Sept.22, 1872.I have been haying this month: in fact I had mowed my orange-grove, a square of two acres, from time to time, all summer. But this month a field of two acres had a heavy burden of grass, with cow-pease intermixed. In some parts of the field, there certainly would be at therate of three tons to the acre. The whole field would average one ton to the acre. So I went at it with a good Northern scythe, and mowed every morning an hour or two. The hay was perfectly cured by fivep.m., same day, and put in barn. The land, being in ridges, made mowing difficult. Next year I mean to lay that land down to grass, taking out stumps, and making smooth, sowing rye and clover. I shall plough it now as soon as the hay is all made, and sow the rye and clover immediately. I have five cows that give milk, and four that should come in soon. These, with their calves, I shall feed through the months when the grass is poor. I have also a yoke of oxen and four young steers, with Trim the mule. I have already in the barn three to four tons of hay and corn-fodder, and two acres of cow-pease cured, to be used as hay. I hope to have five hundred bushels of sweet-potatoes, which, for stock, are equal to corn. I madea hundred and ten bushels of corn, twenty-five to the acre. My cane is doing moderately well. Hope to have all the seed I want to plant fourteen acres next year. Bananas thrive beautifully; shall have fifty offsets to set out this winter; also three or four thousand oranges, all large-sized and fair.
Sept.22, 1872.
I have been haying this month: in fact I had mowed my orange-grove, a square of two acres, from time to time, all summer. But this month a field of two acres had a heavy burden of grass, with cow-pease intermixed. In some parts of the field, there certainly would be at therate of three tons to the acre. The whole field would average one ton to the acre. So I went at it with a good Northern scythe, and mowed every morning an hour or two. The hay was perfectly cured by fivep.m., same day, and put in barn. The land, being in ridges, made mowing difficult. Next year I mean to lay that land down to grass, taking out stumps, and making smooth, sowing rye and clover. I shall plough it now as soon as the hay is all made, and sow the rye and clover immediately. I have five cows that give milk, and four that should come in soon. These, with their calves, I shall feed through the months when the grass is poor. I have also a yoke of oxen and four young steers, with Trim the mule. I have already in the barn three to four tons of hay and corn-fodder, and two acres of cow-pease cured, to be used as hay. I hope to have five hundred bushels of sweet-potatoes, which, for stock, are equal to corn. I madea hundred and ten bushels of corn, twenty-five to the acre. My cane is doing moderately well. Hope to have all the seed I want to plant fourteen acres next year. Bananas thrive beautifully; shall have fifty offsets to set out this winter; also three or four thousand oranges, all large-sized and fair.
All these facts go to show, that, while Florida cannot compete with the Northern and Western States as a grass-raising State, yet there are other advantages in her climate and productions which make stock-farming feasible and profitable. The disadvantages of her burning climate may, to a degree, be evaded and overcome by the application of the same patient industry and ingenuity which rendered fruitful the iron soil and freezing climate of the New-England States.
The Grand Tour Up River
T
HE St. John's is the grand water-highway through some of the most beautiful portions of Florida; and tourists, safely seated at ease on the decks of steamers, can penetrate into the mysteries and wonders of unbroken tropical forests.
During the "season," boats continually run from Jacksonville to Enterprise, and back again; the round trip being made for a moderate sum,and giving, in a very easy and comparatively inexpensive manner, as much of the peculiar scenery as mere tourists care to see. On returning, a digression is often made at Tekoi, where passengers cross a horse-railroad of fifteen miles to St. Augustine; thus rendering their survey of East Florida more complete. In fact, what may be seen and known of the State in such a trip is about all that the majority of tourists see and know.
The great majority also perform this trip, and see this region, in the dead of winter, when certainly one-half of the glorious forests upon the shore are bare of leaves.
It is true that the great number of evergreen-trees here make the shores at all times quite different from those of a Northern climate; yet the difference between spring and winter is as great here as there.
Our party were resolute in declining all invitationsto join parties in January, February, and March; being determined to wait till the new spring foliage was in its glory.
When the magnolia-flowers were beginning to blossom, we were ready, and took passage—a joyous party of eight or ten individuals—on the steamer "Darlington," commanded by Capt. Broch, and, as is often asserted, by "Commodore Rose."
This latter, in this day of woman's rights, is no mean example of female energy and vigor. She is stewardess of the boat, and magnifies her office. She is a colored woman, once a slave owned by Capt. Broch, but emancipated, as the story goes, for her courage, and presence of mind, in saving his life in a steamboat disaster.
Rose is short and thick, weighing some two or three hundred, with a brown complexion, and a pleasing face and fine eyes. Her voice, like that of most colored women, is soft, and her mannerof speaking pleasing. All this, however, relates to her demeanor when making the agreeable to passengers. In other circumstances, doubtless, she can speak louder, and with considerable more emphasis; and show, in short, those martial attributes which have won for her the appellation of the "Commodore." It is asserted that the whole charge of provisioning and running the boat, and all its internal arrangements, vests in Madam Rose; and that nobody can get ahead of her in a bargain, or resist her will in an arrangement.
She knows every inch of the river, every house, every plantation along shore, its former or present occupants and history; and is always ready with an answer to a question. The arrangement and keeping of the boat do honor to her. Nowhere in Florida does the guest sit at a more bountifully-furnished table. Our desserts and pastry were really, for the wilderness, something quite astonishing.
The St. John's River below Pilatka has few distinguishing features to mark it out from other great rivers. It is so wide, that the foliage of the shores cannot be definitely made out; and the tourist here, expecting his palm-trees and his magnolias and flowering-vines, is disappointed by sailing in what seems a never-ending great lake, where the shores are off in the distance too far to make out any thing in particular. But, after leaving Pilatka, the river grows narrower, the overhanging banks approach nearer, and the foliage becomes more decidedly tropical in its character. Our boat, after touching as usual at Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove, brought up at Pilatka late in the afternoon, made but a short stop, and was on her way again.
It was the first part of May; and the forests were in that fulness of leafy perfection which they attain in the month of June at the North. But there is a peculiar, vivid brilliancy about thegreen of the new spring-leaves here, which we never saw elsewhere. It is a brilliancy like some of the new French greens, now so much in vogue, and reminding one of the metallic brightness of birds and insects. In the woods, the cypress is a singular and beautiful feature. It attains to a great age and immense size. The trunk and branches of an old cypress are smooth and white as ivory, while its light, feathery foliage is of the most dazzling golden-green; and rising, as it often does, amid clumps of dark varnished evergreens,—bay and magnolia and myrtle,—it has a singular and beautiful effect. The long swaying draperies of the gray moss interpose everywhere their wavering outlines and pearl tints amid the brightness and bloom of the forest, giving to its deep recesses the mystery of grottoes hung with fanciful vegetable stalactites.
The palmetto-tree appears in all stages,—fromits earliest growth, when it looks like a fountain of great, green fan-leaves bursting from the earth, to its perfect shape, when, sixty or seventy feet in height, it rears its fan crown high in air. The oldest trees may be known by a perfectly smooth trunk; all traces of the scaly formation by which it has built itself up in ring after ring of leaves being obliterated. But younger trees, thirty or forty feet in height, often show a trunk which seems to present a regular criss-cross of basket-work,—the remaining scales from whence the old leaves have decayed and dropped away. These scaly trunks are often full of ferns, wild flowers, and vines, which hang in fantastic draperies down their sides, and form leafy and flowery pillars. The palmetto-hammocks, as they are called, are often miles in extent along the banks of the rivers. The tops of the palms rise up round in the distance as so many hay-cocks, and seeming to rise one above another far as the eye can reach.
We have never been so fortunate as to be able to explore one of these palmetto-groves. The boat sails with a provoking quickness by many a scene that one longs to dwell upon, study, and investigate. We have been told, however, by hunters, that they afford admirable camping-ground, being generally high and dry, with a flooring of clean white sand. Their broad leaves are a perfect protection from rain and dew; and the effect of the glare of the campfires and torch-lights on the tall pillars, and waving, fan-like canopy overhead, is said to be perfectly magical. The most unromantic and least impressible speak of it with enthusiasm.
In going up the river, darkness overtook us shortly after leaving Pilatka. We sat in a golden twilight, and saw the shores every moment becoming more beautiful; but when the twilight faded, and there was no moon, we sought the repose of our cabin. It was sultryas August, although only the first part of May; and our younger and sprightlier members, who were on the less breezy side of the boat, after fruitlessly trying to sleep, arose and dressed themselves, and sat all night on deck.
By this means they saw a sight worth seeing, and one which we should have watched all night to see. The boat's course at night is through narrows of the river, where we could hear the crashing and crackling of bushes and trees, and sometimes a violent thud, as the boat, in turning a winding, struck against the bank. On the forward part two great braziers were kept filled with blazing, resinous light-wood, to guide the pilot in the path of the boat. The effect of this glare of red light as the steamer passed through the palmetto hummocks and moss-hung grottoes of the forest was something that must have been indescribably weird and beautiful; and our young friends made us suitably regret that ourmore airy sleeping-accommodations had lost us this experience.
In the morning we woke at Enterprise, having come through all the most beautiful and characteristic part of the way by night. Enterprise is some hundred and thirty miles south of our dwelling-place in Mandarin; and, of course, that much nearer the tropical regions. We had planned excursions, explorations, picnics in the woods, and a visit to the beautiful spring in the neighborhood; but learned with chagrin that the boat made so short a stay, that none of these things were possible. The only thing that appears to the naked eye of a steamboat traveller in Enterprise is a large hotel down upon the landing, said by those who have tested it to be one of the best kept hotels in Florida. The aspect of the shore just there is no way picturesque or inviting, but has more that forlorn, ragged, desolate air that new settlements on theriver are apt to have. The wild, untouched banks are beautiful; but the new settlements generally succeed in destroying all Nature's beauty, and give you only leafless, girdled trees, blackened stumps, and naked white sand, in return.
Turning our boat homeward, we sailed in clear morning light back through the charming scenery which we had slept through the night before. It is the most wild, dream-like, enchanting sail conceivable. The river sometimes narrows so that the boat brushes under overhanging branches, and then widens into beautiful lakes dotted with wooded islands. Palmetto-hammocks, live-oak groves, cypress, pine, bay, and magnolia form an interchanging picture; vines hang festooned from tree to tree; wild flowers tempt the eye on the near banks; and one is constantly longing for the boat to delay here or there: but on goes her steady course, the pictured scenearound constantly changing. Every now and then the woods break away for a little space, and one sees orange and banana orchards, and houses evidently newly built. At many points the boat landed, and put off kegs of nails, hoes, ploughs, provisions, groceries. Some few old plantations were passed, whose name and history seemed familiar to Madam Rose; but by far the greater number were new settlements, with orchards of quite young trees, which will require three or four more years to bring into bearing.
The greater number of fruit-orchards and settlements were on the eastern shore of the river, which, for the reasons we have spoken of, is better adapted to the culture of fruit.
One annoyance on board the boat was the constant and pertinacious firing kept up by that class of men who think that the chief end of man is to shoot something. Now, we can put up with good earnest hunting or fishing donefor the purpose of procuring for man food, or even the fur and feathers that hit his fancy and taste.
But we detest indiscriminate and purposeless maiming and killing of happy animals, who have but one life to live, and for whom the agony of broken bones or torn flesh is a helpless, hopeless pain, unrelieved by any of the resources which enable us to endure. A parcel of hulking fellows sit on the deck of a boat, and pass through the sweetest paradise God ever made, without one idea of its loveliness, one gentle, sympathizing thought of the animal happiness with which the Creator has filled these recesses. All the way along is a constant fusillade upon every living thing that shows itself on the bank. Now a bird is hit, and hangs, head downward, with a broken wing; and a coarse laugh choruses the deed. Now an alligator is struck; and the applause is greater. We once saw a harmless youngalligator, whose dying struggles, as he threw out his poor little black paws piteously like human hands, seemed to be vastly diverting to these cultivated individuals. They wanted nothing of him except to see how he would act when he was hit, dying agonies are so very amusing!
Now and then these sons of Nimrod in their zeal put in peril the nerves, if not lives, of passengers. One such actually fired at an alligator right across a crowd of ladies, many of them invalids; and persisted in so firing a second time, after having been requested to desist. If the object were merely to show the skill of the marksman, why not practise upon inanimate objects? An old log looks much like an alligator: why not practise on an old log? It requires as much skill to hit a branch, as the bird singing on it: why not practise on the branch? But no: it must be something thatenjoysand can suffer; something that loves life, and mustlose it. Certainly this is an inherent savagery difficult to account for. Killing for killing's sake belongs not even to the tiger. The tiger kills for food; man, for amusement.
At evening we were again at Pilatka; when the great question was discussed, Would we, or would we not, take the tour up the Okalewaha to see the enchanted wonders of the Silver Spring! The Okalewaha boat lay at the landing; and we went to look at it. The Okalewaha is a deep, narrow stream, by the by, emptying into the St. John's, with a course as crooked as Apollo's ram's horn; and a boat has been constructed for the express purpose of this passage.
The aspect of this same boat on a hot night was not inspiriting. It was low, long, and narrow; its sides were rubbed glassy smooth, or torn and creased by the friction of the bushes and trees it had pushed through. It was without glasswindows,—which would be of no use in such navigation,—and, in place thereof, furnished with strong shutters to close the air-holes. We looked at this same thing as it lay like a gigantic coffin in the twilight, and thought even the Silver Spring would not pay for being immured there, and turned away.
A more inviting project was to step into a sail-boat, and be taken in the golden twilight over to Col. Harte's orange-grove, which is said—with reason, we believe—to be the finest in Florida.
We landed in the twilight in this grove of six hundred beautiful orange-trees in as high condition as the best culture could make them. The well-fed orange-tree is known by the glossy, deep green of its foliage, as a declining tree is by the yellow tinge of its leaves. These trees looked as if each leaf, if broken, would spurt with juice. Piles of fish-guano and shell banks, prepared astop-dress for the orchard, were lying everywhere about, mingling not agreeably with the odor of orange-blossoms. We thought to ourselves, that, if the orange-orchard must be fed upon putrefying fish, we should prefer not to have a house in it. The employee who has charge of the orchard lives in a densely-shaded cottage in the edge of it. A large fruit-house has recently been built there; and the experiments of Col. Harte seem to demonstrate, that, even if there occur severe frosts in the early winter, there is no sort of need, therefore, of losing the orange-crop. His agent showed us oranges round and fair that had been kept three months in moss in this fruit-house, and looking as fresh and glossy as those upon the trees. This, if proved by experience, always possible, does away with the only uncertainty relating to the orange-crop. Undoubtedly the fruit is far better to continue all winter on the trees, and be gathered fromtime to time as wanted, as has always been the practice in Florida. But, with fruit-houses and moss, it will be possible, in case of a threatened fall of temperature, to secure the crop. The oranges that come to us from Malaga and Sicily are green as grass when gathered and packed, and ripen, as much as they do ripen, on the voyage over. We should suppose the oranges of Florida might be gathered much nearer ripe in the fall, ripen in the house or on the way, and still be far better than any from the foreign market. On this point fruit-growers are now instituting experiments, which, we trust, will make this delicious crop certain as it is abundant.
Sailing back across the water, we landed, and were conveyed to the winter country-seat of a Brooklyn gentleman, who is with great enthusiasm cultivating a place there. It was almost dark; and we could only hear of his gardens andgrounds and improvements, not see them. In the morning, before the boat left the landing, he took us a hasty drive around the streets of the little village. It is an unusually pretty, attractive-looking place for a Florida settlement. One reason for this is, that the streets and vacant lots are covered with a fine green turf, which, at a distance, looks like our New-England grass. It is a mixture of Bermuda grass with a variety of herbage, and has just as good general effect as if it were the best red-top.
There are several fine residences in and around Pilatka,—mostly winter-seats of Northern settlers. The town has eight stores, which do a business for all the surrounding country for miles. It has two large hotels, several boarding-houses, two churches, two steam saw-mills, and is the headquarters for the steamboats of the Upper St. John's and its tributaries. Four or five steamers from different quarters are often stoppingat its wharf at a time. "The Dictator" and "City Point," from Charleston, run to this place outside by the ocean passage, and, entering the mouth of the St. John's, stop at Jacksonville by the way. The "Nick King" and "Lizzie Baker," in like manner, make what is called the inside trip, skimming through the network of islands that line the coast, and bringing up at the same points. Then there are the river-lines continually plying between Jacksonville and this place, and the small boats that run weekly to the Ocklawaha: all these make Pilatka a busy, lively, and important place.
With Pilatka the interest of our return-voyage finished. With Green-Cove Springs, Magnolia, Hibernia, at all of which we touched on our way back, we were already familiar; and the best sight of all was the cottage under the oaks, to which we gladly returned.
Old Cudjo and the Angel
T
HE little wharf at Mandarin is a tiny abutment into the great blue sea of the St. John's waters, five miles in width. The opposite shores gleam out blue in the vanishing distance; and the small wharf is built so far out, that one feels there as in a boat at sea. Here, trundled down on the truck along a descending tram-way, come the goods which at this point await shipment onsome of the many steamboats which ply back and forth upon the river; and here are landed by almost every steamer goods and chattels for the many families which are hidden in the shadows of the forests that clothe the river's shore. In sight are scarce a dozen houses, all told; but far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles, are scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of produce to this point. Hundreds of barrels of oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables, grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause on their way to the Jacksonville market.
One morning, as the Professor and I were enjoying our morning stroll on the little wharf, an unusual sight met our eye,—a bale of cotton, long and large, pressed hard and solid as iron, and done up and sewed in a wholly workmanlike manner, that excited our surprise. It was the first time since we had been in Mandarin—a space of some four or five years—that we hadever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet the whole soil of East Florida is especially adapted not only to the raising of cotton, but of the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands the very highest market-price. But for two or three years past the annual ravages of the cotton-worm had been so discouraging, that the culture of cotton had been abandoned in despair.
Whence, then, had come that most artistic bale of cotton, so well pressed, so trim and tidy, and got up altogether in so superior a style?
Standing by it on the wharf was an aged negro, misshapen, and almost deformed. He was thin and bony, and his head and beard were grizzled with age. He was black as night itself; and but for a glittering, intellectual eye, he might have been taken for a big baboon,—the missing link of Darwin. To him spoke the Professor, giving a punch with his cane upon the well-packed, solid bale:—
"Why, this is splendid cotton! Where did it come from? Who raised it?"
"Weraise it, sah,—me 'n' dis yer boy," pointing to a middle-aged black man beside him: "we raise it."
"Where?"
"Oh! out he'yr a piece."
A lounging white man, never wanting on a wharf, here interposed:—
"Oh! this is old Cudjo. He lives up Julington. He's an honest old fellow."
Now, we had heard of this settlement up Julington some two or three years before. A party of negroes from South Carolina and Georgia had been induced to come into Florida, and take up a tract of government land. Some white man in whom they all put confidence had undertaken for them the task of getting their respective allotments surveyed and entered for them, so that they should have a solid basis of land to work upon.Here, then, they settled down; and finding, accidentally, that a small central lot was not enclosed in any of the allotments, they took it as an indication thattherewas to be their church, and accordingly erected there a prayer-booth, where they could hold those weekly prayer-meetings which often seem with the negroes to take the place of all other recreations. The neighboring farmers were not particularly well disposed towards the little colony. The native Floridian farmer is a quiet, peaceable being, not at all disposed to infringe the rights of others, and mainly anxious for peace and quietness. But they supposed that a stampede of negroes from Georgia and Carolina meant trouble for them, meant depredations upon their cattle and poultry, and regarded it with no friendly eye; yet, nevertheless, they made no demonstration against it. Under these circumstances, the new colony had gone to work with untiring industry. They had built log-cabins andbarns; they had split rails, and fenced in their land; they had planted orange-trees; they had cleared acres of the scrub-palmetto: and any one that ever has seen what it is to clear up an acre of scrub-palmetto will best appreciate the meaning of that toil. Only those black men, with sinews of steel and nerves of wire,—men who grow stronger and more vigorous under those burning suns that wither the white men,—are competent to the task.
But old Cudjo had at last brought his land from the wild embrace of the snaky scrub-palmetto to the point of bearing a bale of cotton like the one on the wharf. He had subdued the savage earth, brought her under, and made her tributary to his will, and demonstrated what the soil of East Florida might, could, and would do, the cotton-worm to the contrary notwithstanding.
And yet this morning he stood by his cotton, drooping and dispossessed. The white man thathad engaged to take up land for these colonists had done his work in such a slovenly, imperfect manner, that another settler, a foreigner, had taken up a tract which passed right through old Cudjo's farm, and taken the land on which he had spent four years of hard work,—taken his log-cabin and barn and young trees, and the very piece that he had just brought to bearing that bale of cotton. And there he stood by it, mournful and patient. It was only a continuation of what he had always experienced,—always oppressed, always robbed and cheated. Old Cudjo was making the best of it in trying to ship his bale of cotton, which was all that was left of four years' toil.
"What!" said the Professor to him, "are you the old man that has been turned out by that foreigner?"
"Yes, sah!" he said, his little black eyes kindling, and quivering from head to foot with excitement."He take ebry t'ing, ebry t'ing,—my house I built myself, my fences, and more'n t'ree t'ousand rails I split myself: he take 'em all!"
There is always some bitter spot in a great loss that is sorer than the rest. Those rails evidently cut Cudjo to the heart. The "t'ree t'ousand rails" kept coming in in his narrative as the utter and unbearable aggravation of injustice.
"I split 'em myself, sah;ebry one, t'ree t'ousand rails! and he take 'em all!"
"And won't he allow you any thing?"
"No, sah: he won't 'low me not'ing. He say, 'Get along wid you! don't know not'ing 'boutyou! dis yer land mine.' I tell him, 'Youdon't know old Cudjo; but de Lord know him: and by'm by, when de angel Gabriel come and put one foot on de sea, and t'odder on de land, and blow de trumpet, he blow once for old Cudjo! You mind now!'"
This was not merely spoken, but acted. The old black kindled, and stepped off in pantomime. He put, as it were, one foot on the sea, and the other on the land; he raised his cane trumpetwise to his mouth. It was all as vivid as reality to him.
None of the images of the Bible are more frequent, favorite, and operative among the black race than this. You hear it over and over in every prayer-meeting. It is sung in wild chorus in many a "spiritual." The great angel Gabriel, the trumpet, the mighty pomp of a last judgment, has been the appeal of thousands of wronged, crushed, despairing hearts through ages of oppression. Faith in God's justice, faith in a final triumph of right over wrong,—a practical faith,—such had been the attainment of this poor, old, deformed black. That and his bale of cotton were all he had to show for a life's labor. He had learned two things in his world-lesson,—work andfaith. He had learned the power of practical industry in things possible to man: he had learned the sublimer power of faith in God for things impossible.
Well, of course we were indignant enough about poor old Cudjo: but we feared that the distant appeal of the angel, and the last trump, was all that remained to him; and, to our lesser faith, that seemed a long way to look for justice.
But redress was nearer than we imagined. Old Cudjo's patient industry and honest work had wrought favor among his white neighbors. He had lived down the prejudice with which the settlement had first been regarded; for among quiet, honest people like the Floridians, it is quite possible to live down prejudice. A neighboring justice of the peace happened to have an acquaintance in Washington from this very district, acquainted with all the land and land-titles. He wrote to thisman an account of the case; and he interested himself for old Cudjo. He went to the land-office to investigate the matter. He found, that, in both cases, certain formalities necessary to constitute a legal entrance had been omitted; and he fulfilled for old Cudjo these formalities, thus settling his title; and, moreover, he sent legal papers by which the sheriff of the county was enabled to do him justice: and so old Cudjo was re-instated in his rights.
The Professor met him, sparkling and jubilant, on the wharf once more.
"Well, Cudjo, 'de angel' blew for you quicker than you expected."
He laughed all over. "Ye', haw, haw! Yes, massa." Then, with his usual histrionic vigor, he acted over the scene. "De sheriff, he come down dere. He tell dat man, 'You go right off he'yr. Don't you touch none dem rails. Don't you take one chip,—not one chip. Don't you take'—Haw, haw, haw!" Then he added,—
"He come to me, sah: he say, 'Cudjo, what you take for your land?' He say he gib me two hunder dollars. I tell him, 'Dat too cheap; dat all too cheap.' He say, 'Cudjo, what will you take?' I say, 'I take ten t'ousand million dollars! dat's what I take.' Haw, haw, haw!"
The Laborers of the South
W
HO shall do the work for us? is the inquiry in this new State, where there are marshes to be drained, forests to be cut down, palmetto-plains to be grubbed up, and all under the torrid heats of a tropical sun.
"Chinese," say some; "Swedes," say others; "Germans," others.
But let us look at the facts before our face and eyes.
The thermometer, for these three days past, has risen over ninety every day. No white man that we know of dares stay in the fields later than ten o'clock: then he retires under shade to take some other and less-exposing work. The fine white sand is blistering hot: one might fancy that an egg would cook, as on Mt. Vesuvius, by simply burying it in the sand. Yet the black laborers whom we leave in the field pursue their toil, if any thing, more actively, more cheerfully, than during the cooler months. The sun awakes all their vigor and all their boundless jollity. When their nooning time comes, they sit down, not in the shade, but in some good hot place in the sand, and eat their lunch, and then stretch out, hot and comfortable, to take their noon siesta with the full glare of the sun upon them. Down in the swamp-land near our house we have watched old Simon as from hour to hour he drove hiswheelbarrow, heavy with blocks of muck, up a steep bank, and deposited it. "Why, Simon!" we say: "howcanyou work so this hot weather?"
The question provokes an explosion of laughter. "Yah, hah, ho, ho, ho, misse! It be hot; dat so: ho, ho, ho!"
"Howcanyou work so? I can't even think how you can do such hard work under such a sun."
"Dat so: ho, ho! Ladies can't; no, dey can't, bless you, ma'am!" And Simon trundles off with his barrow, chuckling in his might; comes up with another load, throws it down, and chuckles again. A little laugh goes a great way with Simon; for a boiling spring of animal content is ever welling up within.
One tremendously hot day, we remember our steamer stopping at Fernandina. Owing to the state of the tide, the wharf was eight or ten feet above the boat; and the plank made a steep inclinedplane, down which a mountain of multifarious freight was to be shipped on our boat. A gang of negroes, great, brawny, muscular fellows, seemed to make a perfect frolic of this job, which, under such a sun, would have threatened sunstroke to any white man. How they ran and shouted and jabbered, and sweated their shirts through, as one after another received on their shoulders great bags of cotton-seed, or boxes and bales, and ran down the steep plane with them into the boat! At last a low, squat giant of a fellow, with the limbs and muscles of a great dray-horse, placed himself in front of a large truck, and made his fellows pile it high with cotton-bags; then, holding back with a prodigious force, he took the load steadily down the steep plane till within a little of the bottom, when he dashed suddenly forward, and landed it half across the boat. This feat of gigantic strength he repeated again and again, running upeach time apparently as fresh as if nothing had happened, shouting, laughing, drinking quarts of water, and sweating like a river-god. Never was harder work done in a more jolly spirit.
Now, when one sees such sights as these, one may be pardoned for thinking that the negro is the natural laborer of tropical regions. He is immensely strong; he thrives and flourishes physically under a temperature that exposes a white man to disease and death.
The malarial fevers that bear so hard on the white race have far less effect on the negro: it is rare that they have what are called here the "shakes;" and they increase and multiply, and bear healthy children, in situations where the white race deteriorate and grow sickly.
On this point we had an interesting conversation with a captain employed in the Government Coast Survey. The duties of this survey involvemuch hard labor, exposure to the fiercest extremes of tropical temperature, and sojourning and travelling in swamps and lagoons, often most deadly to the white race. For this reason, he manned his vessel with a crew composed entirely of negroes; and he informed us that the result had been perfectly satisfactory. The negro constitution enabled them to undergo with less suffering and danger the severe exposure and toils of the enterprise; and the gayety and good nature which belonged to the race made their toils seem to sit lighter upon them than upon a given number of white men. He had known them, after a day of heavy exposure, travelling through mud and swamps, and cutting saw-grass, which wounds like a knife, to sit down at evening, and sing songs and play on the banjo, laugh and tell stories, in the very best of spirits. He furthermore valued them for their docility, and perfect subjection to discipline.He announced strict rules, forbidding all drunkenness and profanity; and he never found a difficulty in enforcing these rules: their obedience and submission were perfect. When this gentleman was laid up with an attack of fever in St. Augustine, his room was beset by anxious negro mammies, relations of his men, bringing fruits, flowers, and delicacies of their compounding for "the captain."
Those who understand and know how to treat the negroes seldom have reason to complain of their ingratitude.
But it is said, by Northern men who come down with Northern habits of labor, that the negro is inefficient as a laborer.
It is to be conceded that the influence of climate and constitution, and the past benumbing influences of slavery, do make the habits of Southern laborers very different from the habits of Northern men, accustomed, by the shortnessof summer and the length of winter, to set the utmost value on their working-time.
In the South, where growth goes on all the year round, there really is no need of that intense, driving energy and vigilance in the use of time that are needed in the short summers of the North: an equal amount can be done with less labor.
But the Northern man when he first arrives, before he has proved the climate, looks with impatient scorn on what seems to him the slow, shilly-shally style in which both black and white move on. It takes an attack of malarial fever or two to teach him that he cannot labor the day through under a tropical sun as he can in the mountains of New Hampshire. After a shake or two of this kind, he comes to be thankful if he can hire Cudjo or Pompey to plough and hoe in his fields through the blazing hours, even though they do not plough and hoe with all the alacrity of Northern farmers.
It is also well understood, that, in taking negro laborers, we have to take men and women who have been educated under a system the very worst possible for making good, efficient, careful, or honest laborers. Take any set of white men, and put them for two or three generations under the same system of work without wages, forbid them legal marriage and secure family ties, and we will venture to predict that they would come out of the ordeal a much worse set than the Southern laborers are.
We have had in our own personal experience pretty large opportunities of observation. Immediately after the war, two young New-England men hired the Mackintosh Plantation, opposite to Mandarin, on the west bank of the St. John's River. It was, in old times, the model plantation of Florida, employing seven hundred negroes, raising sugar, rice, Sea-Island cotton. There was upon it a whole village of well-built, comfortablenegro houses,—as well built and comfortable as those of any of the white small farmers around. There was a planter's house; a schoolhouse, with chambers for the accommodation of a teacher, who was to instruct the planter's children. There were barns, and a cotton-gin and storehouse, a sugar-house, a milk and dairy house, an oven, and a kitchen; each separate buildings. There were some two or three hundred acres of cleared land, fit for the raising of cotton. This whole estate had been hired by these young men on the principle of sharing half the profits with the owner. After they had carried it on one year, some near relatives became partners; and then we were frequent visitors there. About thirty laboring families were employed upon the place. These were from different, more northern States, who had drifted downward after the Emancipation Act to try the new luxury of being free to choose theirown situation, and seek their own fortune. Some were from Georgia, some from South and some from North Carolina, and some from New Orleans; in fact, thedébrisof slavery, washed together in the tide of emancipation. Such as they were, they were a fair specimen of the Southern negro as slavery had made and left him.
The system pursued with them was not either patronizing or sentimental. The object was to put them at once on the ground of free white men and women, and to make their labor profitable to their employers. They were taught the nature of a contract; and their agreements with their employers were all drawn up in writing, and explained to them. The terms were a certain monthly sum of money, rations for the month, rent of cottage, and privileges of milk from the dairy. One of the most efficient and intelligent was appointed to be foreman of the plantation; and he performed the work of oldperformed by a driver. He divided the hands into gangs; appointed their places in the field; settled any difficulties between them; and, in fact, was an overseer of the detail. Like all uneducated people, the negroes are great conservatives. They clung to the old ways of working,—to the gang, the driver, and the old field arrangements,—even where one would have thought another course easier and wiser.
In the dim gray of the morning, Mose blew his horn; and all turned out and worked their two or three hours without breakfast, and then came back to their cabins to have corn-cake made, and pork fried, and breakfast prepared. We suggested that the New-England manner of an early breakfast would be more to the purpose; but were met by the difficulty, nay, almost impossibility, of making the negroes work in any but the routine to which they had been accustomed. But in this routine they workedhonestly, cheerfully, and with a will. They had the fruits of their labors constantly in hand, in the form either of rations or wages; and there appeared to be much sober content therewith.
On inquiry, it was found, that, though living in all respectability in families, the parties were, many of them, not legally married; and an attempt was made to induce them to enter into holy orders. But the men seemed to regard this as the imposing of a yoke beyond what they could bear. Mose said he had one wife in Virginny, and one in Carliny; and how did he know which of 'em he should like best? Mandy, on the female side, objected that she could not be married yet for want of a white lace veil, which she seemed to consider essential to the ceremony. The survey of Mandy in her stuff gown and cow-hide boots, with her man's hat on, following the mule with the plough, brought rather ludicrous emotions in connection with this want of a white veil.
Nevertheless, the legal marriages were few among them. They lived faithfully in their respective family relations; and they did their work, on the whole, effectively and cheerfully. Their only amusement, after working all day, seemed to be getting together, and holding singing and prayer meetings, which they often did to a late hour of the night. We used to sit and hear them, after ten or eleven o'clock, singing and praying and exhorting with the greatest apparent fervor. There were one or two of what are called preachers among them,—men with a natural talent for stringing words together, and with fine voices. As a matter of curiosity, we once sat outside, when one of these meetings was going on, to hear what it was like.
The exhortation seemed to consist in a string of solemn-sounding words and phrases, images borrowed from Scripture, scraps of hymns, and now and then a morsel that seemed like aRoman-Catholic tradition about the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The most prominent image, however, was that of the angel, and the blowing of the last trumpet. At intervals, amid the flying cloud of images and words, came round something about Gabriel and the last trump, somewhat as follows: "And He will say, 'Gabriel, Gabriel, blow your trump: take it cool and easy, cool and easy, Gabriel: dey's all bound for to come.'"
This idea of taking even the blowing of the last trump cool and easy seemed to be so like the general negro style of attending to things, that it struck me as quite refreshing. As to singing, the most doleful words with the most lugubrious melodies seemed to be in favor.
"Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,"
was a special favorite. With eyes shut, and mouth open, they would pour out a perfectstorm of minor-keyed melody on poor old Dr. Watts's hymn, mispronouncing every word, till the old doctor himself could not have told whether they were singing English or Timbuctoo.
Yet all this was done with a fervor and earnest solemnity that seemed to show thattheyfound something in it, whether we could or not: who shall say? A good old mammy we used to know found great refreshment in a hymn, the chorus of which was,—