full of majesty and power, would
strike his hearers with holy dread—at another, soft,
persuasive, and artless as the language of a child,
diffuse a holy devotion throughout their bosoms, or
melt them into tears; whose audience listened with
their hearts, rather than with their ears—so masterly
was the intellect, made God-like by religion,
which could ring what changes it would, upon the
susceptible chords of human sensibility. My reverie
of the past, however, was soon interrupted by
the rattling of carriages, as they rolled over the noble
esplanade between me and the city, from the
roads which extend north and south along the banks
of the river, on their way to church. I prepared to
follow their example. From my position I could
look into one of the principal streets of the town,
now rapidly filling with well-dressed people, numerous
private equipages, and horsemen in great
numbers. I soon fell in with the living current,
and in a few minutes arrived at the Presbyterian
church, situated in the centre and highest part of
the city. The approach was literally blockaded by
carriages from the suburbs and neighbouring plantations.

The congregation was large, attentive, and so far
as I could judge, as exteriorly fashionable as in
Boston or New-York. The interior of the building
is plain, and vaulted. A handsome pulpit stands
opposite the entrance, over which is a gallery for
the coloured people. The pulpit is deficient in a
sounding-board, that admirable contrivance for condensing
the voice, which, in an apartment of vast
dimensions, has too great expansion. There was
neither organ nor any other instrumental aid to the
church music, which, though exclusively vocal, was
uncommonly fine—the clergyman himself leading.
But the effect was much lessened by the want of
that volume and power, which it would gain, were
the singers, who are now dispersed over the house
in their respective pews, collected into a choir, and
placed in the gallery, as is generally customary
elsewhere. The discourse was unexceptionable;
possessing more originality than is usually found at
the present day in compositions of that nature, embellished
with considerable beauties of language,

and pronounced in a forcible, unimpassioned, yet
impressive style of oratory, which I should like to
see more adopted in the sacred desk, as eminently
fitter for the solemnity of the house of God, than
that haranguing declamatory style of headlong eloquence
so often displayed in the pulpit.

As I delayed for a minute under the portico of
the church, after the services were over, watching,
with a stranger's eye, the members of the congregation
as they issued from the church and filed off
through the several streets to their residences, I felt
that I had not, since leaving New-England, beheld
a scene which reminded me so forcibly and pleasantly
of home. I have, in a former letter, alluded
to the prevalence of the Presbyterian church government
in Mississippi, to the preclusion of Congregationalists.
There is not a resident minister of
the latter denomination in this state or in Louisiana.
There are only about twenty-four Presbyterian
churches in the state, comprising between eight
and nine hundred communicants in all; a less number
than now composes the late Dr. Payson's
church in Portland. The church in Natchez includes
about one hundred members, which is the
largest number in any one church in the whole
state, with two exceptions; one of which is, a
Scotch community, about fifty miles in the country
east from this city; most of whom, or their fathers
before them, emigrating from the land of primitive
manners, still retain their national characteristics of
simplicity and piety; and that stern, unyielding
spirit and Christian devotedness which distinguished

the Scottish Presbyterians of “olden time,” of
whom, though planted in the bosom of an American
forest, they are worthy and original representatives.
They are a plain, moderately independent, farming
community, and sincerely and rigidly devoted to
the duties of Christian worship. They have an
aged pastor over them, to whom they are devotedly
attached; and who is to them, who regard him
with the affection of children, indeed a “shepherd
and father in Israel.” They live like a little band
of exiled Waldenses, unsophisticated in their manners,
pure and severe in their religion. The Gaelic
is spoken among them, and also by many of the
other settlers in that portion of the state, who reside
in the vicinity of Pearl river; by them also the old
popular Gaelic songs are sung, in their original
purity and spirit. In the vicinity of this settlement
the Presbyterians annually hold a camp meeting.
A Presbyterian camp meeting is at least a novelty
at the north.

The majority of the ministers of this state are
graduates of Princeton college. They form, as do
the educated clergy every where, a class of well-informed,
intelligent men; though too few in number,
and generally placed over congregations too
much scattered throughout a large and thinly inhabited
extent of country, to command or exercise that
peculiar influence upon society which, in more
densely populated countries, is so universally possessed
by them; and whose elevating, purifying,
and moral effect is so readily acknowledged by all
classes. So long as this state of society, now peculiar

to the south, continues, ministerial influence,
in its unadulterated and evangelical power, can hold
but limited sway over the heart of the community.
Divines are too often looked upon, not as
representatives of the Saviour, but merely as intelligent,
clever gentlemen, popular and esteemed as
they make themselves more or less agreeable and
social. A distinguished clergyman in England—
where, as you know, the surplice is too often assumed,
without any other qualification for the sacred
office than the talisman “interest,” was termed
“a clever, noble fellow,” by the neighbouring gentry,
for his skill in hunting, and the other lordly
sports of English country gentlemen. The manners,
customs, amusements, and way of life, of the
native born, wealthy, educated planters, have struck
me as very similar to those of English gentlemen of
wealth and leisure: and it is certain that, generally,
many of them would be very apt, like them, to appreciate
a clergyman as much for his social qualifications,
as for those naturally associated with, and
with which he is invested by, his clerical honours.

Here, the Presbyterian clergy, unlike those in
the northern states, are generally wealthy. With
but a few exceptions, they have, after a short residence
in this country, become planters, some of
whom have noble annual incomes. After retiring
to their plantations they do not—and I mention it
with pleasure—altogether resign their ministerial
duties. Some of them preach in destitute churches,
from time to time; while others regularly officiate
to congregations of their own slaves. One of these

clerical planters has erected a neat church upon his
plantation, in which he officiates to an assembly of
his slaves three Sabbaths in every month; where
the worship is conducted with the same regularity,
decorum, and dignity, as in other congregations.
Some leave the entire management of their estates
to overseers, and regularly perform their official duties.
But it is difficult for a clergyman to own a
rich plantation, without becoming a thorough-going
cotton planter. The occupation, with all its ramifications,
if not incompatible with his holy office,
must necessarily be more or less injurious to the
individual, and present a broad target for the shafts
of the confessed worshipper of Mammon.

The bugbear reputation of this country for mortality,
has long deterred young ministers from filling
the places occasionally deserted by their former
occupants; many of whom, if they do not resign
their office, pass the long summers at the north.—
But as no country can well be healthier than this
has been, for the last six or seven years, this “health
plea” can no longer be offered as an excuse. Indeed,
so singularly healthy is this portion of the
south-west, that were I required to give it a name,
with reference to some one striking characteristic,
I should at once call it “Buenos Ayres.”[2] Such,
briefly, is the state and condition of the Presbyterian
church in this state; which, aside from its form
of government, in its formula of faith, and in the

rank in society of its members, is equivalent to the
Congregational churches in the north.

The peculiar structure of southern society is neither
prepared for, nor will it admit of, the exercise
of that ecclesiastical influence to which I have above
alluded. It is composed, primarily, of wealthy individuals,
living aloof from each other on their respective
plantations, isolated like feudal chieftains,
who, of old, with the spirit of ascetics, frowned defiance
at each other, from their castellated rocks:
though, do not understand me that planters partake
of their belligerent spirit. On the contrary, the reverse
is most true of them—for “hospitality” and
“southern planter” are synonymous terms. Though
there are not more hospitable men in the world than
southern gentlemen—though no men can render
their houses more agreeable to the stranger—though
none are more fascinating in their manners, or more
generous in heart—yet they are deficient in that
social, domestic feeling, which is the life, excellence,
and charm of New-England society, which
renders it so dear to every wanderer's heart, and
casts around the affections a spell that no power
but death can injure or destroy.

The Episcopalian church comprises an infinitely
smaller body of members: the few who are of this
church, however, are generally opulent planters,
merchants, and professional men, with their families.
There is but one church of this denomination
in the state, which is in this city. I attended worship
here the last Sabbath. The house was fashionably

but thinly filled. The interior of the
house is plain, though relieved, near the termination
of the southern aisle, by a black marble slab, fixed
in the wall, to the memory of the Rev. Dr. Porter,
late pastor of the church. The pulpit, which is a
miniature forum, is chaste and elegant, and its drapery
rich and tastefully arranged. The choir was
full and powerful, whose effect was increased by
a fine-toned organ, the only one in the state; but
whose rich and striking melody must be a powerful
pleader, to the ears of amateurs of good church
music, for their more general introduction. The
eloquence of the speaker was engaging, mild, and
gentlemanly. The latter term is very expressive
of his manner, and conciliating pulpit address.—
Though not striking as an orator, his thoughts were
just and pertinent. He

Contrary to the prevalent opinion at the north,
Roman Catholic influence in this state is entirely
unknown. Formerly there was a Romish church
in this city, ill endowed and seldom supplied with
an officiating priest. This was accidentally destroyed
by fire a year or two since; and there is
now no church of that denomination in the state,
and hardly a sufficient number of Catholics to organize
one, did they possess either the spirit or inclination.
Such is the peculiar turn of mind of
Mississippians, that they never can be catholicised.

The contiguity of this state to Louisiana, with its
French-Roman population, has probably given rise
to the opinion above stated, which is as erroneous
and unfounded in fact, as is one also very current
among northerners, and originating from the same
local relation. Obtaining their knowledge of this,
among other countries, from Morse's or Cumming's
Geography, or other imperfect sources, they have
the impression that the French and Spanish languages
are much spoken here; whereas they are
probably less used here, in mere colloquial intercourse,
than in many of the Atlantic states. Maine
adjoins Canada; yet who gives Major Downing's
fellow-countrymen the credit of speaking French
in their daily transactions? It is true that many
planters and citizens of Mississippi send their sons
to the Catholic seminary at St. Louis, or Bardstown,
in Kentucky, and their daughters to the French
convents in Louisiana; but this cannot be advanced
as any proof of the prevalence of the religion of
Rome here, as the same thing is done in New-England,
where stand the very pillars of the orthodox
faith; and it is done much less frequently now than
in former years. The prevailing Christian denomination,
as I have before remarked, is that of the
Methodists. The excess of their numbers over that
of the two other denominations, Presbyterians and
Episcopalians, is very great; but having no table
of ecclesiastical statistics by me, to which I can
refer for greater accuracy, I cannot state correctly
the proportions which they bear to each other.—
This denomination embraces all ranks of society,
including many of the affluent and a majority of the
merely independent planters, throughout the state.
—Some of the assemblages here, in the Methodist
churches, would remind the stranger rather of a
fashionable New-York audience, than a congregation
of plain people, soberly arrayed, such as he is
accustomed to behold in a Methodist church in
New-England. Indeed, the Methodists here are
generally a widely different class of people from
those which compose a northern congregation of the
same denomination.

I will conclude my remarks upon the Sabbath,
as observed in this city, which was the subject of
my last letter, and from which I have so long digressed,
by an allusion to a precautionary and wise
municipal regulation for freeing the city, before
sun-set on the Sabbath, of its army of holiday negroes.
At the hour of four the Court-house bell rings
out an alarum, long and loud, warning all strange
slaves to leave the city. Then commences a ludicrous
scene of hurrying and scampering, from the
four corners of the town; for wo be to the unlucky
straggler, who is found after a limited period within
the forbidden bounds! The penalty of forty stripes,
save one, is speedily inflicted, by way of a lesson
in the science of discretion. For a lesson, thus administered,
few have little relish; and the subjects
thereof, with their heads—the negro's omnibus—
loaded with their little articles—a pound of this and
a pound of that—are, all and singular, soon seen

following their noses, with all commendable speed,
along the diverging highways, keeping quick time
to the tune of “over the hills and far away,” to their
respective plantations.

31. XXXI.

In a former letter I have alluded to the old cemetery
in the centre of this city, strewed with dismantled
tombs, monuments and fragments of grave-stones,
fenceless and shadeless; a play-ground for
the young academicians, from the adjacent seminary,
and a common for the epicurean cow, it stands
covering the sides and summit of a pleasantly
rounded hill, a monument and a testimony of the
characteristic negligence and indifference of Americans
for the repositories of their dead.

A few evenings since, as the sun was sinking
beneath the level horizon, which was delineated by
a line of green foliage, accurately traced along the
impurpled western sky, I ascended the slight eminence,
upon whose verdant bosom reposes this

“city of the dead.” Every step through this repository
of human ashes, over sunken graves and
shattered marble, once reared by the hand of affection
or ostentation, forcibly recalled the littleness
and vanity of man. The dead slumbered beneath
my feet in a marble sleep—cold, silent, and forgotten!
From the streets of the city, which on every
side closed in this future resting place of its living,
the clear laugh, and ringing shout of troops of merry
children at their sports, the playful prattle of a
group of loitering school girls, the rattling of whirling
carriages, from whose windows glanced bright
and happy faces, the clattering of horses, the loud
conversation of their riders, the tramp of pedestrians
along the brick trottoirs, the monotonous song of
the carman, the prolonged call of the teamster, and
the sharp reiterated ringing of his long whip, all
mingled confusedly, struck harshly in the clear
evening air upon the ear, breaking the silence that
should repose over such a scene, and dissipating at
once those reflections, which a ramble among the
lonely dwellings of the dead is calculated to engender.
As I lingered upon the hill, the gradually
deepening shadows of evening fell over the town,
and subsiding with the day, these sounds, by no
means a “concord of enchanting ones,” ceased one
after the other, and the subdued hum of a reposing
city floated over the spot, a strange requiem for
its sepultured and unconscious inhabitants. The
full moon now rose above the tops of the majestic
forest trees, which tower along the eastern suburbs
of the city, and poured a flood of mellow light from
a southern sky, upon the mouldering ruins encircling
the brow of the solitary hill, and glanced brightly
upon the roof and towers of the now nearly silent
city, which reflected her soft radiance with the
mild lustre of polished silver. As I stood contemplating
the scene, and yielding to its associations,
my attention was drawn to a couple of men ascending
the hill from the street. As they approached
the crest of the hill, I observed that one of them
was equipped with a spade and mattock, and that
the other—whose black face glistened in the moonlight
like japan, betraying him as a son of Afric—
had his head surmounted by a small box. “Resurrectionists,”
thought I. They stopped not far from
me, and the black setting down his box, immediately
commenced digging. After observing them
for a few minutes I advanced to the spot, and on an
inquiry learned that they were disinterring the remains
of a gentleman, and those of several members
of his family, who had lain buried there for
more than thirty years, for the purpose of removing
them for re-interment in the new burying-ground
north of the town. This cemetery is now wholly
disused, and a great number of the dead have been
taken up and removed to the new one, but the
greater portion still rest, where they were first laid,
fresh from among the living; for in all probability
the majority who lie there, have neither existing
name or friends to preserve their bones from desecration.
I was gratified to see that there existed,
after so long a period, some remaining affection for
the dead displayed in the scene before me. But it
is an isolated instance, and does not palliate the
neglect which is manifested toward the “unknown,
unhonoured, and forgotten,” whose bones still moulder
there, to be “levelled over,” when the increase
of the city shall compel the living to construct
their habitations over those of the dead. As I
watched the progress of exhumation, as the grave
was emptied by the brawny arms of the muscular
slave, of load after load of the dark loam, my eye
was attracted by a white object glistening upon the
thrown-up heap by the side of the grave. I raised
it from the damp soil—it was a finger-bone! The
next shovel full glittered with the slender, brittle
fragments of what once was man! Not a trace of
the coffin remained, or of the snow-white, scolloped
shroud. The black now threw aside his spade, and
stooping down into the grave, lifted to his companion
a round, glaring, white shell, which was once
the temple of the immortal intellect—the tenement
of mind! A few corroded bones and the half-decayed
skull—all that remained of the “human form
divine”—were hastily heaped into the box, the
grave was refilled, and the desecrators of the repose
of the dead departed, as they came, soon to forget
the solemn lesson, which their transient occupation
may have taught them. As I turned away from the
humiliating scene I had just beheld, with a melancholy
heart, and a gloom of sorrow drawn over my
feelings, I could not but forcibly recall the words of
the preacher—“that which befalleth the sons of
men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth
them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they
have all one breath; so that man hath no pre-eminence
above the beast; for all is vanity. All go
unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to
dust again.”

The Spanish and Roman Catholic custom of
sending printed mourning cards to the relatives and
friends of the deceased, is adopted in this country.
On the death of an individual these tickets are immediately
issued and sent throughout the city and
neighbourhood—left indiscriminately, by the carriers,
with friends and strangers, at private houses or
in hotels and bar-rooms. While standing yesterday
at the door of the hotel, one of these cards was
placed in my hands by a mulatto slave, who, with
his hands full of them, was distributing them about
the town. It was a beautifully watered sheet, surrounded
with a deep mourning body; in the centre
of which were two or three lines of invitation, “to
assist, (aider, as the French say) in the funeral
ceremony;” and worded like those often seen inserted
in the daily papers of a large city. The use
of these cards is an established custom, and seldom
if ever deviated from. It is at least a feeling one,
and not unworthy of general imitation.

In company with some gentlemen from the hotel,
I attended this funeral, actuated wholly by a stranger's
curiosity; for, as well as others of the party,
I was a total stranger to the family of the deceased,
who resided a few miles in the country. Our cavalcade
(for we were all mounted upon those long-tailed,
ambling ponies, to which southerners are so
partial) consisted of six—two Yankees, three southerners,

and an Englishman. The first rode, as
most Yankees do, awkwardly; for Yankees, at
home, are gig-drivers, not horsemen. Giving too
much heed to the poising of their very erect bodies,
they left their legs to take care of themselves; but
when their attention was drawn, for a moment, to
these members, they would rock upon their saddles,
the very images of “tottering equilibriums,” as
Capt. Hall would term them; and fortunate were
they in recovering their nearly forfeited seats again.
—These horses, which advance by first lifting two
legs on one side and then changing to the other, do
not suit brother Jonathan's notions of a riding horse.
So he applies whip and spur, and breaks away into
a long gallop. Then indeed he is in his element.
An Arabian, on being asked what was the best seat
in the world, replied, “The back of a fleet courser.”
If the querist had applied to Jonathan, he would
have said, “A galloping nag.” Whenever you see
a stranger galloping at the south, you will seldom
err in guessing him to be a Yankee. Our English
friend rode cockney fashion; that is, not much unlike
a clothes-pin, or a pair of compasses, astride a
line. Stiff and erect as a Hungarian hussar, he curvetted
along the smooth roads, till he had worked
his slight-framed, spirited animal into a fever of excitement,
which flung the foam over his rider, as he
tossed his head, swelled his curved neck, and
champed his bit in rage, in vain efforts to spring
away, free from his thraldom; but the rider fingered
the slight bridle-rein with the ease and skill of
a master. The southerners of the party rode like
all southerners, admirably, inimitably. They appeared
as much at home and at case in their saddles,
as in a well-stuffed arm-chair after dining generously.
The Mississippian sits his horse gracefully,
yet not, as the riding-master would say, scientifically.
He never seems to think of himself, or
the position of his limbs. They yield, as does his
whole body, pliantly and naturally to the motions of
the animal beneath him, with which his own harmonize
so perfectly and with such flexibility, that
there seems to be but one principle actuating both.
He glides easily along upon his pacer, with the bridle
thrown upon its neck, or over the high pummel
of his handsome Spanish saddle; talking as unconcernedly
with his companions, as though lounging,
arm in arm with them, along the streets. He seldom
goes out of a pace. If he is in haste, he only paces
the faster. Of every variety of gaited animals which
I have seen, the Mississippian pacer is the most
desirable. I shall, however, have occasion to allude
hereafter to southern equestrianism more particularly,
and will return from my digression to the
funeral.

We arrived at the entrance gate of the plantation
after a delightful ride of half an hour, along a fine
though dusty road, (for with this impalpable soil it
is either paste or powder) bordered with noble forests
of oak, black gum, the hoary-coated sycamore,
and the rich-leaved, evergreen magnolia, among and
around which the grape vine entwined and hung in
graceful festoons. Through natural vistas in the
wood occasional glimpses could be obtained of white

villas, not unfrequently large and elegant, half hidden
in the centre of plantations, or among the thick
woods which crowned the swelling hills on every
side. The road was, like most of the roads here, a
succession of gentle ascents and descents, being
laid out so as to intersect transversely parallel ridges,
themselves composed of isolated hills, gently
blending and linking into each other. The country
was luxuriant, undulating, and picturesque. The
general character of the scenery struck me as remarkably
English. The resemblance would be still
more striking, did not the taste or convenience of
the planters lead them to select the site of their
dwellings in the centre of their plantations, or in
the depths of their forests, without any reference to
the public road, (from which they are most universally
concealed) which is always the northern farmer's
guide in such a case, thereby giving a solitary
character to the road scenery, and detracting much
from the general beauty of the country.

The residence to which we were riding was invisible
from the road. We passed through a large
gate-way, the gate of which, one of our Yankee
brethren, who had galloped forward, tried in vain to
open, nearly tumbling from his horse in the atttempt,
but which one of our southern friends paced up to,
and scarcely checking his horse, opened with the
merest effort in the world. Winding our way rapidly
along a circuitous carriage-way, at one time
threading the mazes of the forest, at another, coursing
through a cotton field, whitened as though snow
had fallen in large flakes and thickly sprinkled its

green surface—now following the pebbly bed of a
deep bayou, with overhanging, precipitous banks,
and now skirting the borders of some brawling rivulet,
we arrived in sight of the “house of mourning.”
The dwelling, like most in Mississippi, was a long,
wooden, cottage-like edifice, with a long piazza, or
gallery, projecting from the roof, and extending along
the front and rear of the building. This gallery is
in all country-houses, in the summer, the lounging
room, reception room, promenade and dining room.
The kitchen, “gin,” stables, out-houses, and negro-quarters,
extended some distance in the rear, the
whole forming quite a village—but more African
than American in its features. We were rather
too late, as the funeral procession was already proceeding
to the grave-yard, which was, as on most
plantations, a secluded spot not far from the dwelling,
set apart as a family burying-ground. I was
struck with the appearance of the procession. Six
mounted gentlemen in black, preceded the hearse
as bearers. A broad band of white cambric encircled
their hats, and streamed away behind in two
pennons nearly a yard in length. A broad white
sash of similar materials was passed over the right
shoulder, from which a pennon of black ribbon fluttered,
and was knotted under the left side, while
the ends were allowed to hang nearly to the feet.
The hearse was a huge black chest, opening at the
end for the admission of the coffin, which, as I discovered
at the grave, was richly covered with black
silk velvet, and studded with a border of gilt nails.
Its top was not horizontal, as you are accustomed to
see them, but raised in the middle like a roof. The
hearse was followed by several private carriages,
gigs, of which a northern procession would consist,
being not much used in this country. An irregular
procession, or rather crowd of slaves in the rear of
all, followed with sorrowful countenances the remains
of their master, to his last, long home.

When the heavy clods rattled upon the hollow
sounding coffin, these poor wretches, who had anxiously
crowded around the grave, burst into one
simultaneous flood of tears, mingled with expressions
of regret, sorrow and affection. A group of
slaves lamenting over the grave of their master!
Will not our sceptical countrymen regard this as
an anomaly in philanthropy? Half a dozen slaves
then shovelled for a few moments from the fresh
pile of earth upon the coffin, and a mound soon rose,
where, but a few moments before, yawned a grave!
An appropriate prayer was offered over the dead,
and the procession dispersed at the burial-place.
Such is a plantation burial! In this manner are
consigned to the narrow house, four fifths of the
population of this state. The city and town cemeteries
are but little resorted to, for a large proportion
of those who breathe their last in town, unless
they are friendless, or strangers, are borne to some
solitary family burial-place in the country for sepulture:
there are few families in the towns of Mississippi
who have not relatives residing on plantations
in the country.

The grave-yard of Natchez, situated as I have
formerly observed, a little less than a mile north

from the town, on the river road, covers an irregular
surface among several small wooded hills, and is
surrounded by cotton fields, from which it has been
redeemed for its present use. It evinces neither
beauty of location, nor taste in the arrangement of
its tombs, of which there are but two or three remarkable
for elegance or neatness. Its avenues
are overgrown with the rank, luxuriant grass, peculiar
to grave-yards, varied only here and there by
clusters of thorns and briars. The wild and naked
features of the spot are occasionally relieved by a
shade tree planted by some kindly hand over the
grave of a friend; but this occasional testimony of
respect will not redeem the cemetery from that
negligence and want of taste in this matter with
which Americans have been, with too much justice,
universally charged by foreigners. In observing
the names upon the various head-stones, I noticed
that the majority of those who slept beneath, were
strangers, mostly from New-England, but many
from Europe. Many of them were young. It is
thus that the scourge of the south has ever reaped
rich, teeming harvests from the north. But those
days of terror, it is to be hoped, are for ever past,
and that henceforth health will smile over the green
hills of this pleasant land, which pestilence has so
long blasted with her frowns.

32. XXXII.

There are many causes, both moral and physical,
which concur to render the inhabitants of the
south dissimilar to those of the north. Some of
these may be traced to climate, more to education
and local relations, and yet more to that peculiar
state of things which necessarily prevails in a planting
country and all newly organized states. The
difference is clearly distinguishable through all its
grades and ramifications, and so strongly marked as
to stamp the southern character with traits sufficiently
distinctive to be dignified with the term national.

A plantation well stocked with hands, is the ne
plus ultra of every man's ambition who resides at
the south. Young men who come to this country,
“to make money,” soon catch the mania, and nothing
less than a broad plantation, waving with the
snow white cotton bolls, can fill their mental vision,
as they anticipate by a few years in their dreams of
the future, the result of their plans and labours.

Hence, the great number of planters and the few
professional men of long or eminent standing in
their several professions. In such a state of things
no men grow old or gray in their profession if at
all successful. As soon as the young lawyer acquires
sufficient to purchase a few hundred acres of
the rich alluvial lands, and a few slaves, he quits
his profession at once, though perhaps just rising
into eminence, and turns cotton planter. The bar
at Natchez is composed, with but few exceptions,
entirely of young men. Ten years hence, probably
not four out of five of these, if living, will remain in
their profession. To the prevalence of this custom
of retiring so early from the bar, and not to want of
talent, is to be attributed its deficiency of distinguished
names. There is much talent now concentrated
at this bar, and throughout the state. But
its possessors are young men; and this mania for
planting will soon deprive the state of any benefit
from it in a professional point of view. As the lawyers
are young, the judges cannot of course be
much stricken in years. The northerner, naturally
associates with the title of “Judge,” a venerable,
dignified personage, with locks of snow, a suit of
sober black, and powdered queue, shoe-buckles, and
black silk stockings. Judge my surprise at hearing
at the public table a few days since, a young gentleman,
apparently not more than four or five and
twenty, addressed as “judge!” I at first thought it
applied as a mere “soubriquet,” till subsequently
assured that he was really on the bench.

Physicians make money much more rapidly than

lawyers, and sooner retire from practice and assume
the planter. They, however, retain their
titles, so that medico-planters are now numerous,
far out-numbering the regular practitioners, who
have not yet climbed high enough up the wall to
leap down into a cotton field on the other side.
Ministers, who constitute the third item of the diploma'd
triad, are not free from the universal mania,
and as writing sermons is not coining money,
the plantations are like the vocative in Latin pronouns.
They, however, by observing the command
in Gen. ix. 1, contrive ultimately to reach the same
goal. The merchant moves onward floundering
through invoices, ledgers, packages, and boxes.
The gin-wright and overseer, also have an eye upon
this Ultima Thule, while the more wealthy mechanics
begin to form visions of cotton fields, and talk
knowingly upon the “staple.” Even editors have
an eye that way!

Cotton and negroes are the constant theme—the
ever harped upon, never worn out subject of conversation
among all classes. But a small portion of
the broad rich lands of this thriving state is yet appropriated.
Not till every acre is purchased and
cultivated—not till Mississippi becomes one vast
cotton field, will this mania, which has entered into
the very marrow, bone and sinew of a Mississippian's
system, pass away. And not then, till the
lands become exhausted and wholly unfit for farther
cultivation. The rich loam which forms the upland
soil of this state is of a very slight depth—and
after a few years is worn away by constant culture

and the action of the winds and rain. The fields
are then “thrown out” as useless. Every plough-furrow
becomes the bed of a rivulet after heavy
rains—these uniting are increased into torrents, before
which the impalpable soil dissolves like ice
under a summer's sun. By degrees, acre after
acre, of what was a few years previous beautifully
undulating ground, waving with the dark green,
snow-crested cotton, presents a wild scene of frightful
precipices, and yawning chasms, which are increased
in depth and destructively enlarged after
every rain. There are many thousand acres within
twenty miles of the city of Natchez, being the earliest
cultivated portions of the country, which are
now lying in this condition, presenting an appearance
of wild desolation, and not unfrequently, of
sublimity. This peculiar feature of the country
intrudes itself into every rural prospect, painfully
marring the loveliest country that ever came from
the hand of nature. Natchez itself is nearly isolated
by a deep ravine, which forms a natural moat
around the town. It has been formed by “washing,”
and though serpentine and irregular in its
depth, it is cut with the accuracy of a canal. It is
spanned by bridges along the several roads that
issue from the town.

From the loose and friable nature of this soil,
which renders it so liable to “wash,” as is the expressive
technical term here, the south-west portion
of this state must within a century become
waste, barren, and wild, unless peradventure, some
inventing Yankee, or other patentee may devise a

way of remedying the evil and making the wilderness
to “blossom like the rose.” A thick bluish
green grass, termed Bermuda grass, is used with
great success to check the progress of a wash when
it has first commenced.[3] It is very tenacious of the
soil, takes firm and wide root, grows and spreads
rapidly, and soon forms a compact matted surface,
which effectually checks any farther increase of the
ravines, or “bayous,” as these deep chasms are
usually termed; though bayou in its original signification
is applied to creeks, and deep glens,
with or without running water.

When this state was first settled, tobacco was
exclusively cultivated as the grand staple. But this
plant was found to be a great exhauster of the soil;
cotton rapidly superseded its culture, and it was
shortly banished from the state, and found a home
in Tennessee, where it is at present extensively
cultivated. It has not for many years been cultivated
here. Planters have no room for any thing
but their cotton, and corn, on their plantations, and
scarcely are they willing to make room even for the
latter, as they buy a great part of their corn, annually,
from the Kentucky and Indiana flat boats at
the “Landing.”

Among northerners, southern planters are reputed
wealthy. This idea is not far from correct
—as a class they are so; perhaps more so than any
other body of men in America. Like our Yankee
farmers they are tillers of the soil. “But why”
you may ask, “do they who are engaged in the same
pursuits as the New-England farmer, so infinitely
surpass him in the reward of his labours?” The
northern farmer cannot at the most make more than
three per cent. on his farm. He labours himself, or
pays for labour. He must do the first or he cannot
live. If he does the latter, he can make nothing.
If by hard labour and frugal economy, the common
independent Yankee farmer, such as the traveller
meets with any where in New-England, lays up
annually from four to seven hundred dollars, he is a
thriving man and “getting rich.” His daughters
are attractive, and his sons will have something
“handsome” to begin the world with. But the

southern farmer can make from fifteen to thirty
per cent. by his farm. He works on his plantation
a certain number of slaves, say thirty, which are to
him what the sinewy arms of the Yankee farmer are
to himself. Each slave ought to average from
seven to eight bales of cotton during the season,
especially on the new lands. An acre will generally
average from one to two bales. Each bale
averages four hundred pounds, at from twelve to
fifteen cents a pound. This may not be an exact
estimate, but it is not far from the true one. Deducting
two thousand and five hundred dollars for
the expenses of the plantation, there will remain the
net income of eleven thousand dollars. Now suppose
this plantation and slaves to have been purchased
on a credit, paying at the rate of six hundred
dollars apiece for his negroes, the planter
would be able to pay for nearly two-thirds of them
the first year. The second year, he would pay for
the remainder, and purchase ten or twelve more;
and the third year, if he had obtained his plantation
on a credit of that length of time, he would pay for
that also, and commence his fourth year with a
valuable plantation, and thirty-five or forty slaves,
all his own property, with an increased income for
the ensuing year of some thousands of dollars.
Henceforward, if prudent, he will rank as an opulent
planter. Success is not however always in proportion
to the outlay or expectations of the aspirant for
wealth. It is modified and varied by the wear and
tear, sickness and death, fluctuations of the market,
and many other ills to which all who adventure in
the great lottery of life are heirs. In the way above
alluded to, numerous plantations in this state have
been commenced, and thus the wealth of a great
number of the opulent planters of this region has
originated. Incomes of twenty thousand dollars are
common here. Several individuals possess incomes
of from forty to fifty thousand dollars, and live in a
style commensurate with their wealth. The amount
is generally expressed by the number of their negroes,
and the number of “bales” they make at a
crop. To know the number of either is to know
accurately their incomes. And as this is easily ascertained,
it is not difficult to form a prompt estimate
of individual wealth.

To sell cotton in order to buy negroes—to make
more cotton to buy more negroes, “ad infinitum,”
is the aim and direct tendency of all the operations
of the thorough-going cotton planter; his whole
soul is wrapped up in the pursuit. It is, apparently,
the principle by which he “lives, moves, and has
his being.” There are some who “work” three
and four hundred negroes, though the average number
is from thirty to one hundred. “This is all
very fine,” you say, “but the slaves!—there's the
rub.” True; but without slaves there could be no
planters, for whites will not and cannot work cotton
plantations, beneath a broiling southern sun.—
Without planters there could be no cotton; without
cotton no wealth. Without them Mississippi would
be a wilderness, and revert to the aboriginal possessors.
Annihilate them to-morrow, and this state
and every southern state might be bought for a song.

I am not advocating this system; but destroy it—
and the southern states become at once comparative
ciphers in the Union. Northerners, particularly
Yankees, are at first a little compunctious on the
subject of holding slaves. They soon, however, illustrate
the truth contained in the following lines,
but slightly changed from their original application.
With half-averted eyes they at first view slavery as

Many of the planters are northerners. When
they have conquered their prejudices, they become
thorough, driving planters, generally giving themselves
up to the pursuit more devotedly than the
regular-bred planter. Their treatment of their slaves
is also far more rigid. Northerners are entirely unaccustomed
to their habits, which are perfectly understood
and appreciated by southerners, who have
been familiar with Africans from childhood; whom
they have had for their nurses, play-fellows, and
“bearers,” and between whom and themselves a
reciprocal and very natural attachment exists, which,
on the gentleman's part, involuntarily extends to
the whole dingy race, exhibited in a kindly feeling
and condescending familiarity, for which he receives
gratitude in return. On the part of the slave, this
attachment is manifested by an affection and faithfulness
which only cease with life. Of this state
of feeling, which a southern life and education can
only give, the northerner knows nothing. Inexperience

leads him to hold the reins of government
over his novel subjects with an unsparing severity,
which the native ruler of these domestic colonies
finds wholly unnecessary. The slave always prefers
a southern master, because he knows that he will
be understood by him. His kindly feelings toward,
and sympathies with slaves, as such, are as honourable
to his heart as gratifying to the subjects of
them. He treats with suitable allowance those
peculiarities of their race, which the unpractised
northerner will construe into idleness, obstinacy,
laziness, revenge, or hatred. There is another
cause for their difference of treatment to their slaves.
The southerner, habituated to their presence, never
fears them, and laughs at the idea. It is the reverse
with the northerner: he fears them, and hopes
to intimidate them by severity.

The system of credit in this country is peculiar.
From new-year's to new-year's is the customary
extension of this accommodation, and the first of
January, as planters have then usually disposed of
their crops, is a season for a general settlement
throughout every branch of business. The planters
have their commission merchants in New-Orleans
and Natchez, who receive and ship their cotton for
them, and make advances, if required, upon succeeding
crops. Some planters export direct to Liverpool
and other ports, though generally they sell
or consign to the commission merchants in Natchez,
who turn cotton into gold so readily, that one verily
would be inclined to think that the philosopher's
stone might be concealed within the bales. A

planter often commences with nothing, or merely
an endorser—buys land and negroes, and, in the
strong phraseology of Crockett, “goes ahead.” In
a few years he becomes opulent. Others, however,
(as was the case with the old settlers especially)
and young men at the present time, with
little means, commence with a piece of wild land,
and five or six, or perhaps not more than two negroes—and
go on strengthening and increasing, adding
acre to acre, negro to negro, bale to bale, till
wealth crowns their labours. Many of the oldest
and wealthiest planters began in this manner, when
they had to dispute possession of the soil with the
Spaniard, the wild beast of the forest, or wilder Indian.
They are now reaping the rewards of their
youthful toil, in the possession of sons and daughters,
lands and influence, and all the luxuries and
enjoyments which wealth commands. Their sons,
more fortunate in their youth than their sires, receive,
from the paternal bounty, plantations and
negroes, and at once, without previous toil or care,
assume the condition of the refined and luxurious
planter. So you perceive that a Yankee farmer
and a southern planter are birds of a very different
feather.[4] Now in this sad, idolatrous world, where
Mammon is worshipped on millions of altars, the
swelling hills and noble forests of the south must
certainly be “where men ought to worship.” If
the satirical maxim, “man was made to make money,”
is true, of which there can be no question—
the mint of his operations lies most temptingly between
the “Father of waters” and the arrowy
Pearl. And men seem to feel the truth of it—or of
the maxim of Bacon, that “territory newly acquired
and not settled, is a matter of burthen rather than
of strength;” for they are spreading over it like a
cloud, and occupying the vast tracts called “the
Purchase,” recently obtained from the Indians, previous
to their removal to the west. The tide of
emigration is rapidly setting to the north and east
portions of the state. Planters, who have exhausted
their old lands in this vicinity, are settling and
removing to these new lands, which will soon become
the richest cotton growing part of Mississippi.
Parents do not now think of settling their children
on plantations near Natchez, but purchase for them
in the upper part of the state. Small towns, with
“mighty names,” plucked from the ruins of some
long since mouldered city of classic fame and memory,
are springing up here and there, like mushrooms,
amidst the affrighted forests. Sixteen new
counties have lately been created in this portion of
the state, where so recently the Indian tracked his
game and shrieked his war-whoop; and as an agricultural
state, the strength and sinew of Mississippi
must be hereafter concentrated in this fresher and
younger portion of her territory.

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.

34. XXXIV.

In America, where vegetation is on a scale of
magnificence commensurate with her continental
extent—it is remarkable that a taste for horticulture
should be so little cultivated. In the southern
United States, nature enamels with a richness of
colouring and a diversity of materials which she has

but sparingly employed in decorating the hills and
valleys of other lands. The grandeur of the forests
in the south, and the luxuriance of the shrubs and
plants, have no parallel. But southerners tread the
avenues, breathe the air, and recline under the trees
and in the arbours of their paradise, thankfully accepting
and enjoying their luxurious boon, but seldom
insinuating, through the cultivation of flowers,
that nature has left her work imperfect. There
are, it is true, individual exceptions. One of the
finest private gardens in the United States, which
has suggested these remarks, is in the south, and
within two hours ride of Natchez. But as a general
rule, southerners, with the exception of the cultivation
of a few plants in a front yard, pay little regard
to horticulture. So in New-England, a lilac tree
between the windows, a few rose bushes and indigenous
plants lining the walk, and five or six boxes or
vases containing exotics standing upon the granite
steps on either side of the front door, constitute the
sum of their flower plants and the extent to which
this delightful science is carried. The severity of
northern winters and the shortness of the summers,
may perhaps preclude perfection in this pleasing
study, but not excuse the present neglect of it.
The English, inhabiting a climate but a little milder,
possess a strong and decided horticultural taste
—England itself is one vast garden made up of innumerable
smaller ones, each, from the cluster of
shrubbery around the humblest cottage to the magnificent
park, that spreads around her palaces, displaying
the prevailing national passion.

Though southerners do not often pursue horticulture
as a science, yet they are passionately fond of
flowers. At the south, gentlemen, without the charge
of coxcombry or effeminacy, wear them in the button-holes
of their vests—fair girls wreathe them in
their hair, and children trudge to school loaded with
bouquets. The south is emphatically the land of
flowers; nature seems to have turned this region
from her hand as the chef d'œuvre of her skill. Here,
in the glowing language of Chateaubriand, are seen
“floating islands of Pistia and Nenuphar, whose
yellow roses spring up like pavilions; here magnificent
savanas unfold their green mantles, which
seem in the distance to blend ther verdure with the
azure of the skies. Suspened on the floods of the
Mississippi, grouped on rocks and mountains and
dispersed in valleys, trees of every odour, every
shape, every hue, entwine their variegated heads,
and ascend to an immeasurable height; bignonias,
vines, and colocynths, wind their slender roots
around their trunks, creep to the summit of their
branches, and passing from the maple to the tulip
tree and alcea, form a thousand bowers and verdant
arcades; stretching from tree to tree they often
throw their fibrous arms across rivers and erect on
them arches of foliage and flowers. Amidst these
fragrant clusters, the proud magnolia raises its immoveable
cone, adorned with snowy roses, and commanding
the whole forest, meets with no other rival
than the palm-tree, whose green leaves are softly
fanned by refreshing gales.” The race here now is
for wealth; in good time the passion will change, and

men, tired of contesting for the prize in the game of
life, which they have won over and over again, will
seek a theatre on which to display their golden laurels;
and where are men more fond of displaying
their wealth than on their persons, equipage, and
dwellings? Horticulture, the taste in such cases
earliest cultivated, will then shed its genial influence
over the valley of the south-west, and noble mansions
and tasteful cottages, around which forests
now gloomily frown, or rude fields spread their
ploughed surfaces, will be surrounded by noble
grounds enriched by the hand of taste from the
lavish opulence of the forests and savanas. The
garden alluded to at the commencement of this letter,
is situated upon the plantation, an excursion to
which was the subject of my last. As this is said
to be the finest garden in Mississippi, to which all
others more or less approximate, in the character of
their plants, style, and general arrangement, I would
describe it, could my pen do adequate justice to the
taste of its proprietor, or the variety and beauty of
the plants and flowers. Among them—for I will
mention a few—which represented every clime,
were the cape myrtle, with its pure and delicately
formed flower, the oak geranium, the classical ivy,
and the fragrant snow-drop. The broad walks were,
as usual in southern gardens, bordered by the varnished
lauria mundi, occasionally relieved by the
cape jessamine, slender althea, and dark green arbor
vitæ. The splendidly attired amaryllis, the purple
magnolia, the Arabian and night-blooming jessamines,
the verbenum, or lemon-scented geranium,
with the majestic aloe, that hoary monarch of the
garden, which blooms but once in a century, the
broad-leaved yarra, or caco, the fragrant snow-drop,
and the sweet-scented shrub and oleander, with
countless other shrubs and flowers, breathing forth
the sweetest fragrance, gratified the senses, and
pleased the eye wherever it was turned. There
spread the cassia, a creeping plant, bearing a pink
flower, and admirably adapted to bind the soil of
this region, to prevent its “washing,” by the texture
of its thickly matted shoots, its tenacity to the
soil, and the density of its foliage, all which combined,
render it a secure shield laid over the surface
of the ground; box-trees, in luxuriant, dark green
cones, two or three feet high, were interspersed
among the loftier shrubs at the angles of the several
avenues, which were lined with diminutive hedges
of this thickly-leaved plant. In the centre of the
main avenue, which, on account of the inclination
of the garden, was a terraced walk, terminating in
an artificial pond, was a large diamond-shaped bed
of violets enamelled with blue and green, from
which arose a cloud of fragrance that floated over
the whole garden, gathering rich tributes from a
hundred flowers of the sweetest perfume and loveliest
hues. Around this pond, were crescents of
shrubs and trees, among which the melancholy
weeping willow drooped its graceful tendrils over
the water.[6] Beyond this little lake, the primeval
forests, which on every side bounded the prospect,
rose majestically on the summit of a high hill, in
front, affording a striking contrast to the Hesperian
elegancies spread around the observer.

Arbours of the lauria mundi, and pleasant alcoves
invited to repose or meditation; and thickly shaded
walks, wound on either side of the principal walk
which they occasionally intersected, in graceful serpentine
lines, bordered by the eglantine, or Scotch

rose, the monthly rose—the flower-pot plant of the
north—which here grows in luxuriant hedges, from
six to ten feet high. The moss, and wild rose, the
last a native, in which the creative power of horticulture
annually unfolds new beauties, the dwarf
cape jessamine, the Washita willow, with its pretty
flower, the laurustina, hypiscus, and citronelle, or
fragrant lemon grass, the tea-tree, three feet high,
with orange and lemon trees, bending under their
golden fruit, and a guava tree, the only one in fruit
in the state, clustering with its delicious apple, presented
on every side the most delightful offerings
to the senses. But I must beg your indulgence for
intruding upon you a botanical catalogue of plants
in a southern garden, which Pomona, envying the
fair divinity presiding there, might sigh to make her
empire. Besides this exception to my general philippic
in the former part of this letter, against the
practical floral taste of Mississippians, there are a
few others sufficiently beautiful to atone for the prevailing
deficiency of which I have spoken. Clifton,
an elegant villa near Natchez, and one of the
finest residences in the state, for the beauty of its
grounds, and the extent of the prospect from its lofty
galleries, boasts a garden of almost unrivalled beauty,
and rich in the number and variety of its shrubs
and plants. There are three or four other gardens,
buried like gems in the centre of old plantations,
which, in horticultural wealth and display, nearly
rival those above mentioned. I record these instances
with pleasure, as indicating the existence
of that fine taste, in the germ at least, which refinement,
opulence, and leisure, will in time unfold and
ripen into maturity.

While standing upon the gallery in the evening,
enjoying the various busy scenes and confused sounds
peculiar to a plantation at the close of day, my attention
was drawn to a lugubrious procession, consisting
of seven or eight negroes approaching the
house from the “quarters,” some with blankets
thrown like cloaks over their shoulders, their heads
bandaged, and moving with a listless gait of inimitable
helplessness. One after another they crawled
up and presented themselves, before the open passage
in the gallery. Seeing such a sad assembly
I approached them with curiosity, while their
master, notified of their arrival, came out to examine
into the state of this his walking hospital. Of
all modifications of the “human face divine,”
that of the sick negro is the most dolorous. Their
miserable, abject, hollow-eyed look has no parallel.
The negro is not an Adonis in his best estate. But
he increases his natural ugliness by a laxity of the
muscles, a rolling of the eye and a dropping of the
under jaw, when ill, which give his face a most ludicrously
wo-begone appearance. The transparent
jet-black hue of his skin altogether disappears, leaving
the complexion a dingy brown or sallow, which in
no slight degree increases the sadness of his physiognomy.
Those who are actually ill generally receive
every attention that humanity—not “interest”—dictates.
It has been said that interest is the only
friend of the slave; that without this lever applied
to the feelings of the master, he would never be influenced

to care for his slaves either in health or in
sickness. However true this may be in individual
instances, a vast number of cases have come within
my knowledge, which have convinced me that as a general
censure this charge is unmerited. Planters, particularly
native planters, have a kind of affection for
their negroes, incredible to those who have not observed
its effects. If rebellious they punish them—
if well behaved they not unfrequently reward them.
In health they treat them with uniform kindness, in
sickness with attention and sympathy. I once
called on a native planter—a young bachelor, like
many of his class, who had graduated at Cambridge
and travelled in Europe—yet northern education
and foreign habits did not destroy the Mississippian. I
found him by the bed side of a dying slave—nursing
him with a kindness of voice and manner, and
displaying a manly sympathy with his sufferings
honorable to himself and to humanity. On large
plantations hospitals are erected for the reception
of the sick, and the best medical attendance is provided
for them. The physicians of Natchez derive
a large proportion of their incomes from attending
plantations. On some estates a physician permanently
resides, whose time may be supposed sufficiently
taken up in attending to the health of from
one to two hundred persons. Often, several plantations,
if the “force” on each is small, unite and employ
one physician for the whole. Every plantation
is supplied with suitable medicines, and generally
to such an extent, that some room or part of a
room in the planter's house is converted into a small
apothecary's shop. These, in the absence of the
physician in any sudden emergency, are administered
by the planter. Hence, the health of the slaves,
so far as medical skill is concerned, is well provided
for. They are well fed and warmly clothed in the
winter, in warm jackets and trowsers, and blanket
coats enveloping the whole person, with hats or
woolen caps and brogans. In summer they have
clothing suitable to the season, and a ragged negro is
less frequently to be met with than in northern
cities.

The attendance which the sick receive is a great
temptation for the slaves to “sham” illness. I was
dining not long since in the country where the lady—
a planter's daughter, and the wife and mother of a
planter—sent from the table some plates of rich
soup and boiled fowl to “poor sick Jane and her
husband,” as she observed in her reply to one who
inquired if any of her “people” were unwell. A
portion of the dessert was also sent to another who
was convalescent. Those who are not considered
ill enough to be sent to the hospital, are permitted
to remain in their houses or cabins, reporting themselves
every evening at the “great hus,” as they
term the family mansion. The sombre procession
alluded to above, which led to these remarks, consisted
of a few of these invalids, who had appeared
at the gallery to make their evening report. On being
questioned as to their respective conditions, a
scene ensues that to be appreciated, must be observed.

“What ails you, Peter?” “Mighty sick, mas

ter.”[7] “Show me your tongue:” and out, inch by
inch, projects a long tongue, not unlike the sole of
his shoe in size and colour, accompanied by a groan
from the very pit of the stomach. If the negro is
actually ill, suitable medicine is prescribed, which
his master or the physician compels him to swallow
in his presence. For, sick or well, and very fond
of complaining, they will never take “doctor's stuff,”
as they term it, but, throwing it away as soon as
they are out of sight, either go without any medicine,
or take some concoction in repute among the old
African beldames in the “quarters,” by which they
are sickened if well, and made worse if ill, and
present themselves for inspection the next evening,
by no means improved in health. They are fond of
shamming, or “skulking,” as sailors term it, and
will often voluntarily expose themselves to sickness,
in order to obtain exemption from labour.

There is no animal so averse to labour, even to
the most necessary locomotion, as the African. His
greatest enjoyment seems to be a state of animal
inactivity. Inquire of any ordinary field negro why
he would like to be free, if he ever happened to indulge
the wish, and he will reply, “because me no
work all day long.” It is well known that the “lazzaroni”
of Italy, the gauchos who infest Buenos
Ayres, and the half-bloods swarming in the streets
of all South American cities, will never labour, unless
absolutely obliged to do so for the purpose of
sustaining existence, and then only for the temporary

supply. I once applied to a half-naked gaucho,
who, with his red capote wound about his head,
was dozing in the sun on the plaza, to carry a portmanteau.
Slowly raising the heavy lids of his large
glittering eyes, he took two pieces of money, of
small value, from the folds of his red sash, and held
them up to my view, murmuring, with a negative
inclination of his head—“Tengo dos reales, señor:”
thereby implying, “I will take mine ease while my
money lasts—no more work till this is gone.” By
such a feeling is this class of men invariably governed.
Individuals of them I have known to work
with great industry for a day or two, and earn a few
dollars, when they would cease from their usual
labour, and, until their last penny was expended, no
remuneration would prevail on them to carry a
trunk across the square. From my knowledge of
negro character at the south, however elevated it
may be at the north, I am convinced that slaves, in
their present moral condition, if emancipated, would
be lazzaroni in every thing but colour. Sometimes
a sham patient will be detected; although, to make
their complaints the more specious, they frequently
discolour the tongue. This species of culprit is
often punished by ridicule and exposure to his fellows,
whose taunts on such occasions embody the
purest specimens of African wit. Not unfrequently
these cheats are punished by a dose from the medidine
chest, that effectually cures them of such indispositions.
Latterly, since steaming has been
fashionable, a good steaming has been known to be
an equally effective prescription.

When a negro dies, his remains are placed in a
coffin and decently interred. Labour is often entirely
suspended on the plantation, and the slaves
are assembled in their Sunday clothes to attend the
funeral. Divine service is sometimes performed in
the little chapel on the plantation, at which not only
the slaves but the members of the white family are
present. A Presbyterian clergyman recently informed
me that he had been sent for by a native
planter, to attend the funeral of one of his slaves
and preach his funeral sermon. He went, though
twelve miles distant from his residence, and remarked
that he was never present on a more interesting
occasion. On most plantations females are
allowed a month's cessation from field labour, before
and after confinement. But it cannot be denied that
on some plantations nothing but actual confinement
releases them from the field; to which the mother
soon after returns, leaving an infant a few days old
at the “quarters,” which she is permitted to visit
three or four times in the day. Sometimes, when
a little older, infants are brought into the field, under
the care of an old nurse, to save the time which
the mothers would otherwise consume in walking
to and from the “quarters.” Once, on riding through
a plantation, I noticed, under a China tree, which
shaded the shelter-house—a rude building, in the
centre of extensive cotton fields, in which negroes
seek shelter on the approach of a storm—a group
of infants and children, whose parents I discovered
at work more than half a mile distant. Several
little fellows, not two years old, and as naked as

young frogs, were amusing themselves in rolling
over the grass, heedless of the occasional warning
of their gouvernante, “Take care de snake.”—
Slung from a limb in a blanket reposed two others,
very snugly, side by side, mumbling corn bread;
while, suspended from the tree, in a rude cradle,
were three or four more of this band of nurslings,
all in a pile, and fast asleep. I am indebted to this
scene for a correct application of the nursery song,
which I had never before been able exactly to understand,
commencing—

These little candidates for “field honours,” are
useless articles on a plantation during the first five
or six years of their existence. They are then
made to take the first lessons in the elementary
part of their education. When they have learned
their manual alphabet tolerably well, they are placed
in the field to take a spell at cotton-picking. The
first day in the field is their proudest day. The
young negroes look forward to it, with as much restlessness
and impatience as school-boys to a vacation.
Black children are not put to work so young
as many children of poor parents at the north. It
is often the case that the children of the domestic
servants become pets in the house, and the playmates
of the white children of the family. No
scene can be livelier or more interesting to a
northerner, than that which the negro quarters of a

well regulated plantation present, on a Sabbath
morning, just before church hour. In every cabin
the men are shaving and dressing—the women, arrayed
in their gay muslins, are arranging their
frizzly hair, in which they take no little pride, or
investigating the condition of their children's heads
—the old people neatly clothed are quietly conversing
or smoking about their doors, and those of
the younger portion, who are not undergoing the
infliction of the wash-tub, are enjoying themselves
in the shade of the trees or around some little pond,
with as much zest as though “slavery” and “freedom”
were synonymous terms. When all are
dressed and the hour arrives for worship, they lock
up their cabins, and the whole population of the
little village proceeds to the chapel, where divine
worship is performed, sometimes by an officiating
clergyman, and often by the planter himself, if a
church member. The whole plantation is also frequently
formed into a Sabbath class, which is instructed
by the planter or some member of his
family; and often such is the anxiety of masters that
they should perfectly understand what they are
taught—a hard matter in the present state of African
intellect—that no means calculated to advance
their progress are left untried. I was not long since
shown a manuscript catechism, drawn up with great
care and judgment by a distinguished planter, on a
plan admirably adapted to the comprehension of
negroes. The same gentleman, in conjunction with
two or three neighbouring planters, employs a
Presbyterian clergyman, formerly a missionary
among the Choctaws at the Elliott station before
their dispersion, to preach to the slaves, paying him
a salary for his services. On those plantations
which have no chapel, and no regular worship on
the Sabbath, negroes are permitted to go to the
nearest town to church; a privilege they seldom
know how to appreciate, and prefer converting their
liberty into an opportunity for marketing or visiting.
Experience, however, has convinced planters that
no indulgence to their slaves is so detrimental as
this, both to the moral condition of the slave, and
the good order of the plantation, for there is no vice
in which many of them will not become adepts, if
allowed a temporary freedom from restraint, one
day in seven. Hence this liberty, except in particular
instances, is denied them on some estates;
to which they are confined under easy discipline
during the day, passing the time in strolling through
the woods, sleeping, eating, and idling about the
quarters. The evenings of the Sabbath are passed
in little gossipping circles in some of the cabins, or
beneath the shade of some tree in front of their
dwellings, or at weddings. The negroes are usually
married by the planter, who reads the service from
the gallery—the couple with their attendants standing
upon the steps or on the green in front. These
marriages, in the eye of the slave, are binding.
Clergymen are sometimes invited to officiate by
those planters who feel that respect for the marriage
covenant, which leads them to desire its strict
observance, where human legislation has not provided
for it. On nuptial occasions the negroes partake
of fine suppers, to which the ladies add many
little delicacies, and handsome presents of wearing
apparel to the married pair. When the negroes
desire a clergyman to perform the ceremony for
them, planters seldom refuse to comply with their
request.

When negroes leave the plantation, for whatever
purpose, whether to attend church, class meeting or
market, visit their husbands, wives, or sweethearts,
or are sent on errands, they must carry with them
a written permission of absence from their master,
stating the object for which his slave leaves his
plantation, the place or places to which he is going,
and the time to which his absence is limited. This
written authority is called a “pass,” and is usually
written somewhat after this form:

“Oakland — June — 18—

“Pass J — to Natchez and back again by
sunset,” or “E — has permission to visit his wife
on Mr. C —'s plantation, to be absent till 9
o'clock.”

In such fluctuating property as slaves, it often
happens that husband, wife, and children may all
belong to different owners; and as negroes belonging
to different plantations intermarry, such a provision,
which is a state law, is necessary to preserve
discipline, and embrace within the eye or
knowledge of the master, every movement of his
slave. Were slaves allowed to leave the estates
without the knowledge of their masters, during a
certain portion of every week, an immense body of
men in the aggregate, consisting of a few from every

plantation in the state, would be moving among the
plantations, at liberty to plan and execute any mischief
they might choose to set on foot. If negroes
leave the plantation without a “pass,” they are liable
to be taken up by any white person who suspects
them to be runaways, and punishment is the
consequence. The law allows every white man in
town or country this kind of supervision over negroes;
and as there are always men who are on
the lookout for runaways, for the purpose of obtaining
the reward of several dollars for each they can
bring back to his master, the slave, should he leave
the plantation without his “pass”—the want of
which generally denotes the runaway—is soon apprehended.
You will see that this regulation is a
wise legal provision for the preservation both of private
and public security. An anecdote connected
with this subject was recently related to me by a
planter whose slave was the hero. “A gentleman,”
said he, “met one of my negroes mounted on horseback,
with a jug in his hand, riding toward Natchez.
Suspecting him from appearances to be a runaway,
he stopped him and asked for his “pass.” The
slave unrolled first one old rag—an old rag is a negro's
substitute for a pocket—and then another
without success. “I `spec' me loss me pass, master.”
“Whom do you belong to?” “Mr. —,”
giving the wrong person. “Where are you going?”
“To Natchez, get whiskey, master.” At the moment,
my brand upon the horse struck the eye of
the gentleman; “You are a runaway, boy—you belong
to Mr. D —.” Instantly the negro leaped
from his horse, cleared the fence, and fled through
the woods like a deer toward home. The gentleman
on arriving at his own house, sent a servant to
me with the horse which the runaway had deserted.
I immediately assembled the whole force of the
plantation and not one of the negroes was missing;
the culprit having managed to arrive at the plantation
before I could receive any intimation of his absence.
I tried a long time to make the guilty one
confess, but in vain. So at last, I tried the effect
of a ruse. “Well, boys, I know it is one of you,
and though I am not able to point out the rogue,
my friend who detected him will recognize him at
once. So you must walk over to his house. Fall
in there—march!”

“They proceeded a short distance, when I ordered
a halt. “Mind, boys, the guilty one shall not only
be punished by me, but I will give every `hand' on
the plantation the liberty of taking personal satisfaction,
for compelling them to take a walk of three
miles.—So, march!” They moved on again for
about a quarter of a mile, when they came to a full
stop—deliberated a few moments and then retraced
their steps. “Hie! what now?” “Why, master,
Bob say he de one.” Bob, who it seems had confessed
to his fellow-slaves as the best policy, now
stepped forward, and acknowledged himself to be
the runaway.”

35. XXXV.

The morning after my arrival at the plantation,
which suggested the subject of my last letter, two
gentlemen, with their guns and dogs, arrived at the
house, to proceed from thence, according to a previous
arrangement, on a deer hunt. This noble
and attractive game abounds in the “bottoms” and
river hills in this region; though the planters, who
are in general passionately fond of hunting, are fast
thinning their numbers. The branching antlers of a
stag, as in the old oaken halls of England, are found
fixed, in some conspicuous station, in almost every
planter's habitation—trophies of his skill, and testimonials
of his attachment to the chase.

Having prepared our hunting apparatus, and assembled
the dogs, which, from their impatient movements,
evidently needed no intimation of our design,
we mounted our horses, and, winding through
the cotton fields, entered a forest to the south, and
proceeded, in fine spirits, toward the “drive,” four
or five miles below, as the hunting station is technically

termed by deer hunters. There were, exclusive
of a servant, four in our party. One of them,
my host, formerly an officer in the navy, having,
some years since, left the service, and settled himself
down as a cotton planter, presented in his person
the anomalous union, in Mississippi, of the sailor
and farmer: for in this state, which has little intercourse
directly with the sea, sailors are rare birds.
Till recently a ship could not be seen by a Mississippian
without going to New-Orleans, or elsewhere
out of the state: but since Natchez became a port
of entry, and ships have ascended here, the citizens
who flocked in from all the country round, to gaze
upon them, are a little more au fait to this branch
of nautical knowledge. It would be difficult to say
which predominates in this gentleman, the bluff and
frank bearing of the sailor, or the easy and independent
manner of the planter. In the management
of his plantation, the result of his peculiar
economy has shown, that the discipline with which
he was familiar in the navy, with suitable modifications,
has not been applied unsuccessfully to the
government of his slaves. What a strange inclination
sailors have for farming! Inquire of any New-England
sea-captain the ultimatum of his wishes,
after leaving the sea—for sailors in general follow
the sea as the means of securing them a snug
berth on shore—and he will almost invariably reply—“a
farm.” Another of our party was a
planter, a native of Mississippi, and the son of a
gentleman whose philosophic researches have greatly
contributed to the advancement of science. He
was a model of a southern planter—gentlemanly,
companionable, and a keen hunter. The government
of his plantation, which is one of the finest in
the state, is of a parental rather than an imperious
character. He rules rather by kindness than severity,
and his slaves obey from the principle of a desire
to please, rather than from fear. And the result
of his discipline has fully overthrown the
sweeping assertion, which it is the fashion to repeat
and believe, that “the more kindly slaves are treated
the worse they are.” A favourite theory of philanthropists,
in relation to master and slave, is more
practically illustrated on the estate of this gentleman,
than the most sanguine of its framers could
have anticipated. As I have, in a former letter, alluded
to that branch of the domestic economy of
this plantation, relating to the religious privileges of
the slaves, and shall again have occasion to refer to
its discipline, I will pursue the subject here no
farther.

The third individual of our party was a gentleman
originally from New-Jersey; a state which
has contributed many valuable citizens to Mississippi.
But he had been too long in the south to
preserve his identity as a Jersey man. The son of
a distinguished barrister, he had been a lawyer himself;
but, like all professional men, who have remained
here a short time, he had taken his third
degree as a cotton planter. He is a gentleman of fine
taste and a chastened imagination; and besides
some beautiful tales, contributed to the periodicals,
he is the author of that delightful story, the “Fawn's

leap,” published in the Atlantic Souvenir of 1830.
The literary world will have reason to feel regret,
in which the subject of my remark will, no doubt,
be far from sympathising, that fortune has placed
him among her protegés. He possesses an independent
property, and resides on an estate called
“Woodbourne,” eight or nine miles from Natchez.
With true Mississippi taste, he has placed his handsome
villa in the midst of a forest; but the majestic
beauty of the lofty trees, as surveyed from the gallery,
and the solemn grandeur of the primeval forests
which inclose his dwelling on all sides, struck
me, at the moment, as far superior to any display of
art in ornamental grounds, and nearly unhinged my
predilection for artificial scenery. In this charming
retirement, and in the quiet enjoyment of private
life, he has laid aside the gown of the author to assume
the capote of the planter, and become an indefatigable
devotee to the lordly pleasures of the
chase. Few men, who hunt merely en amateur,
and especially, few literary men, can boast that
they have killed twenty-seven deer, and been at the
death of fifty-two—yet this gentleman can do so
with truth: and a row of notches, cut in his hunting-horn,
which I found suspended from an antler
in the gallery of the house we had just left, recorded
the fact. Besides this gentleman, there are but
few individuals who are known out of this state as
cultivators of literature. Mississippi is yet too
young to boast of her authors, although she is not
deficient in men of talent and learning. But the
members of the learned professions are too much
involved in schemes of wealth to have leisure or
inclination for the cultivation of general literature.

Half way through the forest into which we entered
on leaving the plantation, we came to a rude
dwelling, inhabited by a ruder old hunter, who was
to officiate as “driver.” He accompanied us with
his dogs for a while, and then turned aside into the
woods to surround the deer in their place of resort
and drive them toward the river, between which
and them we were to take our “stands,” for the
purpose of intercepting them, as they dashed by to
the water. For if alarmed while feeding upon the
high grounds back from the Mississippi, they at
once bound off to the shelter of the swamps or bottoms
near the river—and the skilful hunter, whose
experience teaches him by what paths they will seek
to gain the lowlands where the hounds cannot follow
them, takes his stand with his rifle behind some
tree by which he is tolerably sure the deer will
pass, and as the noble and terrified animal bounds
past him, he levels the deadly rifle with unerring
aim, and buries a bullet in his heart.

Emerging from the forest a mile or two above
our hunting ground, we came suddenly upon an
amphitheatre of naked hills nearly surrounded by
forests of dark pine. Winding through romantic
defiles thickly bordered with cedars, we gradually
ascended to the summit of the highest of this cluster
of treeless hills, when all at once the Mississippi,
rolling onward to the sea, burst upon our sight in
all its majesty. There is a grand and desolate character
in those naked cliffs which hang in huge terraces

over the river, to the perpendicular height of
three hundred feet. The view from their summits
is one of the most sublime and extensive in the
south-west. To the north and south the broad river
spreads away like a long serpentine lake, its western
shore presenting a plain, clothed even to the
horizon with a boundless forest, with a plantation
here and there breaking the uniformity of its outlines,
near the water's edge.

After a farther ride of a mile, over a hilly road
through woods alternately exposing and hiding the
river, we arrived at the “deer-stand,”—a long ridge
nearly parallel with the river, and covered with a
very open forest with a low “bottom,” between the
ridge and the water, and an extensive “drive,” or
forest frequented by deer, extending two miles inland.
Our “driver” with the whole pack, had
turned off into the “drive” some time before, and
having examined the ground, we took our “stands”
about a hundred yards apart, each behind a large
tree commanding an opening, or avenue, through
which the deer were expected to pass. Several of
these “stands,” and many more than we could occupy,
were on the ridge, all of which should have
been occupied to insure a successful issue to our
sport. A few moments after we had taken our
stands, and while listening for the least token of
the “driver's” presence in the depths of the forest
—the distant baying of dogs, in that peculiar note
with which they open when they have roused their
game, fell faintly upon our ears. The chorus of
canine voices, however, soon grew louder and more

violent—and as they awoke the echoes of the
forests, and came down upon us like a storm—my
heart leaped and the blood coursed merrily in my
veins. All at once the deep voices of the hounds
ceased as though they were at fault; but after a
few moments' pause, a staunch old hunter opened
again far to the right, and again the whole pack
were in pursuit in full cry, and the crashing of trees
and under-brush directly in front of us about a quarter
of a mile in the wood, with the increased roar of
the pack, warned us to be ready. The next moment
the noise moved away to the right, and all at
once, with a crash and a bound, a noble stag, with
his head laid back upon his shoulders, crossed our
line at the remotest stand, and disappeared in the
thick woods along the river. The dogs followed
like meteors. Away to the left another crashing
was heard, and a beautiful doe leaped across the
open space on the ridge, and was lost in the thicket.
The sounds of affrighted deer, passing through the
forest at a great distance, were occasionally heard,
but these soon died away and we only heard the
wild clamour of the dogs, which the driver, who
was close at their heels, in vain essayed to recall by
sounding his horn long and loud, and sending its
hoarse notes into the deepest recesses of the wood.

After a great deal of trouble, by whipping, coaxing,
and driving, nearly all the dogs were again collected,
as it was in vain to pursue the deer to their
retreats. Some of the old hunters slowly coming
in at the last, laid themselves down by us panting
and half dead with fatigue. By and by the driver

again started into the “drive” with the dogs; but
an engagement for the evening, precluding my participation
in a renewal of the spirit-stirring scene,
I reluctantly left my agreeable party who were out
for the day, and proceeded homeward. They returned
late at night with, I believe, a single deer as
the reward of their patience and unwearied spirits,
two most important virtues in a thorough-bred deerhunter.
Uncommon nerve and great presence of
mind are also indispensable qualifications. “Once,”
remarked a hunting gentleman to me, “while waiting
at my stand the approach of a buck, which
sometime before seeing him I had heard leaping
along in immense bounds through the thicket—his
sudden appearance in an open space about a hundred
yards in front, bearing down directly toward
me at fearful speed, so awed and unnerved me for
the moment, that although my rifle was levelled at
his broad breast, I had not the power to pull the
trigger, and before I could recover myself the noble
creature passed me like the wind.” Yet this gentleman
was a tried hunter, and on other occasions
had brought down deer as they came toward him at
full speed, at the distance of from sixty to a hundred
yards.

On my return from the hunting ground, I lingered
on the romantic cliff we had crossed in the morning,
delighted at once more beholding scenery that
reminded me of the rude features of my native state.
Dismounting from my horse, which I secured to the
only tree upon the cliff, I descended, after many hairbreadth
escapes a ravine nearly two hundred feet in

depth, which conducted me to the water side and
near the mouth of the beautiful St. Catharine, which,
after a winding course of more than eighty miles,
empties itself into the Mississippi through an embouchure
ten yards wide, and as accurately defined
as the mouth of a canal. Near this spot is a silver
mine lately re-discovered, after the lapse of a third
of a century. Its history, I believe, is this. Some
thirty or forty years ago, a Spaniard who had been
a miner in Mexico, passing down the Mississippi,
discovered ore which he supposed to be silver. He
took a quantity of it into his pirogue, and on arriving
at a planter's house on the banks of the river in Louisiana,
tested it as correctly as circumstances would
admit, and was satisfied that it was pure silver. He
communicated the discovery to his host, gave him
a few ingots of the metal and took his departure.
What became of him is not known. The host from
year to year resolved to visit the spot, but neglected
it, or was prevented by the intrusion of more pressing
employments, till four or five years since. He
then communicated the discovery to a Mexican miner,
an American or an Englishman, who stopped
at his house, and to whom, on hearing him speak of
mines, he showed the masses he had received so many
years before from the Spaniard. The man on examining
them and ascertaining the metal to be pure
silver, became at once interested in the discovery,
obtained the necessary information to enable him to
find the spot, and immediately ascended the river.
On arriving at the cliffs he commenced his search,
and after a few days discovered the vein, in one of
the lowest strata of the cliffs. He found it difficult,
however, to engage the neighbouring planters in his
scheme of working it, for what planter would exchange
his cotton fields for a silver mine? Yet
they treated him with attention, and seconded his efforts
by lending him slaves. More than a hundred
weight of the ore was obtained, and sent on to Philadelphia
to undergothe process of fusion. It probably is
not rich enough for amalgamation, as it contains a
superior bulk of iron pyrites, blende, lead and earthy
matter. The amount of pure silver procured from
the ore has not been ascertained, the result of the
process not having yet been made known. I obtained
several pieces, which make a very pretty
show in a cabinet, and this is probably the highest
honour to which it will be exalted, at least till the
surface of the earth refuses longer to bear ingots of
silver, in the shape of the snowy cotton boll.

The peculiar features of these cliffs are a series
of vast concavities, or inverted hollow cones, connected
with each other by narrow gorges, whose bottoms
are level with the river, and surrounded by perpendicular
and overhanging walls of earth, often
detached, like huge pyramids, and nearly three hundred
feet in height. There are five clusters of these
cliffs in this state, all situated on the eastern shore
of the Mississippi, from forty to one hundred miles
apart, of which this is the most important in height
and magnitude, as well as in grandeur and variety of
scenery. They are properly the heads or terminations
of the high grounds of the United States—the antenna

of the Alleghanies.[8] The hypothesis that they were
promontories in past ages, with the waves of the Mexican
Gulf breaking at their bases, has had the support
of many scientific men. This opinion carries
with it great probability, when the peculiar qualities
of the Mississippi are considered in relation to its
“forming effects.” These effects are a consequence
of the general truth of the proposition, that every
mechanical destruction will be followed by a mechanical
formation; hence the masses separated by
the waters of the Mississippi, will be again deposited
on the surface of the land, or its shores, about its
mouth, and on the bottom of the sea. You are aware
that one twelfth of the bulk of this vast volume of
water is earth, as ascertained by its depositing that
proportion in the bottom of a glass filled with the
water. During the flood the proportion is greater,
and the earthy particles are as dense as the water
can hold in suspension. The average velocity of
the current below the Missouri, is between one
and two miles an hour, and it is calculated that it
would require four months to discharge the column
of water embraced between this point and its delta.
Bearing constantly within its flood a mass of earth
equal to one twelfth of its whole bulk, it follows that
it must bear toward the sea, every four years, more
than its cubical bulk of solid earth. Now where is
this great column of earth deposited? Has it been
rolling onward for centuries, without any visible ef
fects? This will not be affirmed, and experience
proves the contrary in the hourly mechanical depositions
of the ochreous particles of this river, in its
noble convexities, its extensive bottoms, and the
growing capes at its mouth. But a small portion of
the turbid mixture has been deposited in the bed of
the river, particularly in its southern section, as moving
water will not deposit at any great depth.[9]

Now when the general appearance and geological
features of the South-West, including the south part
of Mississippi and nearly the whole of Louisiana,
are observed with reference to the preceding statements,
the irresistible conviction of the observer is,
that the immense plain now rich with sugar and
cotton fields, a great emporium, numerous villages
and a thousand villas, was formed by the mechanical
deposits of the Mississippi upon the bed of the

ocean, precisely as they are now building up fields
into the Mexican Gulf. Do not understand me that
the present fertile surface of this region was the original
bed of the ocean, but that it rose out of it, as
the coral islands come up out of the sea, by the gradual
accumulation of deposits. The appearance of
these inland promontories or cliffs, which suggested
these remarks, and the fact that the highlands of the
south-west, all terminate along the southern border
of this region, from fifty to one hundred miles
from the sea, leaving a broad alluvial tract between,
and presenting a well defined inland sea-board, go
far to strengthen the opinion I have adopted.

The chain of cliffs along the eastern shore of the
Mississippi, have a parallel chain opposite to them
on the other side of the great savana, skirted by
the Mississippi, about forty miles distant. This
savana or valley gradually widens to the south
until near the mouth of the river, where it is increased
to one hundred and forty or fifty miles in
breadth. It is this great valley which is of mechanical
formation, and its present site was in all probability
covered by the waters of a bay similar to
the Chesapeake, extending many leagues above
Natchez to the nearest approximation of the cliffs
on either side, where alone must have been an
original mouth of this great river. Where the spectator,
in looking westward from these bluffs; now beholds
an extensive and level forest, in ages past
rolled the waters of the Mexican sea—and where
he now gazes upon a broad and placid river flow

ing onward to mingle with the distant ocean, the
very waves of that ocean rolled in loud surges,
dashed against the lofty cliffs, and kissed the pebbles
at his feet.

36. XXXVI.

Though not much given to theorising, I have
been drawn into some undigested remarks in my
last letter, upon a theory, which is beginning to
command the attention of scientific men, to which
the result of geological researches daily adds weight,
and to which time, with correct observations and
farther discoveries, must add the truth of demonstration.

This letter I will devote to a subject, naturally
arising from the preceding, perhaps not entirely
without interest—I mean the physical geography
and geology of this state. In the limits of a letter
it is impossible to treat this subject as the nature of
it demands, yet I will endeavour to go so far into its
detail, as to give you a tolerable idea of the general
features of the region.

Besides the cliffs, or great head-lands, alluded to
in my last letter, frowning, at long intervals, over
the Mississippi, serrated ridges, formed of continuous
hills projecting from these points, extend in various
directions over the state. These again branch
into lower ridges, which often terminate near the
river, between the great bluffs, leaving a flat space
from their base to the water, from a third of a mile
to a league in breadth. These flats, or “bottoms,”
as they are termed in western phraseology, are inundated
at the periodical floods, increasing, at those
places, the breadth of the river to the dimensions
of a lake. The forest-covered savana, nearly forty
miles across, through which the Mississippi flows,
and which is bordered by the mural high lands or
cliffs alluded to in my last letter, is also overflowed
at such seasons; so that the river then becomes, in
reality, the breadth of its valley. The grandeur of
such a spectacle as a river, forty miles in breadth,
descending to the ocean between banks of lofty
cliffs, too far distant to be within each other's horizon,
challenges a parallel. But, as this vast plain
is covered with a forest, the lower half of which
only is inundated, the width of the river remains
as usual to the eye of the spectator on the cliffs,
who will have to call in the aid of his imagination
to realize, that in the bosom of the vast forest outspread
beneath him rolls a river, to which, in breadth,
the noble stream before him is but a rivulet. The
interior hills, or ridges, mentioned above, are usually
covered with pine; which is found only on
such eminences, and in no other section of the south

or west, except an isolated wood in Missouri, for
more than fifteen hundred miles. The surface of
the whole state is thus diversified with hills, with
the exception of an occasional interval on the borders
of a stream, or a few leagues of prairie in the
north part of the state, covered with thin forests of
stunted oaks. These hills rise and fall in regular
undulations, clothed with forests of inconceivable
majesty, springing from a rich, black loam, peculiarly
fitted to the production of cotton; though, according
to a late writer on this plant, “it flourishes
with equal luxuriance in the black alluvial soil of
Alatamaha and in the glowing sands of St. Simon's.[10]

The general features of this state have suggested
the idea of an immense ploughed field, whose gigantic
furrows intersect each other at various angles.
—Imagine the hills, formed by these intersections,
clothed with verdure, whitened with cotton fields,
or covered with noble woods, with streams winding
along in the deep ravines, repeatedly turning back
upon their course, in their serpentine windings, before
they disembogue into the Mississippi on the
west, or the Pearl on the east, and you will have a
rude though generally correct idea of the bolder features
of this state.

A “plain,” or extensive level expanse, which is
not a marsh, forms, consequently, no part of its
scenery, hill and hollow being its stronger characteristics.
For a hilly country it presents one striking
peculiarity. The surface of the forests, viewed

from the bluffs, or from some superior elevation in
the interior, presents one uniform horizontal level,
with scarcely an undulation in the line to break the
perspective. Particularly is this observable about
a mile from Natchez, from the summit of a hill on
the road to the village of Washington. Here an
extensive forest scene lies east of the observer, to
appearance a perfect level. But as he travels over
hill and through ravine, anticipating a delightful
prairie to lie before him, over which he may pace,
(or canter, if he be a northerner) at his ease, he will
find that the promised plain, like the mirage before
the fainting Arabian, for ever eludes his path.

There is another remarkable feature in this country,
peculiar to the whole region through which the
lower Mississippi flows, which I can illustrate no
better than by resorting to the idea of a ploughed
field. As many of these intersecting furrows, or
ravines, terminate with the ridges that confine them,
near the river, with whose medium tides they are
nearly level, they are inundated by the periodical
effluxes, which, flowing up into the land, find a passage
through other furrows, and discharge into some
stream, that suddenly overflows its banks; or winding
sluggishly through the glens, cut deep channels
for themselves in the argillaceous soil, and through
a chain of ravines again unite with the Mississippi,
after having created, by their surplus waters, numerous
marshes along their borders, and leaving
around their course innumerable pools of stagnant
water, which become the home of the lazy alliga

tor,[11] and the countless water-fowls which inhabit
these regions. These inlets are properly bayous.
They radiate from the Mississippi, in the state of
Louisiana, in countless numbers, forming a net-work
of inlets along its banks for fifty miles on either side,
increasing in numbers and size near its mouth; so
that, for many leagues above it, an inextricable tissue
of lakes and inlets, or bayous, form communications
and passes from the river to the Gulf,[12] “accessible,”
says Flint, “by small vessels and baycraft,
and impossible to be navigated, except by pilots
perfectly acquainted with the waters.” The
entrance of some of these bayous, which are in the
vicinity of Natchez, is fortified against the effluxes
of the river by levées, constructed from one highland
to another; and by this means the bottom
lands in the rear are protected from the overflow,
and, when cultivated, produce fine crops of cotton.
Inundations are also caused when the Mississippi
is high, by its waters flowing up into the small rivers
and creeks, whose natural level is many feet
below the high water mark, till they find a level.—
The water of these streams is consequently forced
back upon itself, and, rising above its banks, overflows
all the adjacent country. This “back-water,”
as it is termed, is more difficult to be resisted by levées
than the effluxes of the bayous; and for the
want of some successful means of opposing its
force, some of the finest “bottom lands” in the state
remain uncultivated, and covered with water and
forest.

The smaller rivers and streams in this state are
wild and narrow torrents, wholly unlike those placid
streams which flow through New-England, lined
with grassy or rocky banks, and rolling over a stony
bottom, which can be discerned from many feet
above it, through the transparent fluid. Here the
banks of the streams are precipices, and entirely of
clay or sand, and cave in after every rain, which
suddenly raises these torrents many feet in a few
minutes; and such often is their impetuosity, that
if their banks are too high to be inundated, they cut
out new channels for themselves; and a planter

may, not improbably, in the morning after a heavy
rain, find an acre or more added to his fields from
an adjoining estate; to be repaid, in kind, after another
rain. In the dry season the water of these
streams—which, with the exception of three or four
of the large ones, are more properly conduits for the
rain water that falls upon the hills, than permanent
streams—is tolerably clear, though a transparent
sheet of water larger than a spring, whether in motion
or at rest, I have not seen in this state. After
a rain they become turbid, like the Mississippi, impetuous
in their course, and dangerous to travellers.
Few of these streams are covered with bridges, as
their banks dissolve, during a rain, almost as rapidly
as banks of snow—so light is the earth of which
they are composed—and the points from which
bridges would spring are soon washed away. The
streams are therefore usually forded; and as their
beds are of the finest sand, and abound in quicksands,
carriages and horses are often swallowed up
in fording them, and lives are not unfrequently lost.

The roads throughout the state, with the exception
of these fords, are very good, winding through
fine natural scenery, past cultivated fields, and pleasant
villages.

In the neighbourhood of these streams, on the
hills, and in the vales throughout the state, springs
of clear cold water abound. There is a deep spring
on the grounds attached to Jefferson College in this
state, whose water is so transparent, that to the eye,
the bottom appears to be reflected through no other
medium than the air. The water is of a very mild

temperature in the winter, and of an icy coolness
in the summer. The spring is in a deep glen, surrounded
by lofty trees, one of which, from its shape,
branching from the root into two trunks, and uniting
again in an extraordinary manner by a transverse
limb, thirty feet from the ground, is called
“St. Catharine's Harp,” and is one among the natural
curiosities of that vicinity. In the interior of
the state are several mineral springs, which of late
years have become very fashionable resorts for those
who do not choose, like the majority of Mississippians,
to spend their summers and money at the
Kentucky, Virginian, or New-York springs. The
waters of most of these springs are chalybeate, with
a large proportion of sulphuric acid combined with
the iron. The most celebrated are the Brandywine,
romantically situated in a deep glen in the interior
of the state, and the Bankston springs, two hour's
ride from the capital. The constituent qualities of
the waters, as ascertained by a recent chemical analysis,
are sulphate of magnesia, sulphate of soda
and sulphur, which exist in such a state of combination
as to render the waters not disagreeable to
the taste, yet sufficiently beneficial to the patient.
They are said to act favourably upon most of the
diseases of the climate, such as affections of the
liver, bowels, cutaneous and chronic diseases, congestive
and bilious fevers, debility, and numerous
other ills “that flesh is heir to.” The location is
highly romantic and healthy. In the words of another—“the
circumjacent country is for several
miles covered with forests, of which pine is the principal
growth; its surface is elevated and undulating,
entirely free from stagnant waters, and other local
causes of disease. The site of the springs is not
inferior in beauty to any spot in the southern country.
They are situated in a narrow plane, surrounded,
on one side by an almost perpendicular
bluff from which they flow, on the other, by a gentle
declivity, dividing itself into two twin ridges;
which, after describing a graceful curve, unite again
at a point on which stands the principal building,
one hundred feet in length, and on either of these
ridges, is built a row of new and comfortable apartments.
Through the centre of the grove, a path
leads from the principal building to the spring,
forming at all hours of the day, a delightful promenade.
The water at the fountain, is exceedingly
cool and exhilarating. A dome supported by neat
columns, rises above the fountain, which, with the
aid of the surrounding hills and overhanging forest,
renders it at all times impervious to the sun. The
roads, which during the summer season are always
good, communicate in various directions with Port
Gibson, Vicksburg, Jackson, Clinton, and Raymond,
affording at all times good society. The
forest abounds with deer and other game, the chase
of which will afford a healthy amusement to those
who may be tempted to join in it.”

The mineral waters in the state are chiefly sulphurous
and chalybeate, with the exception, I believe,
of one or two of the saline class.

In the vicinity of these springs, and also on most
of the water courses in the state, and, with but an

exception or two, in these places alone, are found
the only stones in the state. Rock is almost unknown.
I have not seen even a stone, within fifteen
miles of Natchez, larger than the third part of a
brick, and those that I have seen were found in the
pebbly bed of some stream. There is a stratum of
pebbles from one to three feet thick extending
through this state. It is variously waved, sometimes
in a plane, and at others forming various angles
of inclination, and at an irregular depth from
the surface, according to the thickness of the superimposed
masses of earth which are composed of
clay, loam, and sand. This stratum is penetrated
and torn up by the torrents, which strew their beds
with the pebbles. There is no rock except a species
of soft sand-stone south of latitude 32° north,
in this state, except in Bayou Pierre, (the stony
bayou) and a cliff at Grand Gulf, forty miles above
Natchez. This last is composed of common carbonate
of lime and silex, but the quantity of each
has not been accurately determined.

The sand-stone alluded to above, is in the intermediate
state between clay and stone, in which the
process of petrifaction is still in progress. In
the north-east portion of the state, this species of
stone, whose basis is clay, is found in a more matured
state of petrifaction. Perfect gravel is seldom
met with here, even in the stratum of pebbles before
mentioned. These resemble in properties and colour,
the clay so abundant in this region; a great
proportion of the gravel is composed of a petrifaction
of clay and minute shells, of the mollusca tribe.

I have found in the dry bed of the St. Catharine's,
pebbles, entirely composed of thousands of the most
delicately formed shells, some of which, of singularly
beautiful figures, I have not before met with. Concave
spiral cones, the regular discoid volute, cylinders,
a circular shell, a tenth of an inch in diameter,
formed by several concentric circles, and a delicate
shell formed by spiral whorls, with fragments of
various other minute shells, principally compose
them. The variety of shells in this state is very
limited. All that have been found here have their
surfaces covered with the smooth olive-green epidermis,
characteristic of fresh water shells, and are
all very much eroded. Agates of singular beauty
have also been discovered, and minute quartz crystals
are found imbedded in the cavities of pebbles
composed of alumina and grains of quartz. Mica
and feldspar I have not met with. About two years
ago, on the plantation of Robert Field, Esq. in the
vicinity of the white cliffs, a gentleman picked up
from the ground a large colourless rock crystal, with
six sided prisms and a pyramidal termination of
three faces. Curiosity led him to examine the spot,
and after digging a few minutes beneath the surface,
he found three more, of different sizes, two of
them nearly perfect crystals, but the third was an
irregular mass of colourless transparent quartz.
This is the only instance of the discovery of this
mineral in the state, and how these came to be on
that spot, which is entirely argillaceous and at a
great distance from any rocks or pebbles, is a problem.
Pure flint is not found in this state, yet the
plough-share turns up on some plantations, numerous
arrow-heads, formed of this material, and there
is also a species of stone, artificially formed, in size
and shape precisely resembling the common wedge
for cleaving wood, with the angles smoothly rounded.
They are found all over the south-western
country, and the negroes term them “thunder bolts;”
but wiser heads have sagely determined their origin
from the moon. Planters call them spear-heads,
for which they were probably constructed by the
aborigines. The stone of which they are made is
not found in this country. Some of them I believe
are composed of mica and quartz. Many of them
are a variety of the mica and of a brown colour,
sometimes inclining to green, and highly polished.
I have seen some on a plantation near Natchez, of
an iron black colour resembling polished pieces of
black marble.

The several strata which compose this state are
an upper layer of rich black loam from one to three
feet thick, the accumulation of centuries, and a second
stratum of clay several feet in thickness, beneath
which are various substrata of loam and sand,
similarto that which constitutes the islands and “bottoms”
of the Mississippi. With the exception of the
Yazoo, which flows through a delightful country rich
in soil and magnificent with forests, along whose
banks the Mississippians are opening a new theatre
for the accumulation of wealth, and where villages
spring up annually with the yearly harvest—
and the Pearl—a turbid and rapid torrent whose
banks are lined with fine plantations and beautiful

villages—this state boasts no rivers of any magnitude;
and these, when compared with the great Mississippi,
are but streams; and in their chief characteristics
they nearly resemble it.

But I have gone as far into geology as the limits
of a letter writer will permit. A volume might be
written upon the physical features of this country,
without exhausting a subject prolific in uncommon
interest, or half surveying a field, scarcely yet examined
by the geologist.[13]

37. XXXVII.

In my last letter I alluded to the geological features
of Mississippi, the peculiarities of its soil and
rivers, or streams, and the characteristics of its
scenery. In this I will give you a brief topographical
description of the state, embracing its principal
towns and villages. Were I confined to the details
of the tourist, in my sketches, you might follow me
step by step over hill and dale, through forest and
“bottom,” to the several places which may form the
subject of the first part of this letter. But a short
view of them, only, comes within my limits as a
letter-writer. For the more minute information I
possess upon this subject I am indebted to a gentleman,[14]
whose scientific and historical researches
have greatly contributed to the slender stock of information
upon this state—its resources, statistics,
and general peculiarities.

Although I have said a great deal of Natchez,
under this head something may be communicated

upon which I have not touched in my remarks
upon that city. Natchez is one hundred and fifty-five
miles from New-Orleans by land, and two hundred
and ninety-two by water. It contains a population
of about three thousand, the majority of
whom are coloured. The influx of strangers—
young merchants from the north, who have within
the last four years, bought out nearly all the old
standing merchants—numerous mechanics, and foreign
emigrants—is rapidly increasing the number,
and in five years, if the rail-road already surveyed
from this city to the capital, a distance of one hundred
and nine miles, is brought into operation, it
will probably contain twice the present number of
souls. Under the Spanish government vessels came
up to Natchez; and in 1803 there was, as appears
by a publication of Col. Andrew Marschalk, of Mississippi,
a brisk trade kept up between this and
foreign and American ports which suddenly ceased,
after a few years' continuance, on account of the obstacles
interposed by the Spaniards. In 1833, this
trade was revived by some enterprizing gentlemen
of Natchez, and cotton is now shipped directly to
the northern states and Europe, from this port, instead
of being conveyed by steamboats to New-Orleans
and there reshipped. There are two oil
mills in this city worked by steam. The oil is
manufactured from cotton-seed, which heretofore
was used as manure. This oil is said to be superior
to sperm oil, and the finest paint oil. Similar
manufactories are established in New-Orleans, and
I think, also, in Mobile. The material of which
this oil is made is so abundant that it will in all
probability in a very few years supersede the other
oils almost entirely. The “cake” is in consistency
very much like that of flax-seed. It is used, in
equal parts with coal, for fuel, and burns with a
clear flame, and a fire so made is equally warm as
one entirely of coal.

A Bethel church is to be erected this year under
the hill, the erection of which on this noted spot,
will be the boldest and most important step Christianity
has taken in the valley of the Mississippi.
There are four occasionally officiating Methodist
ministers here, one of the Presbyterian, and one
of the Episcopalian denominations. There are
eighteen physicians and surgeons, and sixteen lawyers,
the majority of whom are young men. There
is a weekly paper, with extensive circulation, and
three others are about to be established. There
are five schools or seminaries of learning—three
private, and two public—a flourishing academy for
males, and a boarding-school for young ladies, under
the care of very able teachers. There are also a
hospital and poor-house, and a highly useful orphan
asylum. There are no circulating libraries in the
city, nor I believe in the state. There are three
banks one of which—the Planter's bank—has
branches in seven different towns in the state.
Steamboats were first known at Natchez in 1811-12.

Washington, six miles north-east from Natchez,
with a charming country between, through which
winds one of the worst carriage-roads in the west,
not even excepting the delightful rail-roads from

Sandusky to Columbus, in Ohio, is a corporation
one mile square, containing about four hundred inhabitants,
of all sizes and colours. It contains a
fine brick hospital and poor-house in one building,
two brick churches, one of the Baptist, and the
other of the Methodist denomination. The first has
recently settled a preacher, the other has long had
a stationed minister, who regularly officiates in the
desk. There is a Presbyterian clergyman residing
in the place, whose church is five miles distant in
the country, in a fine grove on one of the highest
elevations in the state. The inhabitants of the village
are principally Methodists, a majority of which
sect will be found in nearly every village in the
south-west.

Jefferson College, the oldest and best endowed
collegiate institution in the state, is pleasantly situated
at the head of a green on the borders of the village.
It is now flourishing; but has for several years
been labouring under pecuniary embarrassments,
which are now, by a generous provision of Congress,
entirely removed, and with a fund of nearly two
hundred thousand dollars, it bids fair to become a
useful and distinguished institution. There is also
a female seminary in a retired part of this village,
which was handsomely endowed by Miss Elizabeth
Greenfield, of Philadelphia, a member of the society
of Friends, from whom it is denominated the Elizabeth
Academy. It is one of the first female institutions
in this state, and under the patronage of the
Methodist society.

Washington is one of the oldest towns in the state,

was formerly the seat of government, under the territorial
administration, and once contained many
more inhabitants than any other place except Natchez,
in the territory. It was nearly depopulated by
the yellow fever in 1825, from the effects of which
it has never recovered. The public offices, with
the exception of the Register's and Receiver's offices,
are removed to Jackson. The town possesses no
resources, and is now only remarkable for its quiet
beauty, the sabbath-like repose of its streets, and its
pure water, and healthy location, upon the plane of
an elevated table land, rising abruptly from the St.
Catharine's, which winds pleasantly along by one
side of the village with many romantic haunts for the
student and “walks” for the villagers, upon its banks.
There is a post office in the village, through which a
triweekly mail passes to and from Natchez. The
route of the rail-road will be through this place,
when it will again lift its head among the thriving
villages of the Great Valley.

Seltzertown, containing a tavern and a blacksmith's
shop (which always form the nucleus of an
American village) is six miles from Washington and
twelve from Natchez. It is remarkable only for the
extensive scenery around it, and the remarkable Indian
fortifications or temples in its vicinity. These
will form the subject of another letter.

Greenville, on the road from Natchez, passing
through the two former places, is twenty-one miles
from that city. It is delightfully situated in a little
green vale, through which winds a small stream.
The plain is crossed by the rail-road, which here becomes

a street, bordered by two rows of dilapidated
huses, overgrown with grass and half buried in venerable
shade trees. From the prison with its dungeons
fallen in, and its walls lifting themselves sullenly
above the ruins by which they are enclosed, to
the tavern with its sunken galleries, and the cobbler's
shop with its doorless threshold, all were in ruins, a
picture of rural desolation exhibiting the beau ideal
of the “deserted village.” Greenville was formerly
a place of some importance, but other towns have
grown up in more eligible spots, for which this has
been deserted by its inhabitants. One does not
meet with a lovelier prospect in this state, than that
presented to the eye on descending from the hill
south and west of the valley, into the quiet little vale
beneath, just before the going down of the sun. The
air of peace and quiet which reigns around the traveller,
will perhaps remind him of the valley whose
description has so delighted him while lingering over
the elegant pages of Rasselas.

Forty two miles from Natchez is Port Gibson,
one of the most flourishing and beautiful towns in
the south. It is only second to Natchez in the
beauty of its location, the regularity of its streets, the
neatness of its dwellings, and the number and excellence
of its public buildings. It is but seven
miles by land from the Mississippi, with which it
communicates by a stream, called Bayou Pierre,
navigable for keel and flat boats, and, in high floods,
for steamboats, quite to the village. It is very
healthy, and has seldom been visited by epidemics.
It contains about one thousand souls. The citizens

were once distinguished for their dissipation, if not
profligacy; but they are now more distinguished
for their intelligence and morality as a community.
There is no town in the south which possesses so
high a standard of morals as Port Gibson. This
reformation is the result of the evangelical labours
of the Presbyterian clergyman of that place; who,
with untiring industry and uncommon energy, combined
with sterling piety, in a very few years performed
the work and produced the effect of an age.

There are a Presbyterian and a Methodist church
in the town, with their respective clergymen. It
contains also a branch bank, court-house, gaol, post-office,
and one of the finest hotels in the state. A
weekly paper, called the “Correspondent,” and
very ably edited, is published here. The society
of the village and neighbourhood is not surpassed
by any in the state. There are some very pretty
country seats in the vicinity, the abodes of planters
of intelligence and wealth; and the country around
is thickly wooded, with fine plantations interspersed;
and the general features of the scenery, though
tame, are beautiful. The road from Natchez to
Port Gibson is through a rich planting country,
pleasantly undulating, with alternate forest and field
scenery on either hand. But beyond Port Gibson
the country assumes a more rugged aspect, and is
less beautiful. The road, for the first few miles,
winds among woods and cotton fields; but, after
crossing Bayou Pierre, at a ford, called “Grindstone
Ford,” where the first rock is seen, in coming north
from the Mexican Gulf, the forest is for many miles

unbroken. I cannot express the strange delight I
experienced as the iron heels of my horse first rung
upon the broad rocky pavement, when ascending the
bank of this stream from the water. No one but a
northerner, the bases and crests of whose native
hills are of granite, and who has passed two years
or more in the stoneless soil of this region, can duly
appreciate such emotions from such a cause.

For forty seven miles from Port Gibson, the road
winds through a “rolling” country, two thirds of
which is enveloped in the gloom of the primeval
forests, and then enters the little village of Raymond,
situated in an open space among the lofty
forest trees which enclose it on all sides. Raymond
has been planted and matured to a handsome
village, with a fine court-house, several hotels, and
neat private dwellings, within five years. The society,
like that of most new towns in this state, is
composed of young men, merchants, lawyers, and
physicians, the majority of whom are bachelors. The
village is built around a pleasant square, in the centre
of which is the court-house, one of the finest public
buildings in this part of the state. It contains about
four hundred inhabitants, not one fifth of whom are
females.

Beyond Raymond the country is less hilly,
spreading more into table lands, which in many
places are marshy. A ride of eight miles through
a rudely cultivated country, in whose deep forests
the persecuted deer finds a home, often bounding
across the path of the traveller, will terminate at
Clinton, formerly Mount Salus, one of the prettiest

and most flourishing villages in the state. It is situated
upon a cluster of precipitous hills, contains
some good buildings, and is a place of much business,
which a rail-road, now in projection to the
Mississippi, will have a tendency greatly to increase.
There is a Methodist church in the village, and a
small society of Presbyterians. The most flourishing
female seminary in the state is located in the
immediate vicinity, under the superintendence of a
lady, formerly well known in the literary world of
New-York, as the authoress of one or two works,
and a contributor to the columns of the “Mirror”
when in its infancy. There is also a college in this
place, but it is not of long standing or very flourishing.
The system adopted in this country, of
combining-an academy with a college, though the
state of education may require some such method,
will always be a clog to the advancement of the latter.
There is a Spanish proverb, “manacle a giant
to a dwarf and he must stoop,” which may have yet
a more extensive application, and the truth of which
this system is daily demonstrating. Here are a
land office and a printing office, which issues a
weekly paper. There are many enterprising professional
men and merchants in the village from
almost every state in the Union, but they are generally
bachelors, and congregate at the hotels, so that
for the number of inhabitants the proportion of families
and dwellings is very small. When a number
of high-spirited young men thus assemble in a little
village, a code of honour, woven of the finest texture
and of the most sensitive materials, will naturally
be established. This code will have for its basis—
feeling. It will be constantly appealed to, and its
adjudications sacredly observed. To the decisions
of such a tribunal, may be traced the numerous affaires
d'honneur which have occurred in the south
during the last twenty years, most of which originated
in villages composed principally of young
gentlemen. There is something striking to the eye
of a northerner, on entering one of these south-western
villages. He will find every third build
ing occupied by a lawyer or a doctor, around whose
open doors will be congregated knots of young men,
en deshabille, smoking and conversing, sometimes
with animation, but more commonly with an air of indifference.
He will pass by the stores and see them
sitting upon the counters or lounging about the doors.
In the streets and bar-rooms of the hotels, they will
cluster around him, fashionably dressed, with sword
canes dangling from their fingers. Wherever he
turns his eyes he sees nothing but young fellows.
Whole classes from medical and law schools, or
whole counting-houses from New-York or Boston,
seem to have been transported en masse into the little
village through which he is passing. An old man,
or a gray hair, scarcely relieves his vision. He will
be reminded, as he gazes about him upon the youthful
faces, of the fabled village, whose inhabitants
had drunk at the fountain of rejuvenescence. Women
he will find to resemble angels, more than he
had believed; for “few and far between,” are their
forms seen gliding through the streets, blockaded
by young gentlemen, and “few” are the bright eyes
that beam upon him from galleries and windows.
If he stays during the evening, he may pass it in
the noisy bar-room, the billiard-room, or at a wine-party.
If he remains a “season,” he may attend
several public balls in the hotel, where he will meet
with beautiful females, for whom the whole country,
with its villages and plantations for twenty miles
round, has been put under contribution. One of the
most fashionable assemblies I have attended in the
south-west, I was present at, one or two winters
since, in the village of Clinton.

This village contains about four hundred inhabitants,
and is thirty-five miles from Vicksburg, its
port, on the Mississippi. Vicksburg is about two
miles below the Walnut hills, one of the bluffs of
the Mississippi, and five hundred from the Balize.
It contains nearly two thousand inhabitants. Thirty
thousand bales of cotton, about one eighth of the
whole quantity shipped by the state at large, are
annually shipped from this place. In this respect
it is inferior only to Natchez and Grand Gulf, the
first of which ships fifty thousand. There is a
weekly paper published here, of a very respectable
character, and well edited, and another is in contemplation.
There are also a bank, with two or three
churches, and a handsome brick court-house, erected
on an eminence from which there is an extensive
view of the Mississippi, with its majestic steamers,
and humbler flat boats, “keels” and “arks,” and of
the vast forests of the Louisiana shore, which every
where, when viewed from the Mississippi side of
the river, exhibits the appearance of an ocean whose

surface, even to the level horizon, is thickly covered
with the tops of trees in full foliage, like the golden
isles of sea weed floating in the southern seas.

There is no town in the south-west more flourishing
than Vicksburg. It is surrounded by rich
plantations, and contains many public-spirited individuals;
whose co-operation in public enterprises
is opening new avenues of wealth for the citizens,
and laying a broad and secure foundation for the
future importance of the town. It is already a
powerful rival of Natchez: but the two places are
so distant from each other, that their interests will
always revolve in different circles. The situation
of this town, on the shelving declivity of a cluster
of precipitous hills, which rise abruptly from the
river, is highly romantic. The houses are scattered
in picturesque groups on natural terraces along
the river, the balcony or portico of one often overhanging
the roof of another. Merchandise destined
for Clinton is landed here, and hauled over a hilly
country to that place, a distance of thirty-five miles.
Cotton is often conveyed to Vicksburg, and other
shipping places, from a distance of one hundred
miles in the interior. The cotton teams, containing
usually ten bales, are drawn by six or eight yoke
of oxen, which accomplish about twenty miles a
day in good weather. The teamsters camp every
night, in an enclosure formed by their waggons and
cattle, with a bright fire burning; and occasionally
their bivouacs present striking groups for the pencil.
The majority of these teamsters are slaves;
but there are many small farmers who drive their

own oxen, often conveying their whole crop on one
waggon. These small farmers form a peculiar class,
and include the majority of the inhabitants in the east
part of this state. With the awkwardness of the
Yankee countryman, they are destitute of his morals,
education, and reverence for religion. With
the rude and bold qualities of the chivalrous Kentuckian,
they are destitute of his intelligence, and
the humour which tempers and renders amusing his
very vices. They are in general uneducated,
and their apparel consists of a coarse linsey-woolsey,
of a dingy yellow or blue, with broad-brimmed
hats; though they usually follow their teams barefooted
and bare-headed, with their long locks hanging
over their eyes and shoulders, giving them a
wild appearance. Accost them as they pass you,
one after another, in long lines, cracking their whips,
which they use instead of the goad—perhaps the
turn-out of a whole district, from the old, gray-headed
hunter, to the youngest boy that can wield
the whip, often fifteen and twenty feet in length,
including the staff—and their replies will generally
be sullen or insulting. There is in them a total
absence of that courtesy which the country people
of New-England manifest for strangers. They will
seldom allow carriages to pass them, unless attended
by gentlemen, who often have to do battle for
the high-way. Ladies, in carriages or on horseback,
if unattended by gentlemen, are most usually
insulted by them. They have a decided aversion
to a broad-cloth coat, and this antipathy is transferred
to the wearer. There is a species of warfare
kept up between them and the citizens of the shipping
ports, mutually evinced by the jokes and tricks
played upon them by the latter when they come
into market; and their retaliation, when their hour
of advantage comes, by an encounter in the back
woods, which they claim as their domain. At home
they live in log-houses on partially cleared lands,
labour hard in their fields, sometimes owning a few
slaves, but more generally with but one or none.—
They are good hunters, and expert with the rifle,
which is an important article of furniture in their
houses. Whiskey is their favourite beverage, which
they present to the stranger with one hand, while
they give him a chair with the other. They are
uneducated, and destitute of the regular administration
of the gospel. As there is no common
school system of education adopted in this state,
their children grow up as rude and ignorant as themselves;
some of whom, looking as wild as young
Orsons, I have caught in the cotton market at Natchez,
and questioned upon the simple principles of
religion and education which every child is supposed
to know, and have found them wholly uninformed.
This class of men is valuable to the state,
and legislative policy, at least, should recommend
such measures as would secure religious instruction
to the adults, and the advantages of a common education
to the children, who, in thirty years, will form
a large proportion of the native inhabitants of Mississippi.

About three miles from Clinton, on the main road
to the capital, is situated “New Forest,” a cotton

plantation, owned and recently improved by two
enterprising young gentlemen from Hallowell, in
Maine. They are the sons of one of the most eminent
and estimable medical gentlemen in New-England;
whose pre-eminent success in the management
of an appaling and desolating epidemic,
a few years since, acquired for him a proud and
distinguished name, both at home and abroad.—
New Forest is spread out upon the elevated ridges
which separate the waters of the Chitalusa, or Big
Black, and Pearl rivers; and pleasantly situated
in one of the richest and healthiest counties, on a
line with the projected rail-road, and in the immediate
neighbourhood of the capital of the state—it
will soon become one of the most valuable and
beautiful “homesteads” to be seen in the south.

Besides the proprietors of this estate, there are
several other young gentlemen from Maine, residing
in Mississippi, who, with the characteristic energy
and perseverance of northerners, are steadily advancing
to wealth and distinction.

Jackson, the capital of the state, is in latitude
32° 17′, and in longitude 13° 07′ west of Washington.
It is one hundred and eight miles north-east
of Natchez, and forty-five miles east of Vicksburg,
on the Mississippi. It lies on the right bank of
Pearl river; which, after a southerly course, and
dividing the state into two nearly equal parts, empties
into Lake Borgne, in the Gulf of Mexico. This
river is navigable two hundred miles from its mouth,
and steamboats have been as far as Jackson. But
the torrent is rapid, and the obstructions to navigation

are very numerous. There are many pleasant
and thriving villages on its banks, and a rich country
of plantations spreads away on either side. The
great rail-road from New-Orleans to Nashville will
run near and parallel with this river for a great distance,
and will monopolize, for the former market,
all that branch of the cotton trade which is now
attached to the ports on the Mississippi above mentioned.
Jackson was but recently selected as the
seat of government of this state. Its site was chosen
for its central position alone, without any reference
to its resources, or any other aids to future
importance, than it might derive from being the
state capital. It is built upon a level area, half a
mile square, cut out from the depth of the forest
which surrounds it. It is a quarter of a mile from
the Pearl, which is concealed by the forests; a
steep, winding path through which leads to the water
side, where the turbid current darts by, a miniature
resemblance of the great river rolling to the
west of it. There are a branch bank in this place,
and a plain, two-storied brick edifice, occupied by
the legislature and courts of justice. Three newspapers
are published here, which, like all others in
this state, are of a warmly political character. A
handome state house is now in the progress of erection,
and many private and public buildings are going
up in various parts of the town. There is a
steam saw-mill near the village, for water privileges
are unknown in this region of impetuous streams;
and several other avenues of wealth and public benefit
are opening by the enterprising citizens.—
During the intervals of the sessions of the legislature
and supreme court, Jackson is a very uninteresting
village; but during the sessions of these
bodies, there is no town in the state which, for the
time, presents so lively and stirring a scene.

Vernon is a pleasant village situated on a rapid
and navigable stream, which often winds through
wild and romantic scenery. Steamboats ascend
to this place during part of the year. It is rapidly
improving and filling with many young men, some
of whom, possessing both talent and industry, are
natives of this state. It is worthy of remark that
those communities composed principally of young
Mississippians, are distinguished by much less dissipation
and adherence to the code of honour formerly
alluded to, than such as are formed of young
men principally from the northern and Atlantic
southern states. The young Mississippian is not
the irascible, hot-headed, and quarrelsome being he
has been represented, although naturally warmhearted
and full of generous feelings, and governed
by a high sense of honour. He is seldom a beau
or a buck in the city-acceptation of those terms,
but dresses plainly—as often in pantaloons of Kentucky
jean, a broad brimmed white hat, brogans
and a blanket coat, as in any other style of vesture.
Nevertheless he knows how to be well-dressed, and
the public assemblies of the south-west boast more
richly attired young gentlemen than are often found
in the assembly-rooms of the Atlantic cities. He
is educated to become a farmer—an occupation
which requires and originates plainness of manners

—and not to shine in the circles of a city. He prefers
riding over his own, or his father's estate,
wrapped in his blanket coat, to a morning lounge in
Broadway enveloped in a fashionable cloak. He
would rather walk booted and spurred upon the
“turf,” the “exchange” of southern planters, than
move, shod in delicate slippers, over the noiseless
carpet of the drawing-room. His short handled
riding-whip serves him better than the slender rattan—his
blanketed saddle is his cabriolet—the road
between his plantation and a cotton market, his
“drive”—and the noble forests on his domain—the
home of the stag and deer—he finds when he
moves through their deep glades, with his rifle in
his hand, better suited to his tastes than the “mall,”
or Hyde Park, and he will be ready to bet a bale
of cotton that the sport which they afford him is at
least an equivalent to shooting cock-sparrows from
a thorn bush on a moor.

Satartia is on the left side of the river Yazoo,
fourteen miles from Vernon and thirty-five by land
from Vicksburg. The village is pleasantly situated
near the water, contains ten or fifteen stores,
a tavern, and several dwelling houses, with a post-office.
From ten to twelve thousand bales of cotton
are annually shipped here. It promises to be
one of the largest shipping ports in north Mississippi.

Benton, on the Yazoo, twenty-two miles to the
north of Vernon, is a growing place, and issues a
weekly newspaper. The rich country around is
rapidly settling, and in the course of twenty years

it will be one of the wealthiest portions of this state.
Amsterdam, within steamboat navigation, on a deep
creek, sixteen miles from Vicksburg, is a thriving
town. Columbia, on the east bank of the Pearl, is
accessible by steamboats, and Columbus, on the
Tombeckbee, some hundred miles above Mobile, is
a flourishing town. There is here a printing press
which issues a weekly paper. Steamboats occasionally
ascend to this place from Mobile. There
are besides, east of the Pearl river, Brandon, so
called in honour of the ex-governor; Winchester,
Westville, Pearlington, and Shieldsborough—the
latter in the southern extremity of the state on Lake
Borgne, within forty miles of New-Orleans—most
of which are thriving villages. One of the most
flourishing towns on the Pearl is Monticello, about
ninety miles east of Natchez.

Manchester, on the Yazoo, has been but recently
settled. It is very flourishing, contains many stores
and dwellings, and ships from twelve to fifteen
thousand bales of cotton annually. It is seventy-six
miles from the mouth of the Yazoo, on the Mississippi.
Twenty-five miles from this village is Rankin,
within three miles of steamboat navigation, and
rapidly rising into importance. There are many
other villages in this new region yet in embryo, but
which must grow with the country into wealth and
distinction.

Grand Gulf, about forty-five miles above Natchez,
on the Mississippi, situated on a natural terrace,
receding to a wooded crescent of hills on the north
and east, and just above a dangerous eddy which

gives the name to the town, is the third town of
commercial importance in the state. It was settled
five years ago, and the present year about forty-five
thousand bales of cotton were shipped from
this port. It contains about nine hundred inhabitants.
A rail-road is projected to Port Gibson eight
miles back from the river, and to the interior, which
will benefit both places. Within sight of the village,
and a short distance above it, is the only cliff
of rocks in this region. Mississippians and Louisianians
should do pilgrimage there. In the vicinity
of this town Aaron Burr surrendered to General
Mead, and the detachment ordered out to arrest
him.

Rodney is a pleasant town twenty miles above
Natchez, on the river. It is a place of commercial
importance, and ships annually many thousand bales
of cotton. Its inhabitants are enterprising and intelligent.

Warrenton, nine miles below Vicksburg, is the
only other village between Natchez and the latter
place.

The most important settlement south of Natchez
is Woodville, a beautiful village, built around
a square, in the centre of which is a handsome
court-house. Various streets diverge from this public
square, and are soon lost in the forests, which
enclose the village. There are some eminent lawyers
who reside here, and the neighbourhood is one
of the wealthiest and most polished in the state.
Governor Poindexter resided till recently at a neat
country seat a short ride from Woodville, striking

only for its quiet cottage-like beauty. Dr. Carmichael,
president of the board of medical censors of
this state, and formerly a surgeon in the revolutionary
army, and the late Governor Brandon, reside
also in the neighbourhood, but still more distant in
the country. One of the most eminent lawyers of
this place is a native of Portland, who has also distinguished
himself as an occasional contributor to
the annuals. One of the first lawyers in Vickburg,
if not in the state, is a native of Maine, and a graduate
of Bowdoin. He is this year a candidate for
congress; though with that juvenility, which characterises
southern athletæ in every intellectual
arena, he scarcely yet numbers thirty summers.

There are three churches in Woodville; a Methodist,
Episcopalian, and Baptist. A weekly paper
is published here, conducted with talent and editorial
skill. The court-house, which is a substantial
and handsome structure of brick, contains a superior
clock. A market-house and a gaol are also
numbered among the public buildings. There is a
branch of the Planters' bank here, and an academy
for boys and another for girls, established within a
mile of the village, are excellent schools. Woodville
is about eighteen miles from the Mississippi.
Its port is Fort Adams, formerly mentioned. A rail-road
is in contemplation, between Woodville and
St. Francisville, La. twenty-nine miles distant, on
the river, which will render the communication easy
and rapid to New-Orleans. This village contains
about eight hundred inhabitants, and is one of the
healthiest in Mississippi. During a period of

eighteen months—according to Mr. Vose, to whose
accurate and elaborate researches I am indebted for
much of my information upon the topography of this
state—out of one hundred and forty-four men, of
whom he kept an account for that length of time,
only three died, and two of these were killed.

Fayette, a very neat and pleasant village, containing
a handsome court-house and church, is twenty-five
miles east of Natchez. It is the most rural
and New-England like village, except Port Gibson,
in the state. Meadville, to the south, is a small
retired place, containing a post-office.

Kingston, on the road from Natchez to Woodville,
originally settled by a colony from New-Jersey,
is a small village, containing a church, post-office,
two or three stores, and several dwelling-houses.
This and Pinckneyville, a few miles south
of Woodville, the latter merely a short street, lined
by a few dwelling-houses and stores, are the only
places south of Natchez, besides those already
mentioned, of any importance. The site of White
Apple village, the capital of the Natchez tribe, and
the residence of “Great Sun,” chief of the chiefs
of that interesting nation, is pointed out to the traveller,
on the river road to Woodville from Natchez.
A few mounds, with the usual remains of spear and
arrow heads, beads, and broken pottery only exist,
to mark the spot. Fragments of gold lace and Spanish
weapons have been found in the neighbourhood,
with many other traces of the march of the
Spanish army through this country.

I will conclude my long letter with an allusion

to the only remaining place of any importance.—
About eighteen miles to the east of Woodville are
the “Elysian Fields!” “Shade of Achilles,” you
exclaim, “are the Elysü Campi of thy ghostly wanderings
discovered in a Mississippian forest?” Nevertheless
they are here, and the great problem is
solved. Some have placed these regions in the sun,
some in the moon, and others in the middle region
of the air; and others again in the centre of the
earth, in the vicinity of Tartarus, and probably in
the neighbourhood of the “incognita terra” of Capt.
Symmes. By many, and this was the vulgar opinion,
they were supposed to lie among the Canary
isles: but, march of mind! more modern and wiser
heads have discovered their position nearly on
the confines of Luisiana and Mississippi. Here
the traveller will behold beautiful birds with gorgeous
plumage—for splendidly enamelled birds enrich,
with their brilliant dyes, the forests of the
south—and his ear will drink in the sweetest melody
from the feathered myriads—such as would
have tempted even “pius æneas” to linger on his
way: but this, alas! is all that his imagination will
recognize of Elysium. Trojan chiefs he will find
metamorphosed into Mandingo negroes, who, in
lieu of managing “war-horses,” and handling arms,
are guiding, with loud clamour, the philosophic
mule, or wielding the useful hoe. Nymphs gathering
flowers, “themselves the fairer,” he will find
changed into Congo sylphs, whose zoneless waists
plainly demonstrate the possibility of the quadrature,
who with skilful fingers gather the milk-white
cotton from the teeming stalks. A few buildings,
of an ordinary kind, and a post-office, surrounded
by cotton fields and woods, make up the sum of
this celestial abode for departed heroes.

38. XXXVIII.

For the tourist to give sketches of the south
without adverting to the slave population, would be
as difficult, as for the historian to write of the early
settlement of America without alluding to the
aborigines. I shall, therefore, in this and two or
three subsequent letters, discursively, as the subject
is suggested to me, introduce such notices of the
relative and actual condition of the slaves in this
state, as may have a tendency to correct any prejudices,
which as a New-Englander you may have
imbibed, and set you right upon a subject, which
has been singularly misrepresented. With slavery
in the abstract, my remarks have nothing to do.
Southerners and northerners think alike here—but I
wish to present the subject before you precisely, as
during a long residence in Mississippi it has constantly

been presented to me—not to give you ex parte
facts, and those from the darkest side of the picture—
recording the moan here, and omitting the smile there
—remembering the sound of the lash, and forgetting
that of the violin—painting the ragged slave, and
passing by his gayly-dressed fellow—but to state
facts impartially and fearlessly, leaving you to draw
your own conclusions.

Aware of the nature of the ground, upon which I
am about to venture, I trust that I shall approach a
subject upon which the sons of the chivalresque
south are naturally so sensitive—involving as it
does, a right so sacred as that of property—without
those prejudices with which a northerner might be
supposed fore-armed. Among the numerous important
subjects with which the public mind within
a few years past has been agitated, no one has been
so obscured by error, and altogether so little understood
as this.

In my letters from New-Orleans, there was but
little allusion to this subject, as I then possessed
very slight and imperfect knowledge of it. But the
broad peculiarities of slavery, and the general traits
of African character differ not materially, whether
exhibited on the extensive sugar fields of Louisiana,
or on the cotton plantations of Mississippi. The
relative situations, also, of the slaves are so much
alike, that a dissertation upon slavery as it exists in
one state, can with almost equal precision be applied
to it as existing in the other. All my remarks
upon this subject, however, are the result only of
my observations in the state of Mississippi.

“Will you ride with me into the country?” said
a young planter as we rose from the table d'hote of
the Mansion house. “I am about purchasing a few
negroes, and a peep into a slave-mart may not be
uninteresting to you.” I readily embraced the opportunity
thus presented of visiting a southern slave
market; and in a few minutes our horses were at
the door—long-tailed pacers with flowing manes
and slender limbs. One of them was caparisoned
with the deep concave Spanish saddle I have so
often mentioned, with a high pummel terminating in
a round flat head—and covered with blue broad-cloth,
which hung nearly to the stirrup, and, extending
in one piece far behind, formed ample housings.
The other horse bore an ordinary saddle, over which
was thrown a light blue merino blanket several
times folded, and secured to the saddle by a gayly-woven
surcingle. Southerners usually ride with a
thick blanket, oftener white than coloured, thus
bound over their saddles, forming a comfortable
cushion, and another placed between the saddle and
the back of the horse. These blankets are considered
indispensable in this climate. They are not always
of the purest white, and the negroes, whose taste in
this as well as in many other things might be improved,
usually put them on awry, with a ragged
corner hanging down in fine contrast with the handsome
saddle, and in pleasant companionship with
the cloth skirts of the rider. These little matters,
however, the southerner seldom notices. If well
mounted, which he is always sure to be, the “keeping”
of the ensemble is but a secondary affair.

The saddle blankets are often unstrapped by the
rider, in case of rain, and folded about him after the
manner of the Choctaws. This custom of wearing
blankets over the saddle originated with the old
pioneers, who carried them to sleep on, as they
camped in the woods.

Crossing Cotton Square—the chief market place
for cotton in the city—we in a few minutes entered
upon the great northern road leading to Jackson, the
capital of this state, and thence to Washington, the
seat of the general government. Near the intersection
of this road with the city streets, a sudden clanking
of chains, startled our horses, and the next instant
a gang of negroes, in straggling procession, followed
by an ordinary looking white man armed with a
whip, emerged from one of the streets. Each negro
carried slung over his shoulder a polished iron ball,
apparently a twenty-four pounder, suspended by a
heavy ox chain five or six feet in length and secured
to the right ancle by a massive ring. They moved
along under their burthen as though it were any
thing but comfortable—some with idealess faces,
looking the mere animal, others with sullen and dogged
looks, and others again talking and laughing as
though “Hymen's chains had bound them.” This
galley-looking procession, whose tattered wardrobe
seemed to have been stolen from a chimney-sweep,
was what is very appropriately termed the “Chain
gang,” a fraternity well known in New-Orleans and
Natchez, and valued for its services in cleaning and
repairing the streets. In the former city however
there is one for whites as well as blacks, who may

be known by their parti-coloured clothing. These
gangs are merely moving penitentiaries, appropriating
that amount of labor, which at the north is expended
within four walls, to the broader limits of
the city. In Natchez, negro criminals only are
thus honoured—a “coat of tar and feathers” being
applied to those white men who may require some
kind of discipline not provided by the courts of justice.
This last summary process of popular justice,
or more properly excitement, termed “Lynch's
law,” I believe from its originator, is too much in
vogue in this state. In the resentment of public as
well as private wrongs, individuals have long been in
the habit of forestalling and improving upon the decisions
of the courts, by taking the execution of the
laws into their own hands. The consequence is,
that the dignity of the bench is degraded, and justice
is set aside for the exhibition of wild outbreaks of
popular feeling. But this summary mode of procedure
is now, to the honour of the south, rapidly falling
into disuse, and men feel willing to yield to the
dignity of the law and acquiesce in its decisions,
even to the sacrifice of individual prejudices. That
“border” state of society from which the custom
originated no longer exists here—and the causes
having ceased which at first, in the absence of proper
tribunals, may have rendered it perhaps necessary
thus to administer justice, the effect will naturally
cease also—and men will surrender the sword of
justice to the public tribunals, erected by themselves.

The want of a penitentiary has had a tendency to

keep this custom alive in this state longer than it
would otherwise have existed. When an individual
is guilty of any offence, which renders him amenable
to the laws, he must either be acquitted altogether
or suffer death. There is no intermediate
mode of punishment, except the stocks, whipping,
branding and cropping—the last two are seldom resorted
to now as legal punishments, and the others
are regarded as too light an expiation for an offence
which merited a seven years' imprisonment. Therefore
when a criminal is acquitted, because his guilt is
not quite sufficient to demand the sacrifice of his
life, but enough to confine him to many years' hard
labour in a state's prison—popular vengeance, if
the nature of his guilt has enlisted the feelings of
the multitude—immediately seizes upon him, and the
poor wretch expiates his crime, by one of the most
cruel systems of justice that human ingenuity has
ever invented. When a criminal is here condemned
to death, whose sentence in other states
would have been confinement for a limited period,
there is in public feeling sometimes a reaction, as
singularly in the other extreme. Petitions for his
pardon are circulated, and, with columns of names
appended, presented to the governor, for here there
can be no commutation of a sentence of death.—
There must be a free, unconditional pardon or the
scaffold. Sometimes a criminal under sentence of
death is pardoned by the governor, thinking his
crime not sufficiently aggravated to be atoned for
by his life, which may often be the case in a state
where eleven crimes are punishable with death.[15]
In such instances the criminal, unless escorted beyond
the reach of popular resentment, receives from
the multitude a commutation of his sentence, which,
through the tender mercies of his judges, is more
dreadful than death itself. Death indeed has in two
or three instances terminated the sufferings of these
victims of public feeling; sometimes they have been
placed upright in a skiff with their arms pinioned
behind them, and a jug of whiskey placed at their
feet, and thus thrown upon the mercy of the Mississippi,
down which under a burning sun, naked and
bareheaded they are borne, till rescued by some
steamer, cast upon the inhospitable shores, or buried
beneath the waves. This act, inhuman as it may
appear, does not indicate a more barbarous or inhuman
state of society than elsewhere. It is the consequence
of a deficiency in the mode and means of
punishment. Was there but one sentence passed
upon all criminals in sober New-England, and that
sentence, death, humanity would lead to numerous
acquittals and pardons, while popular feeling, when
it felt itself injured, refusing to acquiesce in the total
escape of the guilty, would take upon itself to inflict
that punishment which the code had neglected
to provide. A penitentiary in this state would at
once do away this custom, which however necessary
it may appear in the opinion of those who adhere
to it, can never be defended.

The “chain gang,” which led to this digression,
consists of insubordinate negroes and slaves, who,
having run away from their masters, have been
taken up and confined in jail, to await the reclamation
of their owners; during the interval elapsing
between their arrest and the time of their liberation
by their masters, they are daily led forth from the
prison to work on the streets, under the charge of
an overseer. This punishment is considered very
degrading, and merely the threat of the Calaboose,
or the “ball and chain,” will often intimidate and
render submissive the most incorrigible.

“Hi! Bill—dat you in ball and chain?” said, as
we passed by, a young slave well dressed and
mounted on his master's fine saddle-horse; “I no
tink you eber runaway—you is a disgrace to we
black gentlemen—I neber 'sociate wid you 'gain.”

Bill, who was a tall, good-looking mulatto, the
coachman of a gentleman near town, and of course,
high in the scale of African society—seemed to feel
the reproof, and be sensible of his degradation; for
he hung his head moodily and in silence. The
other prisoners, however, began to vituperate the
young horseman, who was glad to escape from their
Billingsgate missiles, by quickening his speed.

When a runaway is apprehended he is committed
to jail, and an advertisement describing his person
and wearing apparel, is inserted in the newspaper
for six months, if he is not claimed in the interim;

at the expiration of which period he may be sold at
auction, and the proceeds, after deducting all expenses,
go to the use of the county. Should the
owner subsequently claim and prove his property,
the amount paid into the treasury, on account of the
sale, is refunded to him. An owner, making his claim
before the six months have expired, and proving his
property before a justice of the peace, is allowed to
take him away on producing a certificate to that effect
from the justice, and paying the expenses incurred
in the apprehension and securing of his slave.
All runaways, or suspected runaways, may lawfully
be apprehended, and carried before a justice of the
peace, who at his discretion may either commit
them to jail, or send them to the owner, and the
person by whom the arrest was made, is entitled to
six dollars for each, on delivering him to his master.

The road, for the first mile after leaving town,
passed through a charming country, seen at intervals,
and between long lines of unpainted, wretched
looking dwellings, occupied as “groggeries,” by
free negroes, or poor emigrants. The contrast between
the miserable buildings and their squalid
occupants, and the rich woodlands beyond them on
either side, among whose noble trees rose the white
columns and lofty roofs of elegant villas, was certainly
very great, but far from agreeable. On a
hill a short distance from the road the “Orphan
Asylum” was pointed out to me, by my companion,
as a monument of the benevolence and public
spirit of the ladies of Natchez. Shortly after the
prevalence of a great epidemic in this city, seventeen

years ago, which left many children orphans,
and destitute, a few distinguished ladies formed
themselves into a society for their aid, obtained
bountiful subscriptions, for on such occasions hearts
and purses are freely opened, gathered the parentless
children scattered throughout the city, and
placed them in this asylum, where all destitute orphans
have since found a home. The institution is
now in a flourishing state, and is under the patronage
of several ladies of great respectability. Some
distance beyond the asylum, to the left, a fine view
of groves and green hills, presenting a prospect
strikingly resembling English park scenery, terminated
in the roofs and columns of a “southern
palace” rising above rich woods and ever-green foliage—the
residence of the family of a late distinguished
officer under the Spanish regime. These
massive structures, with double colonnades and
spacious galleries, peculiar to the opulent southern
planter, are numerous in the neighbourhood of
Natchez, but they date back to the great cotton era,
when fortunes were made almost in a single season.
Magnificence was then the prevailing taste, and the
walls of costly dwellings rose, as the most available
means of displaying to the public eye the rapidly
acquired wealth of successful speculators. But
times are now somewhat changed. The rage for
these noble and expensive structures has passed
away, and those which are now seen, rear themselves
among magnificent groves—monuments only
of the past, when the good old customs of Virginia
characterized the inhabitants. These were for the
most part gentlemen of education, or officers of the
army—for those were military times. This was
the day of dinner parties and courtly balls—an era to
which the gentlemen, who participated in them, now
look back with a sigh. Perhaps no state—not even
Virginia herself, which Mississippi claims as her
mother country—could present a more hospitable,
chivalrous, and high-minded class of men, or more
cultivated females than this, during the first few
years, subsequent to its accession to the Union.

39. XXXIX.

Having terminated my last letter with one of my
usual digressions, before entering upon the subject
with which I had intended to fill its pages, I will
now pursue my original design, and introduce you
into one of the great slave-marts of the south-west.

A mile from Natchez we came to a cluster of
rough wooden buildings, in the angle of two roads,
in front of which several saddle-horses, either tied
or held by servants, indicated a place of popular
resort.

“This is the slave market,” said my companion,
pointing to a building in the rear; and alighting,
we left our horses in charge of a neatly dressed
yellow boy belonging to the establishment. Entering
through a wide gate into a narrow court-yard,
partially enclosed by low buildings, a scene of a
novel character was at once presented. A line of
negroes, commencing at the entrance with the tallest,
who was not more than five feet eight or nine
inches in height—for negroes are a low rather than
a tall race of men—down to a little fellow about
ten years of age, extended in a semicircle around
the right side of the yard. There were in all about
forty. Each was dressed in the usual uniform of
slaves, when in market, consisting of a fashionably
shaped, black fur hat, roundabout and trowsers of
coarse corduroy velvet, precisely such as are worn
by Irish labourers, when they first “come over the
water;” good vests, strong shoes, and white cotton
shirts, completed their equipment. This dress they
lay aside after they are sold, or wear out as soon
as may be; for the negro dislikes to retain the indication
of his having recently been in the market.
With their hats in their hands, which hung down
by their sides, they stood perfectly still, and in close
order, while some gentlemen were passing from
one to another examining for the purpose of buying.
With the exception of displaying their teeth when
addressed, and rolling their great white eyes about
the court—they were so many statues of the most
glossy ebony. As we entered the mart, one of the
slave merchants—for a “lot” of slaves is usually

accompanied, if not owned, by two or three individuals—approached
us, saying “Good morning, gentlemen!
Would you like to examine my lot of boys?[16]
I have as fine a lot as ever came into market.”—
We approached them, one of us as a curious spectator,
the other as a purchaser; and as my friend
passed along the line, with a scrutinizing eye—giving
that singular look, peculiar to the buyer of slaves
as he glances from head to foot over each individual
—the passive subjects of his observations betrayed
no other signs of curiosity than that evinced by an
occasional glance. The entrance of a stranger into
a mart is by no means an unimportant event to the
slave, for every stranger may soon become his master
and command his future destinies. But negroes
are seldom strongly affected by any circumstances,
and their reflections never give them much uneasiness.
To the generality of them, life is mere animal
existence, passed in physical exertion or enjoyment.
This is the case with the field hands in particular,
and more so with the females than the males,
who through a long life seldom see any other white
person than their master or overseer, or any other
gentleman's dwelling than the “great hus,” the
“white house” of these little domestic empires in
which they are the subjects. To this class a change
of masters is a matter of indifference;—they are handed
from one to another with the passiveness of a purchased
horse. These constitute the lowest rank of
slaves, and lowest grade in the scale of the human
species. Domestic and city slaves form classes of a
superior order, though each constitutes a distinct class
by itself. I shall speak of these more fully hereafter.

“For what service in particular did you want to
buy?” inquired the “trader of my friend, “A coachman.”
“There is one I think may suit you, sir,”
said he; “George, step out here.” Forthwith a
light-coloured negro, with a fine figure and good
face, bating an enormous pair of lips, advanced a
step from the line, and looked with some degree of
intelligence, though with an air of indifference, upon
his intended purchaser.

“How old are you, George?” he inquired. “I
don't recollect, sir, 'zactly—b'lieve I'm somewere
`bout twenty-dree.”' “Where were you raised?”
“On master R—'s farm in Wirginny.” “Then
you are a Virginia negro.” “Yes, master, me full
blood Wirginny.” “Did you drive your master's
carriage?” “Yes, master, I drove ole missus' carage,
more dan four year.” “Have you a wife?”
“Yes, master, I lef' young wife in Richmond, but I
got new wife here in de lot. I wishy you buy her,
master, if you gwine to buy me.”

Then came a series of the usual questions from
the intended purchaser. “Let me see your teeth
—your tongue—open your hands—roll up your
sleeves—have you a good appetite? are you good
tempered? “Me get mad sometime,” replied George
to the last query, “but neber wid my horses.” “What
do you ask for this boy, sir?” inquired the planter,
after putting a few more questions to the unusually
loquacious slave. “I have held him at one thousand
dollars, but I will take nine hundred and

seventy-five cash. The bargain was in a few minutes
concluded, and my companion took the negro
at nine hundred and fifty, giving negotiable paper
—the customary way of paying for slaves—at four
months. It is, however, generally understood, that
if servants prove unqualified for the particular service
for which they are bought, the sale is dissolved.
So there is in general perfect safety in purchasing
servants untried, and merely on the warrant of the
seller. George, in the meanwhile, stood by, with
his hat in his hand, apparently unconcerned in the
negotiations going on, and when the trader said to
him, “George, the gentleman has bought you; get
ready to go with him,” he appeared gratified at the
tidings, and smiled upon his companions apparently
quite pleased, and then bounded off to the buildings
for his little bundle. In a few minutes he returned
and took leave of several of his companions, who,
having been drawn up into line only to be shown to
purchasers, were now once more at liberty, and
moving about the court, all the visiters having left
except my friend and myself. “You mighty lucky,
George” said one, congratulating him, “to get sol so
quick.” Oh, you neber min', Charly,” replied the
delighted George; “your turn come soon too.”

“You know who you' master be—whar he live?”
said another. “No, not zactly; he lib on plantation
some whar here 'bout.” After taking leave of
his companions, George came, hat in hand, very
respectfully, to his purchaser, and said, “Young
master, you never be sorry for buy George; I make
you a good servant. But—beg pardon, master—

but—if master would be so good as buy Jane—”
“Who is Jane?”—“My wife, since I come from
Wirginny. She good wife and a good girl—she
good seamstress an' good nurse—make de nice
shirts and ebery ting.”

“Where is she, George?” “Here she be, master,”
said he, pointing to a bright mulatto girl, about
eighteen, with a genteel figure and a lively countenance,
who was waiting with anxiety the reply of
the planter. Opposite to the line of males was also
a line of females, extended along the left side of
the court. They were about twenty in number,
dressed in neat calico frocks, white aprons and
capes, and fancy kerchiefs, tied in a mode peculiar
to the negress, upon their heads. Their whole appearance
was extremely neat and “tidy.” They
could not be disciplined to the grave silence observed
by the males, but were constantly laughing
and chattering with each other in suppressed voices,
and appeared to take, generally, a livelier interest
in the transactions in which all were equally concerned.
The planter approached this line of female
slaves, and inquired of the girl her capabilities as
seamstress, nurse, and ironer. Her price was seven
hundred and fifty dollars. He said he would take
her to his family; and if the ladies were pleased
with her, he would purchase her. The poor girl
was as much delighted as though already purchased;
and, at the command of the trader, went to
prepare herself to leave the mart. Some other negroes
were purchased, several of whom appeared
merely powerful combinations of bone and muscle,

and the only idea suggested to the mind, in gazing
upon them, was of remarkable physical energy.
In the dull eye and fleshy mouth there was no expression
indicative of intellect.

It is the popular opinion, both at the north and
south, that the negro is inferior in intellect to the
white man. This opinion is not, however, founded
upon just experience. The African intellect has
never been developed. Individuals, indeed, have
been educated, whose acquirements certainly reflect
honour upon the race. Uneducated negroes have
also exhibited indications of strong intellectual vigour.
And because, in both instances, the negro
has shown himself still inferior to the white man,
he is unhesitatingly pronounced an inferior being,
irremediably so, in the estimation of his judges, by
the operation of organic laws. That the African
intellect, in its present state, is inferior to that of
the European, is undeniable: but that, by any peculiarity
in his organized system, a necessary inferiority
ensues, will not so readily be admitted.
Physiologists have agreed, that physical peculiarities
may be communicated from generation to generation;
and it is no less certain that mental talents
may thus be transmitted also. Dr. King, in speaking
of the fatality which attended the house of Stuart,
says, “If I were to ascribe their calamities to
another cause” (than evil fate), “or endeavour to
account for them by any natural means, I should
think they were chiefly owing to a certain obstinacy
of temper, which appears to have been hereditary,
and inherent in all the Stuarts, except Charles the

second.” The Brahmins are much superior in intellect
to all the other castes in Hindostan; and it
is mentioned, says Combe, by the missionaries, as
an ascertained fact, that the children of the Brahmins
are naturally more acute, intelligent, and docile,
than those of the inferior castes, age and other
circumstances being equal. “Parents,” says Dr.
Gregory, “frequently live again in their offspring.
It is certain that children resemble their parents,
not only in countenance and in the form of the
body, but in mental dispositions and in their virtues
and vices. The haughty “gens Claudia” transmitted
the peculiar mental character of its founder
through six centuries, and in the tyrannical Nero
again lived the imperious Appius Claudius.” If
this theory be correct, there is something more to be
done before African intellect can be fairly developed.
If culture will expand the intellect of the untutored
negro—take one of the present generation for instance
—according to this theory, which experience proves
to be true, it is certain that he will transmit to his offspring
an intellectual organization, so to speak, superior
to that which was transmitted to himself by his
parent; the mind of the offspring will be a less rude
soil for mental cultivation than was his father's;
and when his education is commenced, he will be
one step in the scale of intellect in advance of his
parents at the same period. When he arrives at
maturity, he will, under equal circumstances, be
mentally superior to his progenitors at the same period
of their lives. His offspring will be superior
to himself, and their offspring yet a grade higher in
the scale of intelligence, and standing, perhaps, upon
the very line drawn between human and angelic
intellect. His mind will bear comparison with that
of the white man; and, morally and intellectually,
he will stand beside him as his equal.

This is mere theory, but it is theory based upon
the operation of laws whose general principles cannot
be controverted: and when the negro, by the
emancipation of his species, has opportunity for the
culture of his own mind—which, if he is disposed
to neglect, the philanthopist will not be—a few generations
will leave no traces of those mental shackles,
which, like chains loaded upon the body, have
so long borne him down to a level with the brute.
Till time proves this original equi-mental organization
of the white man and the negro, which opinion
fact has been strengthening for two or three generations
in individual instances, it is due, both to
philanthropy and justice, to suspend the sentence
which condemns him as a being less than man.

Shortly before leaving the slave mart—a handsome
carriage drove up, from which alighted an elderly
lady, who, leaning on the arm of a youth, entered
the court. After looking at and questioning
in a kind tone several of the female slaves, she purchased
two, a young mother and her child, and in
a few minutes afterward, at the solicitation of the
youth, purchased the husband of the girl, and all
three, with happy faces—happier, that they were not
to be separated—flew to get their little parcels, and
rode away with their mistress,—the wife and child
sitting within the carriage on the front seat—and

the man on the coach-box beside the coachman. We
soon after mounted our horses, and with George and
his wife walking on before us with elastic steps, returned
to town. The slave market, which is the
subject of this letter, I have since frequently visited,
as well as four or five others in the vicinity of
Natchez, where several hundred slaves of all ages,
colours, and conditions, of both sexes, were exposed
for sale. I have conversed with a great number of
them, from the liveliest to the most sullen, and my
impression, which is daily strengthened by a more intimate
knowledge of their species, is, that the negro
is not dissatisfied with his condition—that it is seldom
or never the subject of his thoughts—that he regards
it as his destiny, as much as a home about
the poles is the Laplander's; nor does he pine after
freedom more than the other after the green hills and
sunny skies of Italy. They find themselves first
existing in this state, and pass through life without
questioning the justice of their allotment, which, if
they think at all, they suppose a natural one. Had
the American slave once enjoyed freedom, these circumstances
would be changed. But there is probably
not one among them, except some venerable
African, who has realized what it is to be free. So
long as he has had any consciousness, he is conscious
of having been a slave, and he fulfils his duties as
such, without stopping from time to time to put the
question to himself, “Is this my original destiny?
Was my first ancestor created a slave?” With as
much propriety might the haughty white man query
if more exalted physical beauty and perfection were
not once his, and whether man was not originally
winged! There are, of course, individual exceptions
to this general remark, but in the present
darkened state of negro intellect, these exceptions
are very few.

During the time they remain in the mart for sale,
few men pass their time with more apparent contentment.
There are two extensive markets for
slaves, opposite to each other, on the road to Washington,
three miles from Natchez. These I have
passed at least once a week for more than a year,
and I have always seen the slaves either dancing to
the sound of the violin, played by one of their number,
playing at marbles, quoits, practising gymnastics,
lounging, sleeping in the sun, or idling about
the door, while their masters, the “slave traders,” regardless
of them, were playing at cards or backgammon,
smoking or sitting about the door conversing
together, or with a buyer; their presence not
producing the least restraint upon the noisy merriment
around them. But when a purchaser stops
and desires to look at the “lot,” the slaves at once
leave their several amusements, and draw up into a
line, for inspection and purchase; and when the stranger
leaves, taking with him one or more of their
number, to whom they bid a cheerful good-bye,
they return to their former pursuits wholly unimpressed
by the event that has just taken place.

Negroes, when brought into market, are always
anxious to be sold; and to be sold first is a great
desideratum, for in their estimation it is an evidence
of their superiority. “None but poor nigger stay

for be sol' last.” Hence, when a purchaser enters,
they strive to appear before him to the best advantage,
and by their manner assiduously invite attention
to themselves. There are but two things
which at all depress the mind of the slave in market;
these are, the possibility of obtaining a bad master,
and that of being separated from their relations.
The first, however, seldom troubles them, and the
degree in which they are governed by this apprehension
depends wholly upon their former treatment.
With individuals who have been blessed
with a partial master it may weigh much, but with
the generality of slaves it is a light consideration.
The latter apprehension is in a great measure lessened
by a certainty of being sold together to the
same individual, if possible. It is a rule seldom
deviated from, to sell families and relations together,
if practicable, and if not, at least to masters
residing in the neighbourhood of each other. A
negro trader, in my presence, refused to sell a negro
girl, for whom a planter offered a high price,
because he would not also purchase her sister—
“for,” said the trader, “they are much attached to
each other, and when their mother died I promised
her I would not part them.”

Relatives, except husband and wife, often prefer
being sold to different masters in the same neighbourhood.
This is to be attributed to the roving
propensity of their race, which induces them to prefer
a separation of this nature, for a pretence to
visit from one plantation to another on Sabbaths
and Christmas holydays, at which season the slaves

have a temporary freedom for several days. Then
the highways, lanes, and streets, in town and country,
are filled with gay parties on foot or on plough-horses,
caparisoned for the occasion, as happy as
the total absence of care, thoughtlessness of to-morrow,
plenty of whiskey, and a cessation of all
labour, can make them.

40. XL.

The towns and villages of Mississippi, as in European
states, are located perfectly independent of
each other, isolated among its forests, and often
many leagues apart, leaving in the intervals large
tracts of country covered with plantations, and
claiming no minuter subdivision than that of “county.”
Natchez, for instance, is a corporation one
mile square, but from the boundaries of the city to
Woodville, the next incorporated town south, there
is an interval of thirty-eight miles. It is necessary
for the planters who reside between towns so far
asunder, to have some more particular address, than
the indefinite one arising from their vicinity to one

or other of these towns. Hence has originated the
pleasing custom of naming estates, as in England;
and names so given are always regarded by the
planters themselves, and by the community, as an
inseparable part of their address. These names
are generally selected with taste, such as “Monmouth,”
“Laurel-hill,” “Grange,” “Magnolia grove,”
“The Forest,” “Cottage,” “Briars,” “Father land,”
and “Anchorage”—the last given by a retired navy
officer to his plantation. The name is sometimes
adopted with reference to some characteristic of
the domain, as “The Oaks,” “China grove,” “New
Forest,” &c., but more frequently it is a mere matter
of fancy. Towns in this state have usually
originated from the location of a county seat, after
the formation of a new county. Here the court-house
is placed, and forms the centre of an area
which is soon filled with edifices and inhabitants.
If the county lies on the river, another town may
arise, for a shipping port, but here the accumulation
of towns usually ceases. A county seat, and a
cotton mart, are all that an agricultural country requires.
The towns in this state are thus dispersed
two or three to each county, nor so long as this is a
planting country, will there be any great increase to
their number, although in wealth and importance
they may rival, particularly the shipping ports, the
most populous places in the valley of the west.
In these towns are the banks, the merchants, the
post offices, and the several places of resort for
business or pleasure that draw the planter and his
family from his estate. Each town is the centre of
a circle which extends many miles around it into
the country, and daily attracts all within its influence.
The ladies come in their carriages “to shop,” the
gentlemen, on horseback, to do business with their
commission merchants, visit the banks, hear the
news, dine together at the hotels, and ride back in
the evening. The southern town is properly the
“Exchange” for the neighbouring planters, and the
“Broadway” for their wives and daughters. And
as no plantation is without a private carriage, the
number of these gay vehicles, filling the streets of
the larger towns on pleasant mornings in the winter,
is surprising. I have counted between thirty
and forty private carriages in the streets of Natchez
in one morning. In a small country village, I once
numbered seventeen, standing around a Methodist
chapel. Showy carriages and saddle horses are
the peculiar characteristics of the “moving spectacle”
in the streets of south-western towns.

Every village is a nucleus of southern society,
to which the least portion is generally contributed
by itself. When a public ball is given by the bachelors,
in one of these towns—for private parties
are scarcely known—the tickets of invitation fly
into the retirement of the plantations, within the
prescribed circle, often to the distance of thirty
miles. Thus families, who reside several leagues
apart, on opposite sides of the town, and who might
otherwise never associate, unless on “change,” or
in “shopping,” meet together, like the inhabitants
of one city. This state of things unites, in a social
bond, the intelligent inhabitants of a large extent of

country, who are nearly equally wealthy, and creates
a state of society in the highest degree favourable
to hospitality and social feeling. These social
“circles” often revolve within one another, and
sometimes enlarge, until they embrace several
towns. The Mississippians are remarkable for
their “locomotivity;” an organ which they have
plainly developed, if we reason, as phrenologists
sometimes do, from effect to cause—and whose existence
is manifest from their propensity annually
to depopulate their state, by taking northern tours
during the summer months. During the season of
gayety, in the winter months, the public assemblies
and private coteries of Natchez are unsurpassed by
those of any other city, in the elegance, refinement,
or loveliness of the individuals who compose them.
If you will bear in mind, that the southern females
of wealth are usually educated in the most finished
style, at the first female seminaries in the north, and,
until recently, not seldom in Europe; and recollect
the personal beauty, sprightliness, and extreme refinement
of the southern lady, you will not be surprised
that elegant women grace the private circles, and
shine in the gay assemblies of southern cities.

But fashion and refinement are not confined to
Natchez. In nearly every county reside opulent
planters, whose children enjoy precisely the same
advantages as are afforded in the city. Drawn from
the seclusion of their plantations, their daughters
are sent to the north; whence they return, in the
course of time, with cultivated minds and elegant
manners. Hence every village can draw around it

a polished circle of its own; for refinement and
wealth do not always diminish here, as in New-England,
in the inverse ratio of distance from a
metropolis—and elegant women may often be found
blooming in the depths of forests far in the interior.

Less attention is paid to the mental or personal
cultivation of the male youth of this state, than to
that of the females. Many of them are partially
educated at home; and, by the time they attain the
age at which northern boys enter college, become
assistants on the plantation, which they expect one
day to inherit; or, at the age of nineteen or twenty,
receive from their parents land and negroes, and
commence planting for themselves. At the age of
twenty-one or two they frequently marry. Many
planters are opposed to giving their sons, whom
they destine to succeed them as farmers, a classical
education. A common practical education they
consider sufficient for young gentlemen who are to
bury themselves for life in the retirement of a plantation.
But Mississippi, in this age and at this
juncture, from the peculiar construction of her political
and social laws, demands an educated youth.
—The majority of the planters are able to educate
their children in a superior manner; and if they do
this, they will elevate the rising generation high in
the scale of society, and give Mississippi an honourable
rank among the republics of America.
Although education is not indigenous, and is too
frequently a secondary consideration in the minds
of many, children in the towns are probably as well
educated as they would be at the north, under similar

circumstances, for no village is without private
schools. But the education of young children on
plantations is much neglected. Many boys and
girls, whose parents reside five or ten miles from
any town or academy, and do not employ tutors,
grow up to the age of eight or ten, unable either to
read or write. Some planters, who have but one
or two children, and do not think it worth while to
employ a tutor for so small a number, thoughtless
of the injury their children may sustain, suffer them
to grow up at home, almost ignorant even of the
alphabet, till of an age to be sent away to a boarding-school,
or an academy, where they first learn to
read. In such a state of things, it is not uncommon
to meet with very interesting and intelligent children
wholly ignorant of those childish studies, and
that story-book information, which throw such a
charm over their little society, invigorating the intellectual
faculties, and laying a foundation for a
superstructure of mind. Often several families will
unite and employ a tutor; constructing, for the purpose,
a school-house, in a central position among
their plantations. But those who look forward to
a high rank in American and European society for
their children, employ private tutors in their own
houses, even if they have but one child. Some
gentlemen send their children, when quite young,
to the north, and visit them every summer. Two-thirds
of the planters' children of this state are educated
out of it. There is annually a larger sum
carried out of the state, for the education of children
at the north, and in the expenses of parents
in making them yearly visits there, than would be
sufficient to endow an institution at intervals of four
or five years.

There are three colleges in Mississippi; but Mississippians
have so long been in the habit of sending
their children away, when it was necessary, that
they still adhere to the custom, when there is no farther
occasion for it; and the consequence is, that
their own institutions are neglected, and soon fall
into decay, while the money which they send
for the support of northern colleges, would elevate
their own to high literary distinction and usefulness.

Oakland college, twenty-five miles from Natchez,
near Rodney, is a flourishing institution under Presbyterian
patronage. It is of recent foundation, and
has yet no permanent buildings; but handsome college
edifices are about to be erected for the accommodation
of the students. Its situation is rural and
very healthy. Its funds are respectable, and under
the presidency of the Rev. J. Chamberlin, a
gentleman of learning and piety, it is rapidly rising
into eminence. It already has about one hundred
students, and its professors are men of talent and industry,
one of whom is a son of the late Dr. Payson
of Portland. It is thus that young northerners work
their way to distinction in the south and west.
There is another college at Clinton, of which I have
before spoken, and also an academy at Natchez,
ranking as high as a south-western college, under
the superintendence of J. H. B. Black, Esq. of
New-Jersey. Jefferson college, in the village of
Washington, six miles from Natchez, is the oldest

and best endowed institution in the state. It was
founded by private subscription in 1802, and subsequently
received a grant of a township of unsaleable
land from Congress, exchanged two years since
for a more eligible tract, which sold for a very large
sum. The income of the college is now about
eight thousand dollars, arising from a fund of more
than one hundred and fifty thousand. The building
is a large, three-story brick edifice, handsomely
finished, and capable of containing one hundred
students. The location is highly beautiful, in a
grove of majestic oaks, and at the head of a fine
green parade, which lies, with a magnificent oak in
its centre, between it and the village. A primary
department is connected with it; and a pleasant
brick building, half surrounded with galleries, on the
opposite side of the “green,” is appropriated to this
branch of the institution. The primary department,
which includes a moiety of the students, is under
the able superintendence of professor Crane, a native
of New-Jersey, and recently from West Point.
The history of this institution will confirm what I
have stated in my remarks upon education. Since
its organization until very recently, it has laboured
under pecuniary difficulties, with which it was unable
to contend; for a great part of the time it has
been without pupils or teachers; and its halls have
occasionally been used for private schools. It obtained
no celebrity as a college until 1829-30, when
Mr. Williston, the author of “Eloquence in the
United States,” and “Williston's Tacitus,” was
chosen its president, and the institution was placed
under military organization, after the plan adopted
by capt. Alden Partridge. The novelty of this
mode drew a great number of pupils within its
walls. The following year ill health compelled
president Williston to resign, and he was succeeded
by major Holbrook, formerly principal of the seminary
in Georgetown, D. C. During his presidency
there were above one hundred and fifty cadets connected
with the institution, and it was more flourishing
in every respect than any other in the south-west.
But the new president, seized with the mania
for cotton-planting, which infects all who reside
here for any length of time, devoted a portion of his
attention to agricultural pursuits, and the patrons
of the college, perhaps regarding this additional vocation
as incompatible with that of instructing, withdrew
their sons, one after another, the novelty of
a military education having worn off, and fell into
the old mode of keeping them at home on their
plantations, or sending them to Kentucky, the great
academy for Mississippi youth, to complete their
education. During the summer the president died,
and the institution again became disorganized. In
1833, capt. Alden Partridge was invited by the
board of trustees to assume the presidency, but after
remaining a few months, returned to the north,
unable to restore it to its former flourishing condition.
The college halls became again, and for the
sixth time since their foundation, nearly deserted.
In the spring of 1834, the board invited two professors
to take charge of the college until they could
decide upon the choice of a president. The present
year, C. B. Dubuisson, Esq. of Philadelphia,
one of these professors, was unanimously elected
president, and was inaugurated on the 6th of July,
1835. Under the new president, who is a finished
scholar and a very amiable and energetic man, the
college has become very flourishing, and is rapidly
advancing to permanent literary distinction. Professor
Symmes, a graduate of the University of Virginia,
and an able scholar, is professor of mathematics.
Under these two gentlemen, and the professor
in the primary department, planters may now
have their sons as well educated as at the north.
They are beginning to think so. But if they would
more generally adopt the opinion, that their sons
can be educated at the south by northern professors
as well as at the north, the literary institutions of this
country would not have to struggle for existence,
scarcely able to rise above the rank of an academy.
In connexion with the disinclination which southerners
have to educating their sons at home, and
their disposition to depreciate their native institutions,
there exists another cause, with a direct
tendency to check their advancement. It is the
system of education pursued in their colleges, which,
in a great degree, is the result of necessity. Until
within a few years, there have been no good preparatory
schools in this state, where youth could fit
themselves for admission into college. Now, to
form the lowest class in a college, it is necessary
that those who are to compose it—however large
or small their number—should have gone through
a prescribed series of preparatory studies. But
where there has been no opportunity for pursuing
this preparatory course, as here in the south-west,
the college must open its doors to unprepared youth,
to the great injury of its classes, or, in the absence
of other means, provide measures for fitting them
for admission. These measures all colleges here
are at present taking, by the establishment of primary
departments; until the pupils of these departments
are qualified for promotion, the college
classes remain vacant; and thus, though nominally
a college, the institution is, for the time being, an
academy, or preparatory school for itself. This is
the present state of the colleges here, and none of
them have advanced so far as to open the junior
class. Jefferson College indeed has been, with the
exception of its condition under military discipline
a few years since, no more than a preparatory department
since its organization. It is now rising
into the dignity of a college, although the quadrennial
course, which in our notions is inseparable from
a collegiate education, is not intended by the board
to form a part of their system. The method adopted
in the University of Virginia, in relation to the routine
of studies and succession of classes, will be
partially pursued. In the present state of things,
this is no doubt the preferable course to follow;
but it is to be feared that the college will never be
eminent or very permanent, until established on
the good old basis of our northern institutions. If
this system were adopted, and a professor appointed
to fill the chair in each department of science, whether
there were students or not—and the freshman
class opened, even by the admission of a single
scholar—the institution, with its immense fund,
would stand upon an immovable foundation. The
classes would increase every year in size, and at the
end of the fifth series, or in twenty years, a class of
seniors would receive their degrees, whom even
aristocratic Harvard would not disdain to acknowledge
as her foster children.

41. XLI.

The Indian mounds, those gigantic mausolea of
unhistoried nations, will ever present a subject of
absorbing interest to the reflecting mind. Elevating
their green summits amid the great forests of the
west—mysterious links of the unknown past—they
will stand imperishable through time, encircled by
the cities and palaces of men, silent but impressive
monitors of their grasping ambition. These sepulchres
are scattered every where throughout the valley
of the Mississippi—itself a mighty cemetery of
mighty tombs. In the pathless forests, and on the
banks of the rivers of the south-west, they are still
more thickly strewed than in the north valley, indicating

a denser population. It was recently suggested
to me, by a gentleman of antiquarian tastes,
that the Indians of the southern valley, by whom
these mounds were constructed, and who were a
mild and inoffensive people, far advanced in civilization,
were, in remote ages, invaded by a horde of
northern tribes from the Atlantic shores—as were
the effeminate states of southern Europe by the
Goths and Vandals—who drove out the original
possessors, and took possession of their delightful
country; while the fugitive inhabitants crossed the
Mississippi, and, moving to the west and south, laid
the foundation of the empire of Mexico. This theory
is not improbable, and it is supported by many
established facts. It is certain that the rude tribes
found in this country, by De Soto and his followers,
remnantss of which still exist, cannot be identified
with those by whom these tumuli were erected.
Among them there exists not even a tradition of the
formation of these mounds.

There have been many curious hypotheses advanced
in reference to their object. Some have
supposed that they were constructed, after a great
battle, of the numerous bodies of the slain; others,
that they were the customary burial-places of the
Indians, gradually accumulating in a series of years,
until, terminating in a cone, they were covered with
earth, and deserted for new cemeteries, to be in like
manner abandoned in their turn. Others, by a train
of analogous reasoning, founded upon the prevailing
custom of other aboriginal tribes, have supposed
them to be fortifications; and others again believe

them temples; or, like the pyramids of Egypt,
structures connected with the mysteries of the religion
of their builders. But their true origin, like
that of their grander prototypes on the plains of
Memphis, must for ever be lost in conjecture.

In the vicinity of Natchez, and within three
hours' ride of the city, in various directions, are
twelve or fifteen of these mounds. Some of them
have been partially excavated; and besides many
vessels, weapons of war, and ordinary human remains,
skeletons of men of a large size have been
found in them. On the estate of a gentleman two
miles from Natchez, and in the loveliest vale in this
region, there are three, situated equidistant from
each other, along the bank of the St. Catharine.
One of these was recently excavated by Dr. Powell,
a distinguished phrenologist of the west; from
which he obtained several earthen vessels, neatly
made, various fragments, and besides other bones,
three perfect skulls—one the most beautiful head
I ever beheld, of a young Choctaw girl; another,
the skull of a man of the same tribe; and the third,
a massive and remarkably formed skull of a Natchez.
I have since examined two of these mounds,
but was not able to add any thing important to the
discoveries of Dr. Powell. The perfect decomposition
which has taken place in one of them, would
indicate a much greater age than is generally attributed
to them. I laid bare a perpendicular face of
this mound, ten feet square, and the spade struck
but one hard substance, which proved to be the
lower jaw, containing seven or eight teeth, of some

wild animal, and a few splinters of corroded human
bones that crumbled between the fingers. I could
easily discern several strata, in this exposed surface,
alternately of common earth and a black friable loam,
resembling powder to the eye, but soft like paste in
the fingers. These black strata were veined with
light brown or dingy white streaks, of a firmer consistence.
The location of this mound, its height,
not exceeding twenty feet, the uniform decomposition,
and the regular series of strata, lead to the
conclusion, that it was constructed at one time, probably
after a battle, of the bodies of men whose
deaths took place at the same period, laid in layers,
one above another, as the modern slain are buried,
by only reversing the process, in deep pits.

The skulls found by Dr. Powell in the mound
opened by him, were very perfect specimens. The
head of the Choctaw differs not materially from those
of Europeans, when considered phrenologically, although
its developements of the organs of animal
feelings are more prominent than those of the intellectual
faculties. The head is generally smaller
than that of the European, but the general contour
is nearly the same. The skull of the Natchez is
remarkable in every respect. It is large, like the
German head, very angular, with bold developements.
It is shaped artificially in infancy,—a peculiarity
only of the skulls of the males—so that the
top of the forehead forms the apex of a cone. The
compressure necessary to produce this shape has
entirely destroyed the organs of veneration, of benevolence,
and of the reasoning powers. My examination

of this skull was for a moment only, and very
superficial, so that I did not ascertain the particular
deficiency or developement of any special organ.
The heads of the females of this extinct tribe, I am
informed by those who have examined them, are
very fine, displaying in their graceful, undulating
outline, the beau ideal of the human cranium.

There is a mound about five miles from Natchez,
upon the plantation of a gentleman, whose taste or
ambition has influenced him to erect his dwelling
upon its summit. A strange dwelling-place for the
living, over the sepulchres of the dead! Eleven
miles from the city there is another mound, or a collection
of mounds, which, in the beauty of its location,
the elevation of its summit, and the ingenuity
displayed in its construction, either as a fortress or
a temple, is entitled to an important rank among
these mysterious structures of the western valley.
A few days since I left Natchez with a northern
gentleman, for the purpose of visiting this mound.
Three miles from town we passed the race-course,
situated in a delightful intervale. This is the finest
“course” in the south, passing round a perfectly level
plain in a circle of one mile, whose centre is slightly
convex, so that the spectators can obtain a full view
of the horses while running. Ladies, on extraordinary
occasions, attend the races, although it is not
customary. But to south-western gentlemen the
race-course is a place of resort of the most alluring
character. On the St. Catharine race-course, now
alluded to, on great race days, the chivalry of Mississippi
will be found assembled in high spirits, and

full of the peculiar excitement incident to the occasion.
Home is, perhaps, the proper scene for studying
the planter's character; but it will never be
perfectly understood until he is seen, booted and
spurred, with his pocket-book in one hand, and bank
bills fluttering in the other, moving about upon the
turf.

Three miles from the race-ground, about which is
gathered a little village, sometimes called St. Catharinesville,
we entered the pretty and rural town of
Washington. The whole village was embowered
in the foliage of China trees, which thickly lined
both sides of the main street. Turning down a street
to the left, which led to the college, we alighted
there after a short ride over the green, as it was the
intention of the president and one or two of the professors
to accompany us to the mound. We were
shown the college library, comprised in a few shelves
filled with volumes of the statutes; and the cabinet,
where, besides a few interesting geological specimens,
were some bones of a mammoth, or mastodon,
found in the neighbourhood.

In the course of an hour we all mounted our
horses, and, entering the village, rode down its quiet
and shaded streets, and emerged on the brow of
the hill or ridge on which the town is built; and
shortly after crossed the pebbly bed of the St. Catharines,
which, in its serpentine windings, crosses
nearly every road in the neighbourhood of Natchez.
Beyond this stream, from an eminence over which
the road wound, we had a fine view of the village
on the opposite hill, with its college, lifting its roof

among the towering oaks; its dwellings, with their
light galleries and balconies, half hidden among the
shade trees; the female academy, with its green
lawn, a high colonnaded private edifice, overtopping
the trees, and its neat unassuming churches.

After a pleasant ride of five miles, through forest
and plantation scenery, over a country pleasantly
undulating, we arrived at the summit of a hill, just
after passing a neat brick cottage, surrounded by a
parterre, and half hidden in the woods; so that it
would not have been observed, but for the wide
gate on the road-side—often the only indication, as
I have before remarked, of the vicinage of a planter's
residence. From this hill we were gratified
with an extensive prospect of a richly wooded and
partially cultivated extent of country, occasionally
rising into precipitous hills, crowned with forest
trees. About a mile to the north, on our left, in
the centre of a large cotton plantation, surrounded
by an amphitheatre of hills, stood a singular cluster
of eminences, isolated from those encircling them,
whose summits were destitute of verdure or trees.
These were the goal of our excursion—the celebrated
tumuli of Mississippi. Descending the hill,
we passed through a gate, opening into a narrow
lane, bordered on either side with thick clumps of
trees, and the luxuriant wild shrubbery which grows
by the streams and along the roads throughout the
south; and after winding through ravines and crossing
bayous, we arrived at the “gin” of the plantation;
a large building resembling a northern haypress,
where some negroes were at work; one of

whom, with a readiness always characteristic of
the negro slave, immediately came out to take
charge of our horses. Declining his aid, as we
had no authority for appropriating his services—a
liberty as to which some planters are very punctilious—we
hitched our horses to the rail fence. Had
the proprietor of the estate been present, we should
have solicited the aid of some of his slaves in excavating:
but since then I have met with the venerable
planter, who, with great politeness, has offered
me every facility for making whatever researches
or excavations curiosity might suggest.

We ascended the steep sides of the mound with
some difficulty, as they were inclined but a few degrees
from the perpendicular. On gaining the summit,
thirty-five feet from the base, we saw, extended
before us, an elliptical area, whose plane was
three or four feet lower than the verge of the mound.
To the right, at the eastern extremity of the area,
rose a super-mound, fifteen feet high; and on the
opposite extremity, to the east, stood another, rising
thirty feet from the floor of the area or summit of
the great mound we had just ascended, and sixty
feet from the level of the surrounding plantation.
From the summit of this second mound the eye
embraced an irregular amphitheatre, confined by
elevated forests, half a league in diameter, whose
centre was the mound, from which, on nearly every
side, the ground descended, almost imperceptibly,
with a few obstructions, to the foot of the surrounding
hills.

This peculiarity of its location, so favourable for

a military position, would indicate such to have
been the object of its constructors. The whole
structure, so far as an opinion can be formed from
a careful survey of its general features, was originally
a conical hill, now changed to its present shape
by human labour; which nature, in a wayward
mood, placed, like Joseph's sheaf, conspicuous, and
aloof from the hills that surround it on every side.
From its present aspect, the mound, if originally a
natural hill, must have been forty or fifty feet high,
of an oblong form, its greatest diameter being from
east to west, with very precipitous sides. It consists
now of a single conspicuous elevation, oval in
shape, and presenting, on every side, indentations
and projections, not unlike the salient angles of military
works, serving to strengthen the opinion that
it was a fortification. Its summit is perfectly flat,
comprising an area of four acres, surrounded by a
kind of ballustrade, formed by the projection of the
sides of the mound two or three feet higher than
the area. The two super-mounds before mentioned
stand at either extremity of the summit, in a direction
east and west; a position indicating design, and
confirming the views of those who believe the structure
to be a temple. The Indians, by whom the
mound is supposed to have been erected, were, like
the Peruvians, worshippers of the sun and of fire,
and maintained a perpetual sacrifice of the latter
upon their altars. If this was a temple, the two
super-mounds were its altars; on one of which, toward
the east, burned the sacrifice of fire, to welcome
the rising sun, of which it was a pure and
beautiful emblem; while the bright flame upon the
altar toward the west, mingled with his last expiring
beams. Between these two superior mounds are
four others of inferior height, two of which border
the northern verge of the area, and two the southern,
although not exactly opposite to the former.
Thus the area upon the summit is surrounded by
six tumuli, of various elevations. The largest of
them, to the west, before mentioned, is flat on the
top, which contains about one-fourth of an acre.
Its external sides slope, as do the outside surfaces
of the other five, gradually down to the base of the
great mound upon which it is constructed.

The whole work is surrounded by the remains of
a ditch; from which, and from the sides of the chief
mound, the earth must have been taken to form
those upon the summit. The material of which the
whole is constructed, is the same alluvial earth as
that composing the sides of the ditch and the surrounding
plain. Neither stone nor brick forms any
portion of the material of the work, nor is the former
found any where in the vicinity. In the centre
of the elevated area is the mouth of a subterranean
passage, leading, with an easy inclination, to a
spring without the mound, on the north side of the
plain. It is now fallen in, and choked with briers
vines, and young trees. There are traces also of another
avenue, conducting to the south side, and opening
into the country. Against the two eastern angles
of the mound, at its base, are two smaller mounds,
ten feet high, which might be taken for bastions by
one who regarded the work as a fortification. In the

early settlement of this country, the mound was covered
with fruit-trees of a large size, whose age indicated
uninterrupted possession of their places for
centuries. It is now divested of its trees, and under
cultivation. It is to be regretted that the axe or
plough should ever have desecrated a monument
so sacred to the antiquary.

There is every evidence that formerly this position
was one of great importance. Remains of excavated
roads, passing through the adjacent forests,
and converging to this mound as their common
centre, still exist, in which large trees are growing,
whose age—more than two hundred years—gives
an approximation to the date when these roads were
disused, and when, probably, the spot to which they
centred, ceased to be regarded either as a shrine
for the Indian pilgrim—a national temple—or the
centre of their military strength. Human remains
of very large size have been discovered in its vicinity,
and also fragments of pottery, weapons,
pipes, and mortar-shaped vessels, covered with ornamental
tracery and hieroglyphics, evincing a high
degree of advancement in the arts. If their dwellings
and apparel were made with the same skill
which is displayed in the utensils and weapons discovered
in these mounds, their fabricators will be
regarded, so far as this criterion extends, as having
possessed a high degree of civilization.

In surveying this mound from the plain, the mind
is impressed with the idea of the vast amount of
human labour expended in thus piling it up—
mound upon mound—like Pelion upon Ossa.

Thousands of human emmets have toiled to rear
this hill—their busy hum filled the air, and every
spot around us was trodden by their nimble feet.
The question is naturally suggested to the mind,
while gazing upon the huge pile, “For what was it
constructed?”—and imagination, surveying the sad
history of the departed nations, who once inhabited
this pleasant land, might answer that a prophetic
warning of their total annihilation influenced these
people to erect a national tomb. And are they not
their tombs? Are not these the only evidences that
they ever have been—and are they not the receptacles
of their national remains? The footstep of the
labourer is now stayed for ever! his voice is hushed
in death! The shout of the hunter—the cry of the
warrior—the voice of love, are heard no more.

“The Natchez tribe of Indians,” says a beautiful
writer, to whom I have before alluded, and who involves
in his historical sketch a touching narrative,
“who inhabited the luxuriant soil of Mississippi,
were a mild, generous, and hospitable people.
The offspring of a serene climate, their character
was marked by nothing ferocious; and beyond the
necessity of self-defence, or the unavoidable collisions
with neighbouring tribes, by nothing martial.
Their government, it is true, was most despotic;
and, perhaps, the history of no other nation north
of the equator presents a parallel; and yet no charge
of an unnecessary, or unwarrantable exercise of this
great power, is made against them, even by their
historians, who were also the countrymen of their
oppressors. Their king, or chief, was called “The

Sun,” and the exalted station which he held, was
designated by a representation of that luminary
worn upon his breast. He united also with his
civic function, the priestly power and supremacy—
and thus entrenched behind the ramparts of physical
force, and wielding the terrors of superstition, he
was absolute master of the lives and property of his
subjects. His equal, in dignity and power, was his
queen, under the title of “The Wife of the Sun.”
Thus, then, living in undisturbed repose, and in the
innocent enjoyment of the bounties of nature, there
came in an evil hour to their peaceful shores, a
party of French emigrants, who, about the end of
the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century,
navigated the Mississippi in quest of wealth
and territory. They were received with all the
cordiality and affection that these guiltless and inoffensive
beings could bestow. The choicest gifts
of the beneficent Creator had been showered upon
them with a lavish hand, and with a spirit, somewhat
allied to his who had conferred them, they
cheerfully tendered to the houseless wanderers a participation
in the blessings they themselves enjoyed.
These substantial pledges of amity and good feeling
were received with apparent gratitude by the
emigrants; but their immediate wants supplied,
they were again thrown back upon their evil passions,
that for a moment had been quelled by misfortune,
and perpetrated acts of injustice and cruelty
which excited the indignation of their benefactors.
Driven almost to frenzy, by repeated acts of aggression,
they attempted a re-establishment of their
rights, but were eventually subdued, and basely
massacred. The French, upon their arrival, affected
to treat upon terms of reciprocity for the products
of the soil; perceiving, however, the unsuspicious
temper of these generous Indians, they
threw off the mask, and urged novel and extravagant
demands; even extending to the fields which
supported their wives and children—and not until
they were driven in ignominy from them into the
depth of the wilderness, were their shameless oppressors
satisfied. At this period commenced the
league against the French, which embraced all the
tribes lying on the east, and to the failure of which,
through the unmerited compassion of their queen,
they owed their defeat and extermination.

Messengers were despatched to different quarters,
and a general massacre of the common enemy was
agreed upon. A day was appointed, but being unacquainted
with the art of writing, or the use of
numbers, the period was designated by a bundle of
sticks, every stick representing a day; each of the
confederated chiefs prepared a bundle corresponding
in number with those of his associates, one of
which was to be burned daily; and the committing
of the last to the flames, was to be the signal for
the attack.

“The wife of the sun,” still attached to the
French by many recollections, being the strangers
whom she had protected and loved—trembling at
the torrents of blood which must flow, and forgetting
the wrongs which had been heaped upon her
country, determined to preserve them, and inti

mated to their commander the necessity of caution;
by some singular incredulity he despised and neglected
the counsel thus tendered to him. Frustrated
in her purpose of saving those within the
limits of her own tribe, she determined, by the anticipation
of their fate, to preserve the majority scattered
throughout other tribes. Having free access
to the temple, she removed several of the sticks
there deposited, and the warriors, on repairing thither,
finding but one symbol remaining, prepared for the
dreadful business on which they had resolved. They
then consigned the last stick to the fire, and supposing
that the united nations were all engaged in
the same bloody work, fell upon the French, and
cut them off almost to a man.[17] Perrein, the commander,
with a few more, escaped, and collecting
a few of his countrymen, prevailed upon the neighbouring
tribes, by threats or promises, to abandon
and betray the devoted Natchez; and in one day
consigned them to the sword, sparing neither age,
sex, nor condition; he burnt their houses, laid waste
their fields, and desolation soon marked the spot,
once the retreat of an unoffending, peaceful, and
happy people. The few who escaped, fled for protection
to a neighbouring tribe, then, and now,
known as the Chickasaws; a brave, warlike, and
independent nation. Their conduct toward these
wretched outcasts should be remembered to their
immortal honour; they received them with open
arms, and resisted with unshaken firmness, the
earnest and repeated demands of the French for
their delivery; and to such an extent did they carry
their magnanimity, that they preferred hazarding a
doubtful contest, when their own existence was at
stake, to a violation of the pledges of hospitality and
protection, which they had made to a few persecuted
strangers. Three times, with souls bent upon
vengeance against the remnant of their ancient foes,
and with no less bloody purposes against their defenders,
did the French carry war to the Chickasaw
boundary, and three times were they driven back
with ignominy and loss—nor did they ever obtain
their object. The poor Natchez shared the hospitality
of their protectors until their necessities and sorrows
were alike relieved by death; their bones repose in
a land unknown to their fathers; their spirits may
be again mingled in the beautiful regions which
they believe to be prepared by the Great Spirit for
the fearless warrior, the successful hunter, and the
faithful and hospitable Indian, beyond the great
lakes. Such is the story of the Natchez—such
their melancholy end—such the kindness and benevolence
extended to the white man in distress—and
such the ingratitude, perfidy, and cruelty, with
which these favours were repaid. Of the distinguished
female, whose humanity and mercy proved
so unexpectedly fatal to her race, we hear no more
—but it is highly probable, that in the indiscriminate
massacre which took place, neither her
strong claims to the gratitude of the French, nor her
merciful and forbearing disposition, nor her honours,
titles, and dignities, nor even her sex, could protect
her; but that she fell an undistinguished victim,
among her slaughtered people.”

42. XLII

In my desultory sketches of the white and negro
population of the south-west, my intention has not
been to detail minutely their social relations and
domestic economy. To convey a general idea of
their condition alone enters into my present plan.
Having enlarged upon that of the white population,
I will devote a portion of the following pages to a
brief sketch of a variety of the human species,
which has ever presented an interesting field for
the efforts of the philanthropist.

The origin of slavery is lost: but there is no
doubt that it prevailed, in the early post-diluvian
ages, among all the infant nations of the earth.[18]

Sacred history assures us of its existence shortly
after the flood; and divine economy, in regulating
the political and domestic state of the Jews, permitted
its existence. But Jewish, and all ancient
slavery, was a species of warlike retribution against
enemies taken in battle. Civilization and Christianity
had not then established the modern treatment
and disposal of prisoners. Then they were held
in bondage by their conquerors during life; now
their detention is but for a limited time; then, they
were individual, now they are national, property.
Christianity, in this enlightened age, has taught
conquerors to mitigate their severity toward the
conquered; and national policy has found it most
expedient to make other disposition of them than
holding them in bondage.

But the establishment and preservation of slavery
in the south-west, are more immediately the objects

of my remarks. If any people can repudiate with
justice the charge of originating it, the Mississippians
can do so. The Spaniards introduced it here;
the first American settlers of this state found slaves
attached to its soil, after the Spaniards resigned the
country to the government of the United States,
and they received them as a portion of the possessions,
which fell into their hands by treaty or purchase.
Finding them here they retained them—
for the slavery question, like many others in those
days of innocence, had not been agitated—or they
might have sent them after their Spanish masters.

There was, of course, nothing more natural and
easy than the increase of this property. The process
of generation was too slow, however, and men
commenced purchasing, not free men from slave
ships, but Africans who were already slaves. Virginia,
where the lands were worn out, and slaves were
numerous, and almost useless, afforded them facilities
for purchasing; emigrants from that and other
slave-holding states also brought great numbers
with them, and in a few years this species of property
had accumulated to a great extent. Planters'
sons, and all new planters, must be supplied from
the same fountain—losses by death and elopement
must be made up, till, almost imperceptibly, slavery
became firmly established here, and is now a state
institution; and Virginia, with the Carolinas and
Georgia, and recently Kentucky, has become the
great mart for slave purchasers from the south-west.

The increased demand for slaves led many farmers

in Virginia, whose lands were unavailable, to
turn their attention to raising slaves, if I may so
term it, for the south-western market. Hence a
nursery for slaves has been imperceptibly forming
in that state, till now, by a sort of necessity, a vast
amount of its capital is involved in this trade, the
discontinuance of which would be as injurious in a
pecuniary point of view, to those who raise them,
as the want of the facilities which the trade affords,
would be to the planter. Thus Virginia has become
the field for the purchaser, and the phrase—
“he is gone to Virginia to buy negroes,” or “niggers,”
as is the elegant and equally common phraseology,
is as often applied to a temporarily absent
planter, as “he is gone to Boston to buy goods,” to
a New-England country merchant.

Negroes are transported here both by sea and
land. Alexandria and Norfolk are the principal
depots of slaves, previous to their being shipped.
To these cities they are brought from the surrounding
country, and sold to the slave-trader, who purchases
them for about one-half or one-third less
than he expects to obtain for them in the southern
market. After the resident slave-dealer has collected
a sufficient number, he places them under
the care of an agent. They are then shipped for
New-Orleans, with as comfortable accommodations
as can be expected, where one or two hundred are
congregated in a single merchant vessel. I have
seen more than one hundred landing from a brig,
on the Levee, in New-Orleans, in fine condition,
looking as lively and hearty as though a sea voyage

agreed well with them. They are transferred, if
destined for the Mississippi market, to a steamboat,
and landed at Natchez. The debarkation of a hundred
slaves, of both sexes and all ages, is a novel
spectacle to a northerner. Landing on the Levée,
they proceed, each with his bundle, under the
charge of their temporary master or conductor, toward
the city, in a long straggling line, or sometimes
in double files, in well-ordered procession,
gazing about them with curiosity and wonder upon
the new scenes opening before them, as they advance
into the city, and speculating upon the advantages
afforded as their home, by the beautiful
country to which they find themselves transplanted.
Nothing seems to escape their attention, and every
few steps offer subjects for remark or laughter; for
the risible muscles of the negro are uncommonly
excitable.

On arriving on the “Hill,” in view of the city,
and obtaining a glimpse of the fine country spread
out around them, their delight is very great. Full
of the impression, which they early imbibe, that the
south is emphatically the grave of their race, and
daily having it held up before their imaginations at
home, in terrorem, to keep them in the line of duty,
if insubordinate, they leave home, as they proudly
and affectionately term Virginia, with something of
the feelings of the soldier, allotted to a “forlorn
hope.” It cannot be denied that many have died
shortly after being brought into this country; but
this was owing to indiscretion, in transporting them
at the wrong season of the year—in the spring, after

a winter spent at the north; or in autumn, during
the prevalence, in former years, of the epidemics,
which once were almost annual visitants of
this country. Experience has taught those who
introduce slaves, in late years, to bring them quite
late in autumn. Hence, the two great causes of
mortality being removed, the effects have, in a great
measure, ceased; and slaves, when they arrive here,
and gaze with surprise upon the athletic figures and
gray heads of their fellows, who meet them at every
step, as they advance into the city—find that they
can live even in the south, and grow old on other
plantations than those in “Ol' Wirginny.” “I see
no dead nigger yet, Jef.”—“No—nor no coffin pile
up neider in de street,”—said another of a gang of
negroes passing through the streets, peering on all
sides for these ominous signs of this “fatal” climate,
as they trudged along to their quarters in the slave-market.
This too common opinion of master and
slave must soon be exploded, for it has now no
foundation in fact. Passing through the city in procession,
sometimes dressed in a new uniform, purchased
for them in New-Orleans, but often in the
brown rags in which they left Virginia, preceded
by a large wagon, carrying the surplus baggage;
they are marched beyond the city limits, within
which, till recently, they were publicly sold, the
marts being on nearly every street. Arriving at
their quarters, which are usually old unoccupied
buildings, and often tents or booths, pitched upon
the common, beside some stream of water, and
under the shade of trees, they resort, in the first
place, to a general ablution, preparatory to being
exposed for sale. The toilet arrangements of one
hundred negroes, just from a long voyage, are a
formidable affair. Both the rivers, Alpheus and
Peneus, would hardly suffice for the process. Two
or three days are consumed in it; after which, all
appear in new, comfortable, uniform dresses, with
shining faces, and refreshed after the fatigue of travel.
They are now ready for inspection and sale.
To this important period, the day of sale, they cheerfully
look forward, manifesting not a little emulation
to be “sol' fust.” The interim between their
arrival and sale—for they are not sold at auction, or
all at once, but singly, or in parties, as purchasers
may be inclined to buy—is passed in an otium cum
dignitate of a peculiarly African character, involving
eating, drinking, playing, and sleeping. The
interval of ease enjoyed in the slave-market is an
oasis of luxury in their existence, which they seldom
know how to appreciate, if we may judge from
the wishful manner in which they gaze upon gentlemen
who enter the mart, as though anxious to put
a period to this kind of enjoyment, so congenial to
their feelings and temperament.

Probably two-thirds of the first slaves came into
this state from Virginia; and nearly all now introduced,
of whom there are several thousands annually,
are brought from that state. Kentucky contributes
a small number, which is yearly increasing;
and since the late passage of the slave law in Missouri,
a new market is there opened for this trade.
It is computed that more than two hundred thousand

dollars' worth of slaves will be purchased in
Missouri this season, for the Natchez market. A
single individual has recently left Natchez with one
hundred thousand dollars, for the purpose of buying
up negroes in that state to sell in Mississippi.

The usual way of transporting slaves is by land,
although they are frequently brought round by sea;
but the last is the most expensive method, and therefore,
to “bring them through,” is accounted preferable.
This is done by forming them into a caravan
at the place where they are purchased, and conducting
them by land through the Indian nations to this
state. The route is for the most part through a continuous
forest, and is usually performed by the negroes,
on foot, in seven or eight weeks. Their personal
appearance, when they arrive at Natchez, is
by no means improved, although they are usually
stouter and in better condition than when they leave
home, for they are generally well fed, and their
health is otherwise carefully attended to, while on
the route. Arrived within two or three miles of
Natchez, they encamp in some romantic spot near
a rivulet, and like their brethren transported by sea,
commence polishing their skins, and arraying themselves
in the coarse but neat uniform, which their
master has purchased for them in Natchez.

A few Sabbaths ago, while standing before a village
church in the country, my attention was drawn
to a long procession at the extremity of the street,
slowly approaching like a troop of wearied pilgrims.
There were several gentlemen in company, some
of them planters, who gazed upon the singular spectacle

with unusual interest. One sooty brown hue
was cast over the whole horde, by the sombre colour
of their tattered garments, which, combined
with the slow pace and fatigued air of most of those
who composed it, gave to the whole train a sad and
funereal appearance. First came half a dozen boys
and girls, with fragments of blankets and ragged
pantaloons and frocks, hanging upon, but not covering
their glossy limbs. They passed along in high
spirits, glad to be once more in a village, after their
weary way through the wilderness; capering and
practising jokes upon each other, while their even
rows of teeth, and the whites of their eyes—the
most expressive features in the African physiognomy—were
displayed in striking contrast to their
ebony skins. These were followed by a tall mulatto,
with high cheek-bones, and lean and hungry
looks, making rapid inroads into a huge loaf of bread,
whose twin brother was secured under his left arm.
A woman, very black, very short, and very pursy,
who breathed like a porpoise, and whose capacity
for rapid movement was equal to that of a puncheon,
trudged along behind, evidently endeavouring to
come up with the mulatto, as her eye was fixed very
resolutely on the spare loaf; but its owner strode
forward deliberately and with perfect impunity.
She was followed by another female, bearing an infant
in her arms, probably born in the wilderness.
Close behind her came a covered wagon, from which
she had just descended to walk, drawn by two fine
horses, and loaded with young negroes, who were
permitted to ride and walk alternately on the jour
ney. Behind the wagon, at a long distance, came
an old patriarch, at least eighty years of age, bent
nearly double with the weight of years and infirmity.
By his side moved an old negress, nearly
coeval with him, who supported her decrepit form
by a staff. They were the venerable progenitors
of the children and grandchildren who preceded
them. This aged couple, who were at liberty to
ride when they chose, in a covered wagon behind
them, were followed by a mixed crowd of negroes
of all ages, and of both sexes, with and without
staff, hatless and barefooted. The office of the negro's
hat is a mere sinecure—they love the warm
sun upon their heads—but they like to be well shod,
and that with boots, for the lower region of their
limbs about the ancles is very sensitive. Behind
these came a wretched cart, covered with torn, redpainted
canvass, and drawn by a mule and a horse;
—Sancho Panza's mule and Rosinante—I mean no
insult to the worthy knight or his squire—if coupled
together, would have made precisely such a pair.
This vehicle contained several invalids, two of
whom were reclining on a matrass laid along the
bottom. Around it were many young slaves of
both sexes, talking and marching along in gleeful
mood. Two or three old people followed, one of
whom, who walked with both hands grasping a long
staff, stopped as he passed us, and with an air of
affecting humility, and with his venerable forehead
bowed to the earth, addressed us, “hab massas got
piece 'bacca' for ol' nigger?” An old gentleman
standing by, whose locks were whitened with the
snows of sixty winters, having first obtained leave to
do so from the owner of the drove, who, mounted on
a fine blooded horse, rode carelessly along behind
them, gave the old slave all he had about him,
which, fortunately for the petitioner, happened to
be a large quantity, and for which he appeared extremely
grateful. Several other negroes, walking
along with vigorous steps, and another white conductor,
with a couple of delicately limbed racehorses,
enveloped in broidered mantles, and ridden
by bright-eyed little mulatto boys, and two or three
leashes of hounds, led by a slave, completed the
train. They had been seven weeks on the road,
through the “nation,” as the southern wilderness is
here termed—travelling by easy stages, and encamping
at night. Old people are seldom seen in
these “droves.” The young and athletic usually
compose them. But as in this instance, the old
people are sometimes allowed to come with the
younger portion of their families, as a favour; and
if sold at all, they are sold with their children, who
can take care of them in their old age, which they well
do—for negroes have a peculiarly strong affection
for the old people of their own colour. Veneration
for the aged is one of their strongest characteristics.

Nor are planters indifferent to the comfort of
their gray-headed slaves. I have been much affected
at beholding many exhibitions of their kindly
feeling toward them. They always address them
in a mild and pleasant manner—as “Uncle,” or
“Aunty”—titles as peculiar to the old negro and

negress, as “boy” and “girl,” to all under forty
years of age. Some old Africans are allowed to
spend their last years in their houses, without doing
any kind of labour; these, if not too infirm, cultivate
little patches of ground, on which they raise a
few vegetables—for vegetables grow nearly all the
year round in this climate—and make a little money
to purchase a few extra comforts. They are also
always receiving presents from their masters and
mistresses, and the negroes on the estate, the latter
of whom are extremely desirous of seeing the old
people comfortable. A relation of the extra comforts,
which some planters allow their slaves, would
hardly obtain credit at the north. But you must
recollect that southern planters are men—and men
of feeling—generous and high minded, and possessing
as much of the “milk of human kindness,” as
the sons of colder climes—although they may have
been educated to regard that as right, which a different
education has led northerners to consider
wrong.

“What can you do with so much tobacco?” said
a gentleman—who related the circumstance to me
—on hearing a planter, whom he was visiting, give
an order to his teamster to bring two hogsheads of
tobacco out to the estate from the “Landing.” “I
purchase it for my negroes; it is a harmless indulgence,
which it gives me pleasure to afford them.”

“Why are you at the trouble and expense of
having high-post bedsteads for your negroes?” said
a gentleman from the north, while walking through

the handsome “quarters,” or village for the slaves,
then in progress on a plantation near Natchez—addressing
the proprietor.

“To suspend their “bars” from, that they may
not be troubled with musquitoes.”

“Master, me would like, if you please, a little bit
gallery, front my house.” “For what, Peter?”
“Cause, master, de sun too hot” (an odd reason for
a negro to give,)” “dat side, and when he rain we no
able to keep de door open.” “Well, well, when the
carpenter gets a little leisure you shall have one.”
A few weeks after I was at the plantation, and
riding past the quarters one Sabbath morning, beheld
Peter, his wife, and children, with his old father,
all sunning themselves in their new gallery.

“Missus, you promise me a Chrismus gif'.”
“Well, Jane, there is a new calico frock for you.”
“It werry pretty, missus,” said Jane, eyeing it at a
distance without touching it, “but me prefer muslin,
if you please; muslin de fashion dis Chrismus.”
“Very well, Jane, call to-morrow and you shall
have a muslin.”

These little anecdotes are unimportant in themselves,
but they serve to illustrate what I have stated
above, of the kindness and indulgence of masters
to their slaves. I could add many others, of frequent
occurrence; but these are sufficiently numerous
for my purpose.

Probably of the two ways of bringing slaves
here, that by land is preferable; not only because
attended with less expense, but by gradually advancing
them into the climate, it in a measure precludes

the effect which a sudden transition from one
state to the other might produce. All slaves,
however, are not brought here by negro traders.
Many of the planters prefer going on and purchasing
for themselves, for which purpose it is not unusual
for them to take on from twenty to forty and fifty
thousand dollars, lay the whole out in slaves, and
either accompany them through the wilderness
themselves on horseback, or engage a conductor.
By adopting this method they purchase them at a
much greater advantage, than at second-hand from
the professional trader, as slaves can be bought for
fifty per cent. less there, than after they are once
brought into this market. The number of slaves
introduced into the south-western market is annually
increasing. Last year more than four thousand
were brought into the state, one-third of whom
were sold in the Natchez market. The prices of
slaves vary with the prices of cotton and sugar. At
this time, when cotton brings a good price, a good
“field hand” cannot be bought for less than eight
hundred dollars, if a male; if a female, for six hundred.
“Body servants” sell much higher, one
thousand dollars being a common price for them.
Good mechanics sometimes sell for two thousand
dollars, and seldom for less than nine hundred.
Coachmen are high, and house servants are worth
at all times, from ten to thirty per cent. more than
field negroes. The usual price for a good seamstress,
or nurse, is from seven hundred to one thousand
dollars. Children are valued in proportion to
their ages. An infant adds one hundred dollars to
the price of the mother; and from infancy the children
of the slaves increase in value about one hundred
dollars for every three years, until they arrive
at mature age. All domestic slaves, or “house
servants,” which class includes coachmen, nurses,
hostlers, gardeners, footmen, cooks, waiting-maids,
&c., &c.—all indispensable to the menage of a
wealthy planter—are always in great demand, and
often sell at the most extravagant prices. Some of
these, born and raised in this climate, (acclimated
as they are termed,) often sell for eighteen hundred
and two thousand dollars apiece, of either sex.
But these are exceptions, where the slave possesses
some peculiarly valuable trait as a domestic.

Negro traders soon accumulate great wealth, from
the immense profit they make on their merchandise.
Certainly such a trade demands no trifling consideration.
If any of the worshippers of Mammon
earn their gold, it is the slave-dealer. One of their
number, who is the great southern slave-merchant,
and who, for the last fifteen years, has supplied this
country with two-thirds of the slaves brought into
it, has amassed a fortune of more than a million of
dollars by this traffic alone. He is a bachelor, and
a man of gentlemanly address, as are many of these
merchants, and not the ferocious, Captain Kidd
looking fellows, we Yankees have been apt to imagine
them. Their admission into society, however,
is not recognised. Planters associate with them
freely enough, in the way of business, but notice
them no farther. A slave trader is, nevertheless,
very much like other men. He is to-day a plain

farmer, with twenty or thirty slaves, endeavouring
to earn a few dollars from worn-out land, in some
old “homestead” among the Alleghanies; which,
with his slaves, he has inherited from his father.
He is in debt, and hears that he can sell his slaves
in Mississippi for twice their value in his own state.
If there is no harm in selling them to his next neighbour,
and coming to Mississippi without them, he
feels that there can be no harm—nay, justice to his
creditors requires that he should place them in the
highest market—in bringing them into this state,
and selling them here. He rises in the morning,
gathers his slaves, prepares his wagons and horses,
takes one or two of his sons, or hires a neighbour,
who may add a few of his own to the stock, to accompany
him; and, by and by, the caravan moves
slowly off toward the south and west. Seven or
eight weeks afterward, a drove of negroes, weary
and worn, from a long journey, are seen within two
or three miles of Natchez, turning from the high
road, to pitch their tents upon the green sward, beneath
some wide-spreading tree. It is the caravan
from the Alleghanies. The ensuing morning a
bright array of white tents, and busy men moving
among them, excites the attention of the passer-by.
The figure of the old Virginia farmer, mingling
among his slaves, attracts the notice of a stranger.
“Who is that old gentleman?” he inquires
of the southerner with whom he is riding in company.
“A negro trader,” is the reply. This is
the first step of the trader. He finds it profitable;
and if his inclinations prompt him, he will return
home, after selling his slaves, and buy, with ready
money, from his neighbours, a few here and a few
there, until he has a sufficient number to make another
caravan, with which he proceeds a second time
to the south-western market. He follows this trade
from season to season, and does it conscientiously.
He reasons as I have above stated; and if there is
no harm in selling the first, there is none in selling
the last. This is the metal of which a slave trader
is moulded. The humane characteristics of the
trade will be, of course, regulated by the tempers
and dispositions of the individuals who engage in it.

43. XXXIX.

There are properly three distinct classes of
slaves in the south. The first, and most intelligent
class, is composed of the domestic slaves, or “servants,”
as they are properly termed, of the planters.
Some of these both read and write, and possess a
great degree of intelligence: and as the negro, of
all the varieties of the human species, is the most
imitative, they soon learn the language, and readily
adopt the manners, of the family to which they are

attached. It is true, they frequently burlesque the
latter, and select the high-sounding words of the former
for practice—for the negro has an ear for euphony—which
they usually misapply, or mis-pronounce.

“Ben, how did you like the sermon to-day?” I
once inquired of one, who, for pompous language
and high-sounding epithets, was the Johnson of
negroes.—“Mighty obligated wid it, master, de
'clusive 'flections werry distructive to de ignorum.”

In the more fashionable families, negroes feel it
their duty—to show their aristocratic breeding—to
ape manners, and to use language, to which the
common herd cannot aspire. An aristocratic negro,
full of his master's wealth and importance, which
he feels to be reflected upon himself, is the most
aristocratic personage in existence. He supports
his own dignity, and that of his own master, or
“family,” as he phrases it, which he deems inseparable,
by a course of conduct befitting coloured
gentlemen. Always about the persons of their
masters or mistresses, the domestic slaves obtain a
better knowledge of the modes of civilized life than
they could do in the field, where negroes can rise
but little above their original African state. So
identified are they with the families in which they
have been “raised,” and so accurate, but rough, are
the copies which they individually present, of their
masters, that were all the domestic slaves of several
planters' families transferred to Liberia, or Hayti,
they would there constitute a by no means inferior
state of African society, whose model would be

found in Mississippi. Each family would be a
faithful copy of that with which it was once connected:
and should their former owners visit them
in their new home, they would smile at its resemblance
to the original. It is from this class that the
friends of wisely-regulated emancipation are to seek
material for carrying their plans into effect.

The second class is composed of town slaves;
which not only includes domestic slaves, in the
families of the citizens, but also all negro mechanics,
draymen, hostlers, labourers, hucksters, and
washwomen, and the heterogeneous multitude of
every other occupation, who fill the streets of a busy
city—for slaves are trained to every kind of manual
labour. The blacksmith, cabinet-maker, carpenter,
builder, wheelwright,—all have one or more slaves
labouring at their trades. The negro is a third arm
to every working man, who can possibly save money
enough to purchase one. He is emphatically
the “right-hand man” of every man. Even free
negroes cannot do without them: some of them
own several, to whom they are the severest masters.

“To whom do you belong?” I once inquired of
a negro whom I had employed. “There's my
master,” he replied; pointing to a steady old negro,
who had purchased himself, then his wife, and subsequently
his three children, by his own manual
exertions and persevering industry. He was now
the owner of a comfortable house, a piece of land,
and two or three slaves, to whom he could add one
every three years. It is worthy of remark, and
serves to illustrate one of the many singularities

characteristic of the race, that the free negro, who
“buys his wife's freedom,” as they term it, from
her master, by paying him her full value, ever afterward
considers her in the light of property.

“Thomas, you are a free man,” I remarked to
one who had purchased himself and wife from his
master, by the profits of a poultry yard and vegetable
garden, industriously attended to for many
years, in his leisure hours and on Sundays. “You
are a free man; I suppose you will soon have negroes
of your own.”

“Hi! Hab one now, master.” “Who, Tom?”—
“Ol' Sarah, master.” “Old Sarah! she is your
wife.” “She my nigger too; I pay master five
hun'red dollar for her.”

Many of the negroes who swarm in the cities are
what are called “hired servants.” They belong to
planters, or others, who, finding them qualified for
some occupation in which they cannot afford to employ
them, hire them to citizens, as mechanics,
cooks, waiters, nurses, &c., and receive the monthly
wages for their services. Some steady slaves are
permitted to “hire their own time;” that is, to go
into town and earn what they can, as porters,
labourers, gardeners, or in other ways, and pay a
stipulated sum weekly to their owners, which will
be regulated according to the supposed value of the
slave's labour. Masters, however, who are sufficiently
indulgent to allow them to “hire their time,”
are seldom rigorous in rating their labour very high.
But whether the slave earn less or more than the
specified sum, he must always pay that, and neither

more nor less than that to his master at the
close of each week, as the condition of this privilege.
Few fail in making up the sum; and generally
they earn more, if industrious, which is expended
in little luxuries, or laid by in an old rag
among the rafters of their houses, till a sufficient
sum is thus accumulated to purchase their freedom.
This they are seldom refused, and if a small amount
is wanting to reach their value, the master makes it
up out of his own purse, or rather, takes no notice
of the deficiency. I have never known a planter
refuse to aid, by peculiar indulgences, any of his
steady and well-disposed slaves, who desired to purchase
their freedom. On the contrary, they often
endeavour to excite emulation in them to the attainment
of this end. This custom of allowing slaves
to “hire their time,” ensuring the master a certain
sum weekly, and the slave a small surplus, is mutually
advantageous to both.

The majority of town servants are those who are
hired to families by planters, or by those living in
town who own more than they have employment
for, or who can make more by hiring them out than
by keeping them at home. Some families, who
possess not an acre of land, but own many slaves,
hire them out to different individuals; the wages
constituting their only income, which is often very
large. There are indeed few families, however
wealthy, whose incomes are not increased by the
wages of hired slaves, and there are many poor
people, who own one or two slaves, whose hire enables
them to live comfortably. From three to five

dollars a week is the hire of a female, and seventy-five
cents or a dollar a day for a male. Thus, contrary
to the opinion at the north, families may have
good servants, and yet not own one, if they are unable
to buy, or are conscientious upon that ground,
though there is not a shade of difference between
hiring a slave, where prejudices are concerned, and
owning one. Those who think otherwise, and thus
compound with conscience, are only making a distinction
without a difference. Northern people,
when they come to this country, who dislike either
to hire or purchase, often bring free coloured, or
white servants (helps) with them. The first soon
marry with the free blacks, or become too lofty in
their conceptions of things, in contrasting the situation
of their fellows around them, with their own, to
be retained. The latter, if they are young and
pretty, or even old and ugly, assume the fine lady
at once, disdaining to be servants among slaves, and
Hymen, in the person of some spruce overseer, soon
fulfils their expectations. I have seen but one
white servant, or domestic, of either sex, in this
country, and this was the body servant of an Englishman
who remained a few days in Natchez,
during which time, John sturdily refused to perform
a single duty of his station.

The expense of a domestic establishment at the
south, would appear very great in the estimation of
a New-Englander. A gardener, coachman, nurse,
cook, seamstress, and a house-maid, are indispensable.
Some of the more fashionable families add footmen,
chamber-maids, hostler, an additional nurse,

if there be many children, and another seamstress.
To each of these officials is generally attached a
young neophyte, while one constantly stumbles
over useless little negroes scattered all about the
house and court-yard. Necessary as custom has
made so great a number of servants, there seems
to be much less domestic labour performed in a
family of five, such perfect “eye-servants” are they,
than in a northern family, with only one “maid of
all work.” There are some Yankee “kitchen girls”
—I beg their ladyships' pardon for so styling them
—who can do more house-work, and do it better,
than three or four negro servants, unless the eye
of their mistress is upon them. As nearly all manual
labour is performed by slaves, there must be
one to each department, and hence originates a state
of domestic manners and individual character, which
affords an interesting field of contemplation to the
severer northerner. The city slaves are distinguished
as a class, by superior intelligence, acuteness,
and deeper moral degradation. A great proportion
of them are hired, and, free from restraint
in a great degree, compared with their situations
under their own masters, or in the country, they
soon become corrupted by the vices of the city, and
in associating indiscriminately with each other, and
the refuse of the white population. Soon the vices
of the city, divested of their refinement, become
their own unmasked. Although they may once
have ranked under the first class, and possessed
the characteristics which designate the decent, well-behaved
domestic of the planter, they soon lose
their identity. There are of course exceptions to
these characteristics, as also in the other classes.
Some of these exceptions have come within my
knowledge, of a highly meritorious character.

The third and lowest class consists of those
slaves, who are termed “field hands.”[19] Many of
them rank but little higher than the brutes that
perish, in the scale of intellect, and they are in general,
as a class, the last and lowest link in the chain
of the human species. Secluded in the solitude of
an extensive plantation, which is their world, beyond
whose horizon they know nothing—their
walks limited by the “quarters” and the field—their
knowledge and information derived from the rude
gossip of their fellows, straggling runaways, or
house servants, and without seeing a white person
except their master or overseer, as they ride over
the estate, with whom they seldom hold any conversation—they
present the singular feature of African
savages, disciplined to subordination, and placed
in the heart of a civilized community. Mere change
of place will not change the savage. Moral and
intellectual culture alone, will elevate him to an
equality with his civilized brethren. The African
transplanted from the arid soil of Ebo, Sene-Gambia,
or Guinea, to the green fields of America, without

mental culture, will remain still the wild African,
though he may wield his ox-whip, whistle after
his plough, and lift his hat, when addressed, like
his more civilized fellows. His children, born on
the plantation to which he is attached, and suffered
to grow up as ignorant as himself, will not be one
degree higher in the scale of civilization, than they
would have been had they been born in Africa.
The next generation will be no higher advanced;
and though they may have thrown away the idols
of their country, and been taught some vague notions
of God and the Christian religion, they are in
almost every sense of the word Africans, as rude,
and barbarous, but not so artless, as their untamed
brethren beyond the Atlantic. This has been, till
within a few years, the general condition of “field
hands” in this country, though there have been exceptions
on some plantations highly honourable to
their proprietors. Within a few years, gentlemen
of intelligence, humanity, and wealth, themselves
the owners of great numbers of slaves, have exerted
themselves and used their influence in mitigating
the condition of this class. They commenced a
reformation of the old system, whose chief foundation
was unyielding rigour, first upon their own
plantations. The influence of their example was
manifest by the general change which gradually
took place on other estates. This reformation is
still in progress, and the condition of the plantation
slave is now meliorated, so far as policy will admit,
while they remain in their present relation. But
still they are, and by necessity, always will be, an
inferior class to the two former. It is now popular
to treat slaves with kindness; and those planters
who are known to be inhumanly rigorous to their
slaves, are scarcely countenanced by the more intelligent
and humane portion of the community.
Such instances, however, are very rare; but there
are unprincipled men everywhere, who will give
vent to their ill feelings, and bad passions, not with
less good-will upon the back of an indented apprentice,
than upon that of a purchased slave. Private
chapels are now introduced upon most of the
plantations of the more wealthy, which are far from
any church; Sabbath-schools are instituted for the
black children, and Bible-classes for the parents,
which are superintended by the planter, a chaplain,
or some of the female members of the family. But
with all these aids they are still, as I have remarked,
the most degraded class of slaves; and they are not
only regarded as such by the whites, but by the two
other classes, who look upon them as infinitely beneath
themselves. It is a difficult matter to impress
upon their minds moral or religious truths.
They generally get hold of some undefined ideas,
but they can go no farther. Their minds seem to
want the capacity to receive intellectual impressions,
nor are they capable of reasoning from the
simplest principles, or of associating ideas. A native
planter, who has had the management of between
two and three hundred slaves, since he commenced
planting, recently informed me, that if he
conveyed an order to any of his “field hands,”
which contained two ideas, he was sure it would not
be followed correctly.

“Dick,” said he to one of them, “go to the carriage-house,
and you will find a side-saddle and a
man's saddle there. Put one of them on the roan
horse; but don't put on the ladies' saddle, mind
you.” “Yes, master,” said Dick, lifting his cap
very respectfully, and then posted off to the carriage-house;
whence he returned in a few minutes
with the roan caparisoned for a lady.

The last idea seems to thrust out the first. I
have frequently tried experiments to ascertain how
far this was true of them in general, and have convinced
myself, that it is very hard for the uneducated,
rude field negro to retain more than a single
impression at a time. A gentleman, who has been
a leading planter for the last twenty years, and who
has nearly one hundred slaves, of all ages, told me,
that, finding the established catechism too hard for
his slaves, he drew one up in manuscript himself,
as simply as he thought it could be done. But a
few lessons convinced him that he must make another
effort, on a plan still more simple: and he accordingly
drew up a series of questions, each containing
one idea, and no more; for every question
involving two had always puzzled them. Every
question he also made a leading one: this he found to
be absolutely necessary. “Yet,” he observed, “after
all my efforts, for many years past, to imbue the
minds—not of the children only, but of the parents,
who were all included in my list of catechumens—

with the plainest rudiments of Christianity, I do
not think that I have one on my estate, who comprehends
the simplest principle connected with the
atonement.”

One of these negroes, after a long course of drilling,
was asked, “In whose image were you made?”
“In de image ob de debil, master,” was his prompt
reply.

The restrictions upon slaves are very rigorous in
law, but not in fact. They are forbidden to leave
their estates without a written “pass,” or some letter
or token, whereby it may appear that they are
proceeding by authority. This is a wise regulation,
to which I have before alluded; and if its spirit was
properly entered into by the community, it would
be the best means for public security that could be
adopted.

Patrols are organized in the several counties and
towns, whose duty it is to preserve order, and apprehend
all negroes without passes. This body of
men consists of four or five citizens, unarmed, unless
with riding whips, headed by one of their number
as captain. They are appointed monthly by a
justice of the peace, and authorized to visit negro
cabins, “quarters,” and all places suspected to contain
negroes, or unlawful assemblies of slaves; and
all whom they may find strolling about, without a
“pass,” they are empowered to punish upon the
spot, with “any number of lashes not exceeding
fifteen,” or take them to prison. They go out on
duty once a week in the towns and villages; but it
is considered a bore, and performed reluctantly.

But there is no deficiency of energy and activity in
case of any actual alarm. Soon after the South-Hampton
tragedy, during the Christmas holydays,
the public mind was excited by a vague rumour
that this drama was to be reacted here, as it was
known that some of the negroes, supposed to be
engaged in it, had been brought out and sold in this
state. During this excitement the patrols were
very vigilant. On the high roads they were increased
to one hundred armed and mounted men.
But this alarm was groundless, and very soon subsided.

The fencibles—a volunteer military corps in Natchez,
composed of the first young gentlemen of the
city, and now commanded by the late chancellor of
the state—the best disciplined and finest looking
body of men west of the Alleghanies, constitute the
military police of that city. They are also the “firemen;”
and a more efficient phalanx to battle with
a conflagration, cannot be found, even in New-York
or Boston. Patrols go out merely to preserve the
peace of the neighbourhood from any disturbance
from drunken negroes, rather than to guard against
insurrectionary movements.

Though the south has little to apprehend from
her coloured population, yet many bold plans, indicating
great genius in their originators, have been
formed by slaves for effecting their freedom. But
farther than mere plans, or violent acts, of short continuance,
they will hardly be able to advance. The
negro is wholly destitute of courage. He possesses
an animal instinct, which impels him, when roused,

to the performance of the most savage acts. He is
a being of impulse, and cowardice is a principle of
his soul, as instinctive as courage in the white man.
This may be caused by their condition, and without
doubt it is. But whatever may be the cause,
the effect exists, and will ever preclude any apprehension
of serious evil from any insurrectionary
combination of their number. The spirit of insubordination
will die as soon as the momentary excitement
which produced it has subsided; and negroes
never can accomplish any thing of a tragic nature,
unless under the influence of extraordinary temporary
excitement. The negro has a habitual fear
of the white man, which has become a second nature;
and this, combined with the fearless contempt
of the white man for him, in his belligerent attitude,
will operate to prevent any very serious evil resulting
from their plans.

A northerner looks upon a band of negroes, as
upon so many men. But the planter, or southerner,
views them in a very different light; and armed
only with a hunting whip or walking-cane, he will
fearlessly throw himself among a score of them,
armed as they may be, and they will instantly flee
with terror. There is a peculiar tone of authority,
in which an angry master speaks to his slaves,
which, while they are subordinate, cowers them,
and when they are insubordinate, so strong is the
force of habit, it does not lose its effects. The
very same cause which enables him to keep in subjection
fifty or a hundred negroes on his estate,
through the instrumentality of his voice, or mere

presence, operates so soon as the momentary intoxication
of insurrectionary excitement is over—if it
does not check its first exhibition—to bring them
into subjection. Nor do I speak unadvisedly or
lightly, when I say that a band of insurgent slaves
will be more easily intimidated and defeated by half
the number of planters, with whips or canes, and
their peculiarly authoritative voices, than by an
equal number of northern soldiers armed cap à pie.
Fear, awe, and obedience in relation to his master,
are interwoven into the very nature of the slave.
They are the main-spring of all his actions; a part
and portion of himself, and no extraneous circumstances
can enable him to rise superior to their influence.

I could relate many facts illustrative of what I
have stated above, respecting the influence of habitual
or natural obedience upon the negro. The
runaway will sometimes suffer himself to be taken
by a white boy not a third of his size. Recently,
about midnight, a lady saw, by the light of the moon,
a tall negro enter her gallery. She immediately
arose, observed him through the window more distinctly
as he was peering about with a light step,
and satisfied that he was a negro, she threw up the
window, and cried “stop, sir! stop!” in the tone
of authority peculiar to all who have had any thing
to do with negroes. He at first started, and made
a motion to run, but on a repetition of the command
he submissively obeyed, and suffered himself to be
taken by the lady's coachman, whom she called up—

the runaway, as he proved to be, standing till he
came and bound him, without moving a limb. This
conduct betrayed no uncommon nerve or resolution
in the lady, for southern ladies would laugh at the
idea of being afraid of a negro. The readiness of
the black coachman to arrest his fellow slave, goes
far also toward illustrating the views which the
slaves themselves entertain of their condition. But
this is illustrated still more forcibly by the following
incident. I was sitting, not long since, on the portico
of a house in the country, engaged in conversation,
when an old negro entered the front gate, leading
by the arm a negro boy about sixteen years of age.
“Ah,” said the gentleman with whom I was talking,
“there is my runaway!” The old man approached
the steps, which led to the portico, and
removing his hat, as usual with slaves on addressing
a white person, said, “master, I done bring John
home. I cotch him skulkin 'bout in Natchy: I
wish master sell him where ol' nigger nebber see
him more, if he runaway 'gain: he disgrace he family;
his ol' mammy cry 'nough 'bout it when she
hearn it.”

This couple were father and son. A “good negro,”
in the usual acceptation of the term, feels that
there is a kind of disgrace attached to himself and
family, if any one of them becomes a runaway.

A negro lad, who had absconded for a few days'
play, was apprehended and led by his overseer
through the streets on his way home, not long ago,
when an old negro wash-woman standing by, exclaimed

on seeing him, “La, me! who 'tink he 'gin
so young to act bad!” I will relate an instance of
their readiness to arrest each other.

“Missus, dere's a runaway back de garden,” said
hastily a young negress, as a party were sitting
down to the tea table of a lady at whose house I
was visiting. “Let me go catch him,” “let me go
missus,” said the waiters, and they could hardly
be kept in the hall. Permission was given for one
to go, who in a few minutes returned, leading up to
the hall-door a stout half-naked negro whom he had
caught prowling about the premises. “Here de
nigger, missus,” said he exultingly, as though he
himself belonged to another race and colour.

Negroes are very sensitive. They are easily
excited, and upon no subject so much so perhaps,
as religion. They are, particularly the females, of
a very religious temperament, strongly inclining to
superstition. Unable to command their feelings,
they give vent to the least emotion in the loudest
clamours. They are thereby persuaded that they
are converted, and apply for admission into the
church in great numbers. Many of them are perhaps
truly pious. But the religion of most of them
is made up of shouting, which is an incontrovertible
argument or proof, with them, of conversion. This
shouting is not produced generally by the sermon,
for few are able to understand a very plain discourse,
of which every sentence will contain words
wholly incomprehensible to them. But they always
listen with great attention, and so they would do
were the sermon delivered in any other tongue. A

few of the more intelligent and pious negroes, who
can understand most of the sermon, perhaps become
affected, and unable, like their better disciplined
masters, to controul their feelings, give vent to them
in groans and shouts. Those about them catch the
infection, and spread it, till the whole negro portion
of the audience in the gallery, becomes affected
ostensibly by religious feeling, but really by a kind
of animal magnetism, inexplicable and uncontrollable.

The majority of the religious slaves are of the
Methodist denomination, some of which sect may
be found on every plantation in the country, but
few of them are practical Christians. They are
apt to consider the name as the thing. But I have
met with individual exceptions, which reflect honour
upon their race, and which I now recall with pleasure.
One of the most touching and eloquent prayers
I have ever heard, I recently listened to from
the lips of an old negro, (who sometimes preached
to his fellow slaves,) as he kneeled by the pallet of
a dying African, and commended in an appeal,—
which for beautiful simplicity and pathos, is seldom
equalled—his departing spirit to his God.

I have observed that they are seldom influenced
by the principles of religion in their individual conduct.
Many, who are regarded by their brother
Africans as “shining lights,” drink ardent spirits
freely and without compunction. “Ben, why do
you drink whiskey?” I inquired of an old “member,”
who was very fond of indulging in this favourite
southern potation for all classes—“It no sin

master—don't de Bible say, what enter into de
mouth no defile de man?” This was unanswerable.

I asked another, “why he swore?” “Cause,
master, nigger no keep de debil down he throat,
when oxen so bad.”

Negro preaching has obtained here formerly,
but the injudicious course taken at the north by
those who are friendly to the cause of emancipation,
but who do not evince their good feelings in
the wisest manner, has led planters to keep a
tighter rein upon their slaves. And negro preaching,
among the removal of other privileges which
they once enjoyed, is now interdicted. It is certainly
to be regretted that the steps taken by those
who desire to do away slavery, should have militated
against their views, through their own unadvised
measures, and placed the subject of their philanthropic
efforts in a less desirable state than
formerly.

The more I see of slavery, the more firmly I am
convinced that the interference of our northern
friends, in the present state of their information
upon the subject, will be more injurious than beneficial
to the cause. The physician, like Prince Hohenloe,
might as reasonably be expected to heal,
with the Atlantic between himself and his patient's
pulse, or to use a juster figure, an individual,
wholly ignorant of a disease, might as well attempt
its cure, as for northerners, however sincere their
exertions, or however pure their intentions may be,
under existing circumstances, to meliorate the condition
of the coloured population of the south.

When the chains of the slave are broken in pieces,
it must be by a southern hand—and thousands of
southern gentlemen are already extending their
arms, ready to strike the blow. And when experience
shall tell them the time is at hand, then,

“Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!” shall
be shouted from the south to the north; and

I will conclude my remarks upon this interesting
subject, with some valuable reflections from another
pen. “It avails but little to deprecate now,” says the
able writer whom I quote, “and even to denounce
with holy zeal, the iniquity of those who first established
the relations of master and slave in the then
colonies of Great Britain, but now United States of
America. These relations have been sanctioned by
law and long usage, and interwoven with the institutions
of the two countries: they cannot be cancelled
at once by any law, founded on justice and
equity, which should place at once either or both
of the parties in a less advantageous position, than
the one which they held when connected by the
tie of master and slave. However opposed to
slavery in the abstract, and alive to its numerous
evils in practice; and with whatever zeal we may
advocate emancipation, we ought ever, in this, as
in all other kinds of reform, political as well as moral,
to act with that wise discretion, which should

make the present work a means of future and permanent
good. It should be steadily borne in mind,
therefore, that immediate, unconditional emancipation,
while it is detrimental to the master, does no
immediate good to the manumitted slave. It is not
the boon, so much as a beginning, a hope, and a promise
of future good to the African; it is simply one
of the means, a most important and paramount one,
indeed, for acquiring the blessings of rational liberty;
but it is not the blessing itself. It becomes, therefore,
the bounden duty, on every principle of equity
and religion, of those who, either of their own free
will, or by menaces to the master, give emancipation
to the slave, to carry out what they have begun,
to realize what they have promised, to fulfil the
hopes which they have raised. Failing to do this,
and simply content with severing the relations between
master and slave, they become, themselves,
the most cruel tyrants, the most unjust men. They
have hurried on, by their blind zeal, a crisis, which
they are either unable, or unwilling, or know not
how, to turn to the best account, for the cause of
humanity, civilization, and religion.

Previous—and essential preliminaries, to any attempt
at emancipation, either by direct advocacy of
the measure in particular quarters, or by legislative
enactments, where such are constitutional and legal
—a full inquiry ought to be instituted under the following
heads:—

I. The actual condition of the slaves, which will
include the kind and amount of labour which they

are bound to perform, the treatment which they experience
when at work, and the degree of attention
paid to their physical wants and moral nature, as to
lodging, clothing, food, amusements, and instruction.

II. The immediate effects of unconditional emancipation,
on the coloured freeman. Under this head
should be investigated his capability, under the circumstances,
of providing for himself and family;
and of his acting the part of a good neighbour, and
a useful, productive citizen.

III. The compatibility of the whites and blacks,
the former masters and slaves, and their descendants
respectively, living together after emancipation
in the same community, with due regard to the
feelings, interests, dispositions, and wants of each
class.

IV. The measures to be adopted for the interests
of each, in case of such incompatibility being evident
and impossible to be overcome. The first
branch of inquiry results favourably to the cause of
humanity, as far as the West Indies are concerned.
The state of the slave population in the United
States is even still more favourable in the main:
and if the comparisons instituted between the slaves
in the islands and the operatives in England, have
resulted in favour of the superior comforts of the
former, I feel very sure that, when made between
the latter and the American slaves, they will exhibit
these in a still more advantageous position.

All this, however, while it diminishes the fears of
the philanthropist, ought not to relax his efforts for

a future and gradual melioration. It simply illustrates
things as they are, and does not positively
show how they should be.

The facts hitherto collected under the second
branch of inquiry, are not encouraging. The third
head presents a very unsatisfactory aspect to the
friends of emancipation, and of the negro race. The
problem has not been solved; or if partially so, it
goes to show, that there is an incompatibility between
the two races, and that both are sufferers by
their sojourn in the same land, even though both
should be free nominally, and, in the eye of the law,
equal. A glance at the condition of the free states
of the union, as they are called, in this respect, exhibits
the proofs of this condition of things. And
so long as these startling anomalies exist—freedom
without its enjoyments, equality without its social
privileges—we really do not see how the people of
the free states can pretend, with any show of propriety
or justice, even had they the power by law
and constitution, to meddle with the relations between
master and slave, in the slave-holding states. They
have the right, which all men ought to have, of discussing
freely any and every important question in
ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy, but not
to give their conclusion a direct and offensive application
to those portions of their fellow-citizens or
fellow-men, to whom they have not yet furnished a
clear and satisfactory example, and rule of conduct
in the case specially adverted to.

Still more do the difficulties of the subject increase,
if the last branch of inquiry has not been

satisfactorily carried out—if the necessity of separation
of the two races, be denied; or, if admitted,
the means of accomplishing it be opposed and reviled,
as either impracticable or unjust. I am myself
in favour of emancipation; but this is a conclusion
which it seems to us ought to be carried
into effect, only after a due consideration of the
premises, and with a full knowledge of the remoter
consequences, and ability to make these consequences
correspond with the claims of justice and
peace in the beginning; and the best and permanent
interests of the two races, ultimately. Have those
who advocate immediate and unconditional emancipation
weighed well these several branches of inquiry
on this momentous subject? It is to be feared,
indeed, by their language and conduct, that they
have not. They should beware, while they are
denouncing the slave-holder, that they do not themselves
incur a still more fearful responsibility, and
make themselves answerable for jeoparding, if not
actually dissolving, the Union, and encouraging
civil, perhaps servile war, with all its horrors and
atrocities.”