Darien, Georgia.
Dear E——. Minuteness of detail, and fidelity in the account of my daily
doings, will hardly, I fear, render my letters very interesting to you
now; but cut off as I am here from all the usual resources and amusements
of civilized existence, I shall find but little to communicate to you that
is not furnished by my observations on the novel appearance of external
nature, and the moral and physical condition of Mr. ——’s people. The
latter subject is, I know, one sufficiently interesting in itself to you,
and I shall not scruple to impart all the reflections which may occur to
me relative to their state during my stay here, where enquiry into their
mode of existence will form my chief occupation, and, necessarily also,
the staple commodity of my letters. I purpose, while I reside here,
keeping a sort of journal, such as Monk Lewis wrote during his visit to
his West India plantations. I wish I had any prospect of rendering my
diary as interesting and amusing to you as his was to me.
In taking my first walk on the island, I directed my steps towards the
rice mill, a large building on the banks of the river, within a few yards
of the house we occupy. Is it not rather curious that Miss Martineau
should have mentioned the erection of a steam mill for threshing rice
somewhere in the vicinity of Charleston as a singular novelty, likely to
form an era in Southern agriculture, and to
produce the most desirable
changes in the system of labor by which it is carried on? Now, on this
estate alone, there are three threshing mills—one worked by steam, one by
the tide, and one by horses; there are two private steam mills on
plantations adjacent to ours, and a public one at Savannah, where the
planters who have none on their own estates are in the habit of sending
their rice to be threshed at a certain percentage; these have all been in
operation for some years, and I therefore am at a loss to understand what
made her hail the erection of the one at Charleston as likely to produce
such immediate and happy results. By the bye—of the misstatements, or
rather mistakes, for they are such, in her books, with regard to certain
facts—her only disadvantage in acquiring information was not by any means
that natural infirmity on which the periodical press, both here and in
England, has commented with so much brutality. She had the misfortune to
possess, too, that unsuspecting reliance upon the truth of others which
they are apt to feel who themselves hold truth most sacred: and this was
a sore disadvantage to her in a country where I have heard it myself
repeatedly asserted—and, what is more, much gloried in—that she was
purposely misled by the persons to whom she addressed her enquiries, who
did not scruple to disgrace themselves by imposing in the grossest manner
upon her credulity and anxiety to obtain information. It is a knowledge of
this very shameful proceeding, which has made me most especially anxious
to avoid
fact hunting. I might fill my letters to you with accounts
received from others, but as I am aware of the risk which I run in so
doing, I shall furnish you with no details but those which come under my
own immediate observation. To return to the rice mill: it is worked by a
steam-engine of thirty horse power, and besides threshing great part of
our own rice, is kept constantly employed by the neighboring
planters,
who send their grain to it in preference to the more distant mill at
Savannah, paying, of course, the same percentage, which makes it a very
profitable addition to the estate. Immediately opposite to this building
is a small shed, which they call the cook’s shop, and where the daily
allowance of rice and corn grits of the people is boiled and distributed
to them by an old woman, whose special business this is. There are four
settlements or villages (or, as the negroes call them, camps) on the
island, consisting of from ten to twenty houses, and to each settlement is
annexed a cook’s shop with capacious cauldrons, and the oldest wife of
the settlement for officiating priestess. Pursuing my walk along the
river’s bank, upon an artificial dyke, sufficiently high and broad to
protect the fields from inundation by the ordinary rising of the tide—for
the whole island is below high water mark—I passed the blacksmith’s and
cooper’s shops. At the first all the common iron implements of husbandry
or household use for the estate are made, and at the latter all the rice
barrels necessary for the crop, besides tubs and buckets large and small
for the use of the people, and cedar tubs of noble dimensions and
exceedingly neat workmanship, for our own household purposes. The
fragrance of these when they are first made, as well as their ample size,
renders them preferable as dressing-room furniture, in my opinion, to all
the china foot-tubs that ever came out of Staffordshire. After this I got
out of the vicinity of the settlement, and pursued my way along a narrow
dyke—the river on one hand, and on the other a slimy, poisonous-looking
swamp, all rattling with sedges of enormous height, in which one might
lose one’s way as effectually as in a forest of oaks. Beyond this, the low
rice-fields, all clothed in their rugged stubble, divided by dykes into
monotonous squares, a species of prospect by no means beautiful to the
mere lover of the picturesque. The only thing that I met with to attract
my
attention was a most beautiful species of ivy, the leaf longer and more
graceful than that of the common English creeper, glittering with the
highest varnish, delicately veined, and of a rich brown green, growing in
profuse garlands from branch to branch of some stunted evergreen bushes
which border the dyke, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks
are rather circumscribed, inasmuch as the dykes are the only promenades.
On all sides of these lie either the marshy rice-fields, the brimming
river, or the swampy patches of yet unreclaimed forest, where the huge
cypress trees and exquisite evergreen undergrowth spring up from a
stagnant sweltering pool, that effectually forbids the foot of the
explorer.
As I skirted one of these thickets to-day, I stood still to admire the
beauty of the shrubbery. Every shade of green, every variety of form,
every degree of varnish, and all in full leaf and beauty in the very depth
of winter. The stunted dark-colored oak; the magnolia bay (like our own
culinary and fragrant bay), which grows to a very great size; the wild
myrtle, a beautiful and profuse shrub, rising to a height of six, eight,
and ten feet, and branching on all sides in luxuriant tufted fullness;
most beautiful of all, that pride of the South, the magnolia grandiflora,
whose lustrous dark green perfect foliage would alone render it an object
of admiration, without the queenly blossom whose color, size, and perfume
are unrivalled in the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent
creature grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps, but seldom
adorns a high or dry soil, or suffers itself to be successfully
transplanted. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable
covert, and from glittering graceful branch to branch hang garlands of
evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing
even now; while I, bethinking me of the pinching cold that is at this hour
tyrannizing over your region, look
round on this strange scene—on these
green woods, this unfettered river, and sunny sky—and feel very much like
one in another planet from yourself.
The profusion of birds here is one thing that strikes me as curious,
coming from the vicinity of Philadelphia, where even the robin redbreast,
held sacred by the humanity of all other Christian people, is not safe
from the gunning prowess of the unlicensed sportsmen of your free
country. The negroes (of course) are not allowed the use of firearms, and
their very simply constructed traps do not do much havoc among the
feathered hordes that haunt their rice-fields. Their case is rather a hard
one, as partridges, snipes, and the most delicious wild ducks abound here,
and their allowance of rice and Indian meal would not be the worse for
such additions. No day passes that I do not, in the course of my walk, put
up a number of the land birds, and startle from among the gigantic sedges
the long-necked water-fowl by dozens. It arouses the killing propensity in
me most dreadfully, and I really entertain serious thoughts of learning to
use a gun, for the mere pleasure of destroying these pretty birds as they
whirr from their secret coverts close beside my path. How strong an
instinct of animal humanity this is, and how strange if one be more
strange than another. Reflection rebukes it almost instantaneously, and
yet for the life of me I cannot help wishing I had a fowling-piece
whenever I put up a covey of these creatures; though I suppose, if one
were brought bleeding and maimed to me, I should begin to cry, and be very
pathetic, after the fashion of Jacques. However, one must live, you know;
and here our living consists very mainly of wild ducks, wild geese, wild
turkeys, and venison. Nor, perhaps, can one imagine the universal doom
overtaking a creature with less misery than in the case of the bird who,
in the very moment of his triumphant soaring, is brought dead to the
ground. I should like to bargain for such a finis myself, amazingly, I
know; and have always thought that the death I should prefer would be to
break my neck off the back of my horse at a full gallop on a fine day. Of
course a bad shot should be hung—a man who shatters his birds’ wings and
legs; if I undertook the trade, I would learn of some Southern duelist,
and always shoot my bird through the head or heart—as an expert murderer
knows how. Besides these birds of which we make our prey, there are others
that prey upon their own fraternity. Hawks of every sort and size wheel
their steady rounds above the rice-fields; and the great turkey
buzzards—those most unsightly carrion birds—spread their broad black
wings, and soar over the river like so many mock eagles. I do not know
that I ever saw any winged creature of so forbidding an aspect as these
same turkey buzzards; their heavy flight, their awkward gait, their
bald-looking head and neck, and their devotion to every species of foul
and detestable food, render them almost abhorrent to me. They abound in
the South, and in Charleston are held in especial veneration for their
scavenger-like propensities, killing one of them being, I believe, a
fineable offence by the city police regulations. Among the Brobdignagian
sedges that in some parts of the island fringe the Altamaha, the
nightshade (apparently the same as the European creeper) weaves a perfect
matting of its poisonous garlands, and my remembrance of its prevalence in
the woods and hedges of England did not reconcile me to its appearance
here. How much of this is mere association I cannot tell; but whether the
wild duck makes its nest under its green arches, or the alligators and
snakes of the Altamaha have their secret bowers there, it is an
evil-looking weed, and I shall have every leaf of it cleared away.
I must inform you of a curious conversation which took place between my
little girl and the woman who performs
for us the offices of chambermaid
here—of course one of Mr. ——’s slaves. What suggested it to the child,
or whence indeed she gathered her information, I know not; but children
are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, however minute, escapes their
microscopic observation. She suddenly began addressing this woman. ‘Mary,
some persons are free and some are not (the woman made no reply). I am a
free person (of a little more than three years old). I say, I am a free
person, Mary—do you know that?’ ‘Yes, missis.’ ‘Some persons are free and
some are not—do you know that, Mary?’ ‘Yes, missis,
here,’ was the
reply; ‘I know it is so here, in this world.’ Here my child’s white nurse,
my dear Margery, who had hitherto been silent, interfered, saying, ‘Oh,
then you think it will not always be so?’ ‘Me hope not, missis.’ I am
afraid, E——, this woman actually imagines that there will be no slaves
in Heaven; isn’t that preposterous now? when by the account of most of the
Southerners slavery itself must be Heaven, or something uncommonly like
it. Oh, if you could imagine how this title ‘Missis,’ addressed to me and
to my children, shocks all my feelings! Several times I have exclaimed,
‘For God’s sake do not call me that!’ and only been awakened, by the
stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect
uselessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice indeed I
have done more—I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend
me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such ownership
sinful, and that, though I was the wife of the man who pretends to own
them, I was in truth no more their mistress than they were mine. Some of
them I know understood me, more of them did not.
Our servants—those who have been selected to wait upon us in the
house—consist of a man, who is quite a tolerable cook (I believe this is
a natural gift with them, as
with Frenchmen); a dairywoman, who churns for
us; a laundrywoman; her daughter, our housemaid, the aforesaid Mary; and
two young lads of from fifteen to twenty, who wait upon us in the capacity
of footmen. As, however, the latter are perfectly filthy in their persons
and clothes—their faces, hands, and naked feet being literally encrusted
with dirt—their attendance at our meals is not, as you may suppose,
particularly agreeable to me, and I dispense with it as often as possible.
Mary, too, is so intolerably offensive in her person that it is impossible
to endure her proximity, and the consequence is that, amongst Mr. ——’s
slaves, I wait upon myself more than I have ever done in my life before.
About this same personal offensiveness, the Southerners you know insist
that it is inherent with the race, and it is one of their most cogent
reasons for keeping them as slaves. But as this very disagreeable
peculiarity does not prevent Southern women from hanging their infants at
the breasts of negresses, nor almost every planter’s wife and daughter
from having one or more little pet blacks sleeping like puppy dogs in
their very bedchamber, nor almost every planter from admitting one or
several of his female slaves to the still closer intimacy of his bed—it
seems to me that this objection to doing them right is not very valid. I
cannot imagine that they would smell much worse if they were free, or come
in much closer contact with the delicate organs of their white, fellow
countrymen; indeed, inasmuch as good deeds are spoken of as having a sweet
savor before God, it might be supposed that the freeing of the blacks
might prove rather an odoriferous process than the contrary. However this
may be, I must tell you that this potent reason for enslaving a whole race
of people is no more potent with me than most of the others adduced to
support the system, inasmuch as, from observation and some experience, I
am strongly inclined to believe that peculiar ignorance
of the laws of
health and the habits of decent cleanliness are the real and only causes
of this disagreeable characteristic of the race—thorough ablutions and
change of linen, when tried, having been perfectly successful in removing
all such objections; and if ever you have come into anything like
neighborly proximity with a low Irishman or woman, I think you will allow
that the same causes produce very nearly the same effects. The stench in
an Irish, Scotch, Italian, or French hovel are quite as intolerable as any
I ever found in our negro houses, and the filth and vermin which abound
about the clothes and persons of the lower peasantry of any of those
countries as abominable as the same conditions in the black population of
the United States. A total absence of self-respect begets these hateful
physical results, and in proportion as moral influences are remote,
physical evils will abound. Well-being, freedom, and industry induce
self-respect, self-respect induces cleanliness and personal attention, so
that slavery is answerable for all the evils that exhibit themselves where
it exists—from lying, thieving, and adultery, to dirty houses, ragged
clothes, and foul smells.
But to return to our Ganymedes. One of them—the eldest son of our
laundrywoman, and Mary’s brother, a boy of the name of Aleck
(Alexander)—is uncommonly bright and intelligent; he performs all the
offices of a well-instructed waiter with great efficiency, and anywhere
out of slave land would be able to earn fourteen or fifteen dollars a
month for himself; he is remarkably good tempered and well disposed. The
other poor boy is so stupid that he appears sullen from absolute darkness
of intellect; instead of being a little lower than the angels, he is
scarcely a little higher than the brutes, and to this condition are
reduced the majority of his kind by the institutions under which they
live. I should tell you that Aleck’s parents and kindred have always been
about the house of the
overseer, and in daily habits of intercourse with
him and his wife; and wherever this is the case the effect of involuntary
education is evident in the improved intelligence of the degraded race.
In a conversation which Mr. —— had this evening with Mr. O——, the
overseer, the latter mentioned that two of our carpenters had in their
leisure time made a boat, which they had disposed of to some neighboring
planter for sixty dollars.
Now, E——, I have no intention of telling you a one-sided story, or
concealing from you what are cited as the advantages which these poor
people possess; you, who know that no indulgence is worth simple justice,
either to him who gives or him who receives, will not thence conclude that
their situation thus mitigated is, therefore, what it should be. On this
matter of the sixty dollars earned by Mr. ——’s two men much stress was
laid by him and his overseer. I look at it thus: if these men were
industrious enough out of their scanty leisure to earn sixty dollars, how
much more of remuneration, of comfort, of improvement might they not have
achieved were the price of their daily labor duly paid them, instead of
being unjustly withheld to support an idle young man and his idle
family—i.e. myself and my children.
And here it may be well to inform you that the slaves on this plantation
are divided into field hands and mechanics or artisans. The former, the
great majority, are the more stupid and brutish of the tribe; the others,
who are regularly taught their trades, are not only exceedingly expert at
them, but exhibit a greater general activity of intellect, which must
necessarily result from even a partial degree of cultivation. There are
here a gang (for that is the honorable term) of coopers, of blacksmiths,
of bricklayers, of carpenters—all well acquainted with their peculiar
trades. The latter constructed the wash-hand stands, clothes presses,
sofas, tables, etc., with which our house is
furnished, and they are very
neat pieces of workmanship—neither veneered or polished indeed, nor of
very costly materials, but of the white pine wood planed as smooth as
marble—a species of furniture not very luxurious perhaps, but all the
better adapted therefore to the house itself, which is certainly rather
more devoid of the conveniences and adornments of modern existence than
anything I ever took up my abode in before. It consists of three small
rooms, and three still smaller, which would be more appropriately
designated as closets, a wooden recess by way of pantry, and a kitchen
detached from the dwelling—a mere wooden outhouse, with no floor but the
bare earth, and for furniture a congregation of filthy negroes, who lounge
in and out of it like hungry hounds at all hours of the day and night,
picking up such scraps of food as they can find about, which they discuss
squatting down upon their hams, in which interesting position and
occupation I generally find a number of them whenever I have sufficient
hardihood to venture within those precincts, the sight of which and its
tenants is enough to slacken the appetite of the hungriest hunter that
ever lost all nice regards in the mere animal desire for food. Of our
three apartments, one is our sitting, eating, and
living room, and is
sixteen feet by fifteen. The walls are plastered indeed, but neither
painted nor papered; it is divided from our bed-room (a similarly elegant
and comfortable chamber) by a dingy wooden partition covered all over with
hooks, pegs, and nails, to which hats, caps, keys, etc.. etc.., are suspended
in graceful irregularity. The doors open by wooden latches, raised by
means of small bits of packthread—I imagine, the same primitive order of
fastening celebrated in the touching chronicle of Red Riding Hood; how
they shut I will not pretend to describe, as the shutting of a door is a
process of extremely rare occurrence throughout the whole Southern
country. The third room,
a chamber with sloping ceiling, immediately over
our sitting-room and under the roof, is appropriated to the nurse and my
two babies. Of the closets, one is Mr. —— the overseer’s bed-room, the
other his office or place of business; and the third, adjoining our
bed-room, and opening immediately out of doors, is Mr. ——’s dressing
room and cabinet d’affaires, where he gives audiences to the negroes,
redresses grievances, distributes red woolen caps (a singular
gratification to a slave), shaves himself, and performs the other offices
of his toilet. Such being our abode, I think you will allow there is
little danger of my being dazzled by the luxurious splendors of a
Southern slave residence. Our sole mode of summoning our attendants is by
a packthread bell-rope suspended in the sitting-room. From the bed-rooms
we have to raise the windows and our voices, and bring them by power of
lungs, or help ourselves—which, I thank God, was never yet a hardship to
me.
I mentioned to you just now that two of the carpenters had made a boat in
their leisure time. I must explain this to you, and this will involve the
mention of another of Miss Martineau’s mistakes with regard to slave
labor, at least in many parts of the Southern States. She mentions that
on one estate of which she knew, the proprietor had made the experiment,
and very successfully, of appointing to each of his slaves a certain task
to be performed in the day, which once accomplished, no matter how early,
the rest of the four and twenty hours were allowed to the laborer to
employ as he pleased. She mentions this as a single experiment, and
rejoices over it as a decided amelioration in the condition of the slave,
and one deserving of general adoption. But in the part of Georgia where
this estate is situated, the custom of task labor is universal, and it
prevails, I believe, throughout Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of
North Carolina; in
other parts of the latter State, however—as I was
informed by our overseer, who is a native of that State—the estates are
small, rather deserving the name of farms, and the laborers are much
upon the same footing as the laboring men at the North, working from
sunrise to sunset in the fields with the farmer and his sons, and coming
in with them to their meals, which they take immediately after the rest of
the family. In Louisiana and the new South-western Slave States, I
believe, task labor does not prevail; but it is in those that the
condition of the poor human cattle is most deplorable, as you know it was
there that the humane calculation was not only made, but openly and
unhesitatingly avowed, that the planters found it upon the whole their
most profitable plan to work off (kill with labor) their whole number of
slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole stock. By the bye,
the Jewish institution of slavery is much insisted upon by the Southern
upholders of the system; perhaps this is their notion of the Jewish
jubilee, when the slaves were by Moses’ strict enactment to be all set
free. Well, this task system is pursued on this estate; and thus it is
that the two carpenters were enabled to make the boat they sold for sixty
dollars. These tasks, of course, profess to be graduated according to the
sex, age, and strength of the laborer; but in many instances this is not
the case, as I think you will agree when I tell you that on Mr. ——’s
first visit to his estates he found that the men and the women who
labored in the fields had the same task to perform. This was a noble
admission of female equality, was it not?—and thus it had been on the
estate for many years past. Mr. ——, of course, altered the distribution
of the work, diminishing the quantity done by the women.
I had a most ludicrous visit this morning from the midwife of the
estate—rather an important personage both to master and slave, as to her
unassisted skill and
science the ushering of all the young negroes into
their existence of bondage is entrusted. I heard a great deal of
conversation in the dressing-room adjoining mine, while performing my own
toilet, and presently Mr. —— opened my room-door, ushering in a dirty
fat good-humored looking old negress, saying, ‘The midwife, Rose, wants
to make your acquaintance.’ ‘Oh massa!’ shrieked out the old creature in a
paroxysm of admiration, ‘where you get this lilly alablaster baby!’ For a
moment I looked round to see if she was speaking of my baby; but no, my
dear, this superlative apostrophe was elicited by the fairness of
my
skin—so much for degrees of comparison. Now, I suppose that if I chose
to walk arm in arm with the dingiest mulatto through the streets of
Philadelphia, nobody could possibly tell by my complexion that I was not
his sister, so that the mere quality of mistress must have had a most
miraculous effect upon my skin in the eyes of poor Rose. But this species
of outrageous flattery is as usual with these people as with the low
Irish, and arises from the ignorant desire, common to both the races, of
propitiating at all costs the fellow-creature who is to them as a
Providence—or rather, I should say, a fate—for ‘t is a heathen and no
Christian relationship. Soon after this visit, I was summoned into the
wooden porch or piazza of the house, to see a poor woman who desired to
speak to me. This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress
who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such
irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to
me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of
a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing
and hard field labor, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost
savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty
clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I
was inconceivably shocked
and sickened. The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore
tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend
to her ailments and give her proper remedies; but these are natural
results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of improper treatment of the
female frame—and though there may be alleviation, there cannot be any
cure when once the beautiful and wonderful structure has been thus made
the victim of ignorance, folly, and wickedness.
After the departure of this poor woman, I walked down the settlement
towards the infirmary or hospital, calling in at one or two of the houses
along the row. These cabins consist of one room about twelve feet by
fifteen, with a couple of closets smaller and closer than the state-rooms
of a ship, divided off from the main room and each other by rough wooden
partitions in which the inhabitants sleep. They have almost all of them a
rude bedstead, with the grey moss of the forests for mattress, and filthy,
pestilential-looking blankets, for covering. Two families (sometimes eight
and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden
frames pinned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose
enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little
counteracted by the miserable spark of fire, which hardly sends an
attenuated thread of lingering smoke up its huge throat. A wide ditch runs
immediately at the back of these dwellings, which is filled and emptied
daily by the tide. Attached to each hovel is a small scrap of ground for a
garden, which, however, is for the most part untended and uncultivated.
Such of these dwellings as I visited to-day were filthy and wretched in
the extreme, and exhibited that most deplorable consequence of ignorance
and an abject condition, the inability of the inhabitants to secure and
improve even such pitiful comfort as might yet be achieved by them.
Instead of
the order, neatness, and ingenuity which might convert even
these miserable hovels into tolerable residences, there was the careless,
reckless, filthy indolence which even the brutes do not exhibit in their
lairs and nests, and which seemed incapable of applying to the uses of
existence the few miserable means of comfort yet within their reach.
Firewood and shavings lay littered about the floors, while the half-naked
children were cowering round two or three smouldering cinders. The moss
with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwellings might
have been stuffed, was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while
the back-door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left
wide open for the fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to
travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin, by what they brought
and left in every direction. In the midst of the floor, or squatting round
the cold hearth, would be four or five little children from four to ten
years old, the latter all with babies in their arms, the care of the
infants being taken from the mothers (who are driven a-field as soon as
they recover from child labor), and devolved upon these poor little
nurses, as they are called, whose business it is to watch the infant, and
carry it to its mother whenever it may require nourishment. To these
hardly human little beings, I addressed my remonstrances about the filth,
cold, and unnecessary wretchedness of their room, bidding the elder boys
and girls kindle up the fire, sweep the floor, and expel the poultry. For
a long time my very words seemed unintelligible to them, till when I began
to sweep and make up the fire, etc.., they first fell to laughing, and then
imitating me. The encrustations of dirt on their hands, feet, and faces,
were my next object of attack, and the stupid negro practice (by the bye,
but a short time since nearly universal in enlightened Europe), of keeping
the babies with their feet
bare, and their heads, already well capped by
nature with their woolly hair, wrapped in half-a-dozen hot filthy
coverings. Thus I traveled down the ‘street,’ in every dwelling
endeavouring to awaken a new perception, that of cleanliness, sighing, as
I went, over the futility of my own exertions, for how can slaves be
improved? Nathless, thought I, let what can be done; for it may be, that,
the two being incompatible, improvement may yet expel slavery—and so it
might, and surely would, if, instead of beginning at the end, I could but
begin at the beginning of my task. If the mind and soul were awakened,
instead of mere physical good attempted, the physical good would result,
and the great curse vanish away; but my hands are tied fast, and this
corner of the work is all that I may do. Yet it cannot be but, from my
words and actions, some revelations should reach these poor people; and
going in and out amongst them perpetually, I shall teach, and they learn
involuntarily a thousand things of deepest import. They must learn, and
who can tell the fruit of that knowledge alone, that there are beings in
the world, even with skins of a different color from their own, who have
sympathy for their misfortunes, love for their virtues, and respect for
their common nature—but oh! my heart is full almost to bursting, as I
walk among these most poor creatures.
The infirmary is a large two-story building, terminating the broad
orange-planted space between the two rows of houses which form the first
settlement; it is built of white washed wood, and contains four
large-sized rooms. But how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was
presented to me, on my entering the first of these? But half the
casements, of which there were six, were glazed, and these were obscured
with dirt, almost as much as the other windowless ones were darkened by
the dingy shutters, which the shivering inmates had fastened
to, in order
to protect themselves from the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the
powerless embers of a few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of
the sick women as could approach, were cowering; some on wooden settles,
most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise; and
these last poor wretches lay prostrate on the floor, without bed,
mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered and filthy blankets, which,
huddled round them as they lay strewed about, left hardly space to move
upon the floor. And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay
those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labor for
us—those who, perhaps even yesterday, were being urged onto their unpaid
task—those whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, were even at that
hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the
luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate
sickness. I stood in the midst of them, perfectly unable to speak, the
tears pouring from my eyes at this sad spectacle of their misery, myself
and my emotion alike strange and incomprehensible to them. Here lay women
expecting every hour the terrors and agonies of child-birth, others who
had just brought their doomed offspring into the world, others who were
groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages—here
lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with
rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and dampness of the
atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, and stench, and
every aggravation of which sickness is capable, combined in their
condition—here they lay like brute beasts, absorbed in physical
suffering; unvisited by any of those Divine influences which may ennoble
the dispensations of pain and illness, forsaken, as it seemed to me, of
all good; and yet, O God, Thou surely hadst not forsaken them! Now, pray
take notice, that this is the hospital of an estate, where the
owners are
supposed to be humane, the overseer efficient and kind, and the negroes,
remarkably well cared for and comfortable. As soon as I recovered from my
dismay, I addressed old Rose, the midwife, who had charge of this room,
bidding her open the shutters of such windows as were glazed, and let in
the light. I next proceeded to make up the fire, but upon my lifting a log
for that purpose, there was one universal outcry of horror, and old Rose,
attempting to snatch it from me, exclaimed, ‘Let alone, missis—let
be—what for you lift wood—you have nigger enough, missis, to do it!’ I
hereupon had to explain to them my view of the purposes for which hands
and arms were appended to our bodies, and forthwith began making Rose tidy
up the miserable apartment, removing all the filth and rubbish from the
floor that could be removed, folding up in piles the blankets of the
patients who were not using them, and placing, in rather more sheltered
and comfortable positions, those who were unable to rise. It was all that
I could do, and having enforced upon them all my earnest desire that they
should keep their room swept, and as tidy as possible, I passed on to the
other room on the ground floor, and to the two above, one of which is
appropriated to the use of the men who are ill. They were all in the same
deplorable condition, the upper rooms being rather the more miserable,
inasmuch as none of the windows were glazed at all, and they had,
therefore, only the alternative of utter darkness, or killing draughts of
air, from the unsheltered casements. In all, filth, disorder and misery
abounded; the floor was the only bed, and scanty begrimed rags of blankets
the only covering. I left this refuge for Mr. ——’s sick dependants, with
my clothes covered with dust, and full of vermin, and with a heart heavy
enough, as you will well believe. My morning’s work had fatigued me not a
little, and I was glad to return to the house, where I gave vent
to my
indignation and regret at the scene I had just witnessed, to Mr. —— and
his overseer, who, here, is a member of our family. The latter told me
that the condition of the hospital had appeared to him, from his first
entering upon his situation (only within the last year), to require a
reform, and that he had proposed it to the former manager, Mr. K——, and
Mr. ——’s brother, who is part proprietor of the estate, but receiving no
encouragement from them, had supposed that it was a matter of indifference
to the owners, and had left it in the condition in which he had found it,
in which condition it has been for the last nineteen years and upwards.
This new overseer of ours has lived fourteen years with an old Scotch
gentleman, who owns an estate adjoining Mr. ——’s, on the island of St.
Simons, upon which estate, from everything I can gather, and from what I
know of the proprietor’s character, the slaves are probably treated with
as much humanity as is consistent with slavery at all, and where the
management and comfort of the hospital, in particular, had been most
carefully and judiciously attended to. With regard to the indifference of
our former manager upon the subject of the accommodation for the sick, he
was an excellent overseer, videlicet, the estate returned a full income
under his management, and such men have nothing to do with sick
slaves—they are tools, to be mended only if they can be made available
again,—if not, to be flung by as useless, without further expense of
money, time, or trouble.
I am learning to row here, for, circumscribed as my walks necessarily are,
impossible as it is to resort to my favorite exercise on horseback upon
these narrow dykes, I must do something to prevent my blood from
stagnating; and this broad brimming river, and the beautiful light canoes
which lie moored, at the steps, are very inviting persuaders to this
species of exercise. My first attempt was
confined to pulling an oar
across the stream, for which I rejoiced in sundry aches and pains
altogether novel, letting alone a delightful row of blisters on each of my
hands.
I forgot to tell you that in the hospital were several sick babies, whose
mothers were permitted to suspend their field labor, in order to nurse
them. Upon addressing some remonstrances to one of these, who, besides
having a sick child, was ill herself, about the horribly dirty condition
of her baby, she assured me that it was impossible for them to keep their
children clean, that they went out to work at daybreak, and did not get
their tasks done till evening, and that then they were too tired and worn
out to do anything but throw themselves down and sleep. This statement of
hers I mentioned on my return from the hospital, and the overseer
appeared extremely annoyed by it, and assured me repeatedly that it was
not true.
In the evening Mr. ——, who had been over to Darien, mentioned that one
of the storekeepers there had told him that, in the course of a few years,
he had paid the negroes of this estate several thousand dollars for moss,
which is a very profitable article of traffic with them—they collect it
from the trees, dry and pick it, and then sell it to the people in Darien
for mattresses, sofas, and all sorts of stuffing purposes,—which, in my
opinion, it answers better than any other material whatever that I am
acquainted with, being as light as horse hair, as springy and elastic, and
a great deal less harsh and rigid. It is now bed-time, dear E——, and I
doubt not it has been sleepy time with you over this letter, long ere you
came thus far. There is a preliminary to my repose, however, in this
agreeable residence, which I rather dread, namely, the hunting for, or
discovering without hunting, in fine relief upon the whitewashed walls of
my bedroom, a most
hideous and detestable species of
reptile, called
centipedes, which come out of the cracks and crevices of the walls, and
fill my very heart with dismay. They are from an inch to two inches long,
and appear to have not a hundred, but a thousand legs. I cannot ascertain
very certainly from the negroes whether they sting or not, but they look
exceedingly as if they might, and I visit my babies every night, in fear
and tremblings lest I should find one or more of these hateful creatures
mounting guard over them. Good night; you are well to be free from
centipedes—better to be free from slaves.