CHAPTER IX.FROM LOUISIANA THROUGH TEXAS.The largest part of the cotton crop of the United States is now produced in the Mississippi valley, including the lands contiguous to its great Southern tributary streams, the Red River and others. The proportion of the whole crop which is produced in this region is constantly and very rapidly increasing. This increase is chiefly gained by the forming of new plantations and the transfer of slave-labour westward. The common planter of this region lives very differently to those whose plantations I have hitherto described. What a very different person he is, and what a very different thing his plantation is from the class usually visited by travellers in the South, I learned by an extended experience. I presume myself to have been ordinarily well-informed when I started from home, but up to this point in my first journey had no correct idea of the condition and character of the common cotton-planters. I use the word common in reference to the whole region: there are some small districts in which the common planter is a rich man—really rich. But over the whole district there are comparatively few of these, and in this chapter I wish to show what the many are—as I found them. I shall draw for this purpose upon a record of experience extending through nearly twelve months, but obtained in different journeys and in two different years.My first observation of the common cotton-planters washad on the steamboat, between Montgomery and Mobile, and has already been described. My second experience among them was on a steamboat bound up Red River.On a certain Saturday morning, when I had determined upon the trip, I found that two boats, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles, were advertised to leave the same evening, for the Red River. I went to the levee, and, finding the Saint Charles to be the better of the two, I asked her clerk if I could engage a state-room. There was just one state-room berth left unengaged; I was requested to place my name against its number on the passenger-book; and did so, understanding that it was thus secured for me.Having taken leave of my friends, I had my luggage brought down, and went on board at half-past three—the boat being advertised to sail at four. Four o’clock passed, and freight was still being taken on—a fire had been made in the furnace, and the boat’s big bell was rung. I noticed that the Swamp Fox was also firing up, and that her bell rang whenever ours did—though she was not advertised to sail till five. At length, when five o’clock came, the clerk told me he thought, perhaps, they would not be able to get off at all that night—there was so much freight still to come on board. Six o’clock arrived, and he felt certain that, if they did get off that night, it would not be till very late. At half-past six, he said the captain had not come on board yet, and he was quite sure they would not be able to get off that night. I prepared to return to the hotel, and asked if they would leave in the morning. He thought not. He was confident they would not. He was positive they could not leave now, before Monday—Monday noon. Monday at twelve o’clock—I might rely upon it.Monday morning,The Picayunestated, editorially, that the floating palace, the St. Charles, would leave for Shreveport,at five o’clock, and if anybody wanted to make a quick and luxurious trip up Red River, with a jolly good soul, Captain Lickup was in command. It also stated, in another paragraph, that, if any of its friends had any business up Red River, Captain Pitchup was a whole-souled veteran in that trade, and was going up with that remarkably low draft-favourite, the Swamp Fox, to leave at four o’clock that evening. Both boats were also announced, in the advertising columns, to leave at four o’clock.As the clerk had said noon, however, I thought there might have been a misprint in the newspaper announcements, and so went on board the St. Charles again before twelve. The clerk informed me that the newspaper was right—they had finally concluded not to sail till four o’clock. Before four, I returned again, and the boat again fired up, and rang her bell. So did the Swamp Fox. Neither, however, was quite ready to leave at four o’clock. Not quite ready at five. Even at six—not yet quite ready. At seven, the fires having burned out in the furnace, and the stevedores having gone away, leaving a quantity of freight yet on the dock, without advising this time with the clerk, I had my baggage re-transferred to the hotel.A similar performance was repeated on Tuesday.On Wednesday, I found the berth I had engaged occupied by a very strong man, who was not very polite, when I informed him that I believed there was some mistake—that the berth he was using had been engaged to me. I went to the clerk, who said that he was sorry, but that, as I had not stayed on board at night, and had not paid for the berth, he had not been sure that I should go, and he had, therefore, given it to the gentleman who now had it in possession, and whom, he thought, it would not be best to try to reason out of it. He was very busy, he observed, because the boat was going tostart at four o’clock; if I would now pay him the price of passage, he would do the best he could for me. When he had time to examine, he could probably put me in some other state-room, perhaps quite as good a one as that I had lost. Meanwhile he kindly offered me the temporary use of his private state-room. I inquired if it was quite certain that the boat would get off at four; for I had been asked to dine with a friend, at three o’clock. There was not the smallest doubt of it—at four they would leave. They were all ready, at that moment, and only waited till four, because the agent had advertised that they would—merely a technical point of honour.But, by some error of calculation, I suppose, she didn’t go at four. Nor at five. Nor at six.At seven o’clock, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles were both discharging dense smoke from their chimneys, blowing steam, and ringing bells. It was obvious that each was making every exertion to get off before the other. The captains of both boats stood at the break of the hurricane deck, apparently waiting in great impatience for the mails to come on board.The St. Charles was crowded with passengers, and her decks were piled high with freight. Bumboatmen, about the bows, were offering shells, and oranges, and bananas; and newsboys, and peddlers, and tract distributors, were squeezing about with their wares among the passengers. I had confidence in their instinct; there had been no such numbers of them the previous evenings, and I made up my mind, although past seven o’clock, that the St. Charles would not let her fires go down again.Among the peddlers there were two of “cheap literature,” and among their yellow covers, each had two or three copies of the cheap edition (pamphlet) of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Theydid not cry it out as they did the other books they had, but held it forth among others, so its title could be seen. One of them told me he carried it because gentlemen often inquired for it, and he sold a good many; at least three copies were sold to passengers on the boat. Another young man, who looked like a beneficiary of the Education Society, endeavouring to pass a college vacation in a useful and profitable manner, was peddling a Bible Defence of Slavery, which he made eloquent appeals, in the manner of a pastoral visit, to us, each personally, to purchase. He said it was prepared by a clergyman of Kentucky, and every slaveholder ought to possess it. When he came to me, I told him that I owned no slaves, and therefore had no occasion for it. He answered that the world was before me, and I perhaps yet might own many of them. I replied so decidedly that I should not, that he appeared to be satisfied that my conscience would not need the book, and turned back again to a man sitting beside me, who had before refused to look at it. He now urged again that he should do so, and forced it into his hands, open at the title-page, on which was a vignette, representing a circle of coloured gentlemen and ladies, sitting around a fire-place with a white person standing behind them, like a servant, reading from a book. “Here we see the African race as it is in America, under the blessed——”“Now you go to hell! I’ve told you three times I didn’t want your book. If you bring it here again I’ll throw it overboard. I own niggers; and I calculate to own more of ’em, if I can get ’em, but I don’t want any damn’d preachin’ about it.”That was the last I saw of the book-peddler.It was twenty minutes after seven when the captain observed—scanning the levee in every direction, to see if there was another cart or carriage coming towards us—“No usewaiting any longer, I reckon: throw off, Mr. Heady.” (The Swamp Fox did not leave, I afterwards heard, till the following Saturday.)We backed out, winded round head up, and as we began to breast the current a dozen of the negro boat-hands, standing on the freight, piled up on the low forecastle, began to sing, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and shirts lashed to poles, towards the people who stood on the sterns of the steamboats at the levee. After losing a few lines, I copied literally into my note-book:“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.Chorus.—Oahoiohieu.De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.Cho.—Oahoiohieu,So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the furnaces).Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Give my lub to Dinah, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.For we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.”The wit introduced into these songs has, I suspect, been rather over estimated.As soon as the song was ended, I went into the cabin to remind the clerk to obtain a berth for me. I found twobrilliant supper-tables reaching the whole length of the long cabin, and a file of men standing on each side of both of them, ready to take seats as soon as the signal was given.The clerk was in his room, with two other men, and appeared to be more occupied than ever. His manner was, I thought, now rather cool, not to say rude; and he very distinctly informed me that every berth was occupied, and he didn’t know where I was to sleep. He judged I was able to take care of myself; and if I was not, he was quite sure that he had too much to do to give all his time to my surveillance. I then went to the commander, and told him that I thought myself entitled to a berth. I had paid for one, and should not have taken passage in the boat, if it had not been promised me. I was not disposed to fight for it, particularly as the gentleman occupying the berth engaged to me was a deal bigger fellow than I, and also carried a bigger knife; but I thought the clerk was accountable to me for a berth, and I begged that he would inform him so. He replied that the clerk probably knew his business; he had nothing to do with it; and walked away from me. I then addressed myself to a second clerk, or sub-officer of some denomination, who more good-naturedly informed me that half the company were in the same condition as myself, and I needn’t be alarmed, cots would be provided for us.As I saw that the supper-table was likely to be crowded, I asked if there would be a second table. “Yes, they’ll keep on eatin’ till they all get through.” I walked the deck till I saw those who had been first seated at the table coming out; then going in, I found the table still crowded, while many stood waiting to take seats as fast as any were vacated. I obtained one for myself at length, and had no sooner occupied it than two half-intoxicated and garrulous men took the adjoining stools.It was near nine o’clock before the tables were cleared away, and immediately afterwards the waiters began to rig a framework for sleeping-cots in their place. These cots were simply canvas shelves, five feet and a half long, two wide, and less than two feet apart, perpendicularly. A waiter, whose good will I had purchased at the supper-table, gave me a hint to secure one of them for myself, as soon as they were erected, by putting my hat in it. I did so, and saw that others did the same. I chose a cot as near as possible to the midship doors of the cabin, perceiving that there was not likely to be the best possible air, after all the passengers were laid up for the night, in this compact manner.Nearly as fast as the cots were ready they were occupied. To make sure that mine was not stolen from me, I also, without much undressing, laid myself away. A single blanket was the only bed-clothing provided. I had not lain long, before I was driven, by an exceedingly offensive smell, to search for a cleaner neighbourhood; but I found all the cots, fore and aft were either occupied or engaged. I immediately returned, and that I might have adernier ressort, left my shawl in that I had first obtained.In the forward part of the cabin there was a bar, a stove, a table, and a placard of rules, forbidding smoking, gambling, and swearing in the cabin, and a close company of drinkers, smokers, card-players, and constant swearers. I went out, and stepped down to the boiler-deck. The boat had been provided with very poor wood, and the firemen were crowding it into the furnaces whenever they could find room for it, driving smaller sticks between the larger ones at the top, by a battering-ram method.Most of the firemen were Irish born; one with whom I conversed was English. He said they were divided into three watches, each working four hours at a time, and all handsliable to be called, when wooding, or landing, or taking on freight, to assist the deck hands. They were paid now but thirty dollars a month—ordinarily forty, and sometimes sixty—and board. He was a sailor bred. This boat-life was harder than seafaring, but the pay was better, and the trips were short. The regular thing was to make two trips, and then lay up for a spree. It would be too hard upon a man, he thought, to pursue it regularly; two trips “on end” was as much as a man could stand. He must then take a “refreshment.” Working this way for three weeks, and then refreshing for about one, he did not think it was unhealthy, no more so than ordinary seafaring. He concluded, by informing me that the most striking peculiarity of the business was, that it kept a man, notwithstanding wholesale periodical refreshment, very dry. He was of opinion that after the information I had obtained, if I gave him at least the price of a single drink, and some tobacco, it would be characteristic of a gentleman.Going round behind the furnace, I found a large quantity of freight: hogsheads, barrels, cases, bales, boxes, nail-rods, rolls of leather, ploughs, cotton, bale-rope, and fire-wood, all thrown together in the most confused manner, with hot steam-pipes, and parts of the engine crossing through it. As I explored further aft, I found negroes lying asleep, in all postures, upon the freight. A single group only, of five or six, appeared to be awake, and as I drew near they commenced to sing a Methodist hymn, not loudly, as negroes generally do, but, as it seemed to me, with a good deal of tenderness and feeling; a few white people—men, women, and children—were lying here and there, among the negroes. Altogether, I learned we had two hundred of these deck passengers, black and white. A stove, by which they could fry bacon, was the only furniture provided for them by theboat. They carried with them their provisions for the voyage, and had their choice of the freight for beds.As I came to the bows again, and was about to ascend to the cabin, two men came down, one of whom I recognized to have been my cot neighbour. “Where’s a bucket?” said he. “By thunder! this fellow was so strong I could not sleep by him, so I stumped him to come down and wash his feet.” “I am much obliged to you,” said I; and I was, very much; the man had been lying in the cot beneath mine, to which I now returned and soon fell asleep.I awoke about midnight. There was an unusual jar in the boat, and an evident excitement among people whom I could hear talking on deck. I rolled out of my cot, and stepped out on the gallery. The steamboat Kimball was running head-and-head with us, and so close that one might have jumped easily from our paddle-box on to her guards. A few other passengers had turned out beside myself, and most of the waiters were leaning on the rail of the gallery. Occasionally a few words of banter passed between them and the waiters of the Kimball; below, the firemen were shouting as they crowded the furnaces, and some one could be heard cheering them: “Shove her up, boys! Shove her up! Give her hell!” “She’s got to hold a conversation with us before she gets by, anyhow,” said one of the negroes. “Ye har that ar’ whistlin’?” said a white man; “tell ye thar an’t any too much water in her bilers when ye har that.” I laughed silently, but was not without a slight expectant sensation, which Burke would perhaps have called sublime. At length the Kimball slowly drew ahead, crossed our bow, and the contest was given up. “De ole lady too heavy,” said a waiter; “if I could pitch a few ton of dat ar freight off her bow, I’d bet de Kimball would be askin’ her to show de way mighty quick.”At half-past four o’clock a hand-bell was rung in the cabin, and soon afterwards I was informed that I must get up, that the servants might remove the cot arrangement, and clear the cabin for the breakfast-table.Breakfast was not ready till half-past seven. The passengers, one set after another, and then the pilots, clerks, mates, and engineers, and then the free coloured people, and then the waiters, chambermaids, and passengers’ body servants, having breakfasted, the tables were cleared, and the cabin swept. The tables were then again laid for dinner. Thus the greater part of the cabin was constantly occupied, and the passengers who had no state-rooms were driven to herd in the vicinity of the card-tables and the bar, the lobby (Social Hall, I believe it is called), in which most of the passengers’ baggage was deposited, or to go outside. Every part of the boat, except the bleak hurricane deck, was crowded; and so large a number of equally uncomfortable and disagreeable people I think I never saw elsewhere together. We made very slow progress, landing, it seems to me, after we entered Red River, at every “bend,” “bottom,” “bayou,” “point,” and “plantation” that came in sight; often for no other object than to roll out a barrel of flour, or a keg of nails; sometimes merely to furnish newspapers to a wealthy planter, who had much cotton to send to market, and whom it was therefore desirable to please.I was sitting one day on the forward gallery, watching a pair of ducks, that were alternately floating on the river, and flying further ahead as the steamer approached them. A man standing near me drew a long barrelled and very finely-finished pistol from his coat pocket, and, resting it against a stanchion, took aim at them. They were, I judged, full the boat’s own length—not less than two hundred feet—from us, and were just raising their wings to fly, when he fired. Oneof them only rose; the other flapped round and round, and when within ten yards of the boat, dived. The bullet had broken its wing. So remarkable a shot excited, of course, not a little admiration and conversation. Half a dozen other men standing near at once drew pistols or revolvers from under their clothing, and several were fired at floating chips, or objects on the shore. I saw no more remarkable shooting, however; and that the duck should have been hit at such a distance, was generally considered a piece of luck. A man who had been “in the Rangers” said that all his company could put a ball into a tree, the size of a mans body, at sixty paces, at every shot, with Colt’s army revolver, not taking steady aim, but firing at the jerk of the arm.This pistol episode was almost the only entertainment in which the passengers engaged themselves, except eating, drinking, smoking, conversation, and card-playing. Gambling was constantly going on, day and night. I don’t think there was an interruption to it of fifteen minutes in three days. The conversation was almost exclusively confined to the topics of steamboats, liquors, cards, black-land, red-land, bottom-land, timber-land, warrants, and locations, sugar, cotton, corn, and negroes.After the first night, I preferred to sleep on the trunks in the social hall, rather than among the cots in the crowded cabin, and several others did the same. There were, in fact, not cots enough for all the passengers excluded from the state-rooms. I found that some, and I presume most of the passengers, by making the clerk believe that they would otherwise take the Swamp Fox, had obtained their passage at considerably less price than I had paid.On the third day, just after the dinner-bell had rung, and most of the passengers had gone into the cabin, I was sittingalone on the gallery, reading a pamphlet, when a well-dressed middle-aged man accosted me.“Is that the book they call Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you are reading, sir?”“No, sir.”“I did not know but it was; I see that there are two or three gentlemen on board that have got it. I suppose I might have got it in New Orleans: I wish I had. Have you ever seen it, sir?”“Yes, sir.”“I’m told it shows up Slavery in very high colours.”“Yes, sir, it shows the evils of Slavery very strongly.”He took a chair near me, and said that, if it represented extreme cases as if they were general, it was not fair.Perceiving that he was disposed to discuss the matter, I said that I was a Northern man, and perhaps not well able to judge; but that I thought that a certain degree of cruelty was necessary to make slave-labour generally profitable, and that not many were disposed to be more severe than they thought necessary. I believed there was little wanton cruelty. He answered, that Northern men were much mistaken in supposing that slaves were generally ill-treated. He was a merchant, but he owned a plantation, and he just wished I could see his negroes. “Why, sir,” he continued, “my niggers’ children all go regularly to a Sunday-school, just the same as my own, and learn verses, and catechism, and hymns. Every one of my grown-up niggers are pious, every one of them, and members of the church. I’ve got an old man that can pray——well, sir, I only wish I had as good a gift at praying! I wish you could just hear him pray. There are cases in which niggers are badly used; but they are not common. There are brutes everywhere. You have men, at the North, who whip their wives—and they kill them sometimes.”“Certainly, we have, sir; there are plenty of brutes at the North; but our law, you must remember, does not compel women to submit themselves to their power. A wife, cruelly treated, can escape from her husband, and can compel him to give her subsistence, and to cease from doing her harm. A woman could defend herself against her husband’s cruelty, and the law would sustain her.”“It would not be safe to receive negroes’ testimony against white people; they would be always plotting against their masters, if you did.”“Wives are not always plotting against their husbands.”“Husband and wife is a very different thing from master and slave.”“Your remark, that a bad man might whip his wife, suggested an analogy, sir.”“If the law was to forbid whipping altogether, the authority of the master would be at an end.”“And if you allow bad men to own slaves, and allow them to whip them, and deny the slave the privilege of resisting cruelty, do you not show that you think it is necessary to permit cruelty, in order to sustain the authority of masters, in general, over their slaves? That is, you establish cruelty as a necessity of Slavery—do you not?”“No more than of marriage, because men may whip their wives cruelly.”“Excuse me, sir; the law does all it can, to prevent such cruelty between husband and wife; between master and slave it does not, because it cannot, without weakening the necessary authority of the master—that is, without destroying Slavery. It is, therefore, a fair argument against Slavery, to show how cruelly this necessity, of sustaining the authority of cruel and passionate men over their slaves, sometimes operates.”He asked what it was Uncle Tom “tried to make out.”I narrated the Red River episode, and asked if such things could not possibly occur.“Yes,” replied he, “but very rarely. I don’t know a man, in my parish, that could do such a thing. There are two men, though, in——, bad enough to do it, I believe; but it isn’t a likely story, at all. In the first place, no coloured woman would be likely to offer any resistance, if a white man should want to seduce her.”After further conversation, he said, that a planter had been tried for injuring one of his negroes, at the court in his parish, the preceding summer. He had had a favourite, among his girls, and suspecting that she was unduly kind to one of his men, in an anger of jealousy he mutilated him. There was not sufficient testimony to convict him; “but,” he said, “everybody believes he was guilty, and ought to have been punished. Nobody thinks there was any good reason for his being jealous of the boy.”I remarked that this story corroborated “Uncle Tom’s Cabin;” it showed that it was all possible.“Ah!” he answered, “but then nobody would have any respect for a man that treated his niggers cruelly.”I wondered, as I went into dinner, and glanced at the long rows of surly faces, how many men there were there whose passions would be much restrained by the fear of losing the respect of their neighbours.[39]My original purpose had been to go high up Red River at this time, but the long delay in the boat’s leaving New Orleans, and her slow passage, obliged me to change my plans. Thefollowing year, I returned, in company with my brother, as narrated in “The Texas Journey.” Some portion of what follows is taken from that volume.At a place called Alexandria, our progress was arrested by falls in the river which cannot be passed by boats at low stages of the water. The village is every bit a Southern one—all the houses being one story in height, and having an open verandah before them, like the English towns in the West Indies. It contains, usually, about 1,000 inhabitants, but this summer had been entirely depopulated by the yellow fever. Of 300 who remained, 120, we were told, died. Most of the runaway citizens had returned, when we passed, though the last case of fever was still in uncertain progress.It has apparently not the least reputation for morality. At Nachitoches, the next village above on the river, a couple of men were waiting for their breakfast at the inn, when one, who looked and spoke more like a New Englander than a Southerner, said to the other, whom I presumed to be an Alexandrian—possibly Elder Slocum himself:—“I had a high old dream, last night.”“What was it?”“Dreamt I was in hell.”“Rough country?”“Boggy—sulphur bogs. By and by I cum to a great pair of doors. Something kinder drew me right to ’em, and I had to open ’em, and go in. As soon as I got in, the doors slammed to, behind me, and there I see old boss devil lying asleep, on a red-hot sofy. He woke up, and rubbed his eyes, and when he see me, he says, ‘Halloo! that you?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ says I. ‘Where’d you come from?’ says he. ‘From Alexandria, sir,’ says I. ‘Thought so,’ says he, and he took down a big book, and wrote something in to’t with a red-hot spike. ‘Well, sir, what’s going on now in Alexandria?’ says he. ‘Having a“protracted meeting” there, sir,’ says I. ‘Look here, my friend,’ says he, ‘you may stop lyin’, now you’ve got here.’ ‘I aint lyin’, sir,’ says I. ‘Oh!’ says he, ‘I beg your pardon; I thought it was Alexandria on Red River, you meant.’ ‘So it was,’ says I, ‘and they are having a protracted meeting there, sure as you’re alive.’ ‘Hell they are!’ says he, jumpin’ right up; ‘boy, bring my boots!’ A little black devil fetched him a pair of hot brass boots, and he began to draw ’em on. ‘Whose doin’ is that?’ says he. ‘Elder Slocum’s, sir,’ says I. ‘Elder Slocum’s! Why in hell couldn’t you have said so, before?’ says he. ‘Here, boy, take away these boots;’ and he kicked ’em off, and laid down again.”French blood rather predominates in the population in the vicinity of Nachitoches, but there is also a considerable amount of the Spanish and Indian mongrel breed. These are often handsome people, but vagabonds, almost to a man. Scarcely any of them have any regular occupation, unless it be that of herding cattle; but they raise a little maize, and fish a little, and hunt a little, and smoke and lounge a great deal, and are very regular in their attendance on divine worship, at the cathedral.In the public bar-room I heard a person, who I suppose would claim the appellation of a gentleman, narrating how he had overreached a political opponent, in securing the “Spanish vote” at an election, and it appeared from the conversation that it was considered entirely, and as a matter of course, purchasable by the highest bidder. A man who would purchase votes at the North, would, at least, be careful not to mention it so publicly.We spent several days in Nachitoches, purchasing horses and completing the preparations for our vagrant life in Texas.One mild day of our stay we made a trip of some ten or fifteen miles out and back, at the invitation of a planter, whoseacquaintance we had made at the hotel. We started in good season, but were not long in losing our way and getting upon obscure roads through the woods. The planter’s residence we did not find, but one day’s experience is worth a note.We rode on from ten o’clock till three, without seeing a house, except a deserted cabin, or meeting a human being. We then came upon a ferry across a small stream or “bayou,” near which was a collection of cabins. We asked the old negro who tended the ferry if we could get something to eat anywhere in the neighbourhood. He replied that his master sometimes took in travellers, and we had better call and try if the mistress wouldn’t let us have some dinner.The house was a small square log cabin, with a broad open shed or piazza in front, and a chimney, made of sticks and mud, leaning against one end. A smaller detached cabin, twenty feet in the rear, was used for a kitchen. A cistern under a roof, and collecting water from three roofs, stood between. The water from the bayou was not fit to drink, nor is the water of the Red River, or of any springs in this region. The people depend entirely on cisterns for drinking water. It is very little white folks need, however—milk, whisky, and, with the better class, Bordeaux wine, being the more common beverages.About the house was a large yard, in which were two or three China trees, and two fine Cherokee roses; half a dozen hounds; several negro babies; turkeys and chickens, and a pet sow, teaching a fine litter of pigs how to root and wallow. Three hundred yards from the house was a gin-house and stable, and in the interval between were two rows of comfortable negro cabins. Between the house and the cabins was a large post, on which was a bell to call the negroes. A rack for fastening horses stood near it. On the bell-post and on each of the rack-posts were nailed the antlers of a buck, aswell as on a large oak-tree near by. On the logs of the kitchen a fresh deer-skin was drying. On the railing of the piazza lay a saddle. The house had but one door and no window, nor was there a pane of glass on the plantation.Entering the house, we found it to contain but a single room, about twenty feet by sixteen. Of this space one quarter was occupied by a bed—a great four-poster, with the curtains open, made up in the French style, with a strong furniture-calico day-coverlid. A smaller camp bed stood beside it. These two articles of furniture nearly filled the house on one side the door. At the other end was a great log fire-place, with a fine fire. The outer door was left constantly open to admit the light. On one side the fire, next the door, was a table; a kind of dresser, with crockery, and a bureau stood on the other side, and there were two deer-skin seated chairs and one (Connecticut made) rocking chair.A bold-faced, but otherwise good-enough-looking woman of a youngish middle age, was ironing a shirt on the table. We stated our circumstances, and asked if we could get some dinner from her. She reckoned we could, she said, if we’d wait till she was done ironing. So we waited, taking seats by the fire, and examining the literature and knick-knacks on the mantel-piece. These consisted of three NachitochesChronicles, a Patent Office Agricultural Report, “Christie’s Galvanic Almanac,” a Bible, “The Pirate of the Gulf,” a powder-horn, the sheath of a bowie-knife, a whip-lash, and a tobacco-pipe.Three of the hounds, a negro child, and a white child, had followed us to the door of the cabin, three chickens had entered before us, a cat and kittens were asleep in the corner of the fire-place. By the time we had finished reading the queer advertisements in French of runaway negroes in theChronicletwo of the hounds and the black child had retired, and a tan-coloured hound, very lean, and badly crippled in one leg, hadentered and stood asking permission with his tail to come to the fire-place. The white child, a frowzy girl of ten, came toward us. I turned and asked her name. She knitted her brows, but made no verbal reply. I turned my chair towards her, and asked her to come to me. She hung her head for an instant, then turned, ran to the hound and struck him a hard blow in the chops. The hound quailed. She struck him again, and he turned half around; then she began with her feet, and kicked him out, taking herself after him.At length the woman finished her ironing, and went to the kitchen, whence quickly returning, she placed upon the table a plate of cold, salt, fat pork; a cup of what to both eye and tongue seemed lard, but which she termed butter; a plate of very stale, dry, flaky, micaceous corn-bread; a jug of molasses, and a pitcher of milk.“Well, now it’s ready, if you’ll eat it,” she said, turning to us. “Best we’ve got. Sit up. Take some pone;” and she sat down in the rocker at one end of the table. We took seats at the other end.“Jupiter! what’s the matter with this child?” A little white child that had crawled up into the gallery, and now to my side—flushed face, and wheezing like a high-pressure steamboat.“Got the croup, I reckon,” answered the woman. “Take some ’lasses.”The child crawled into the room. With the aid of a hand it stood up and walked round to its mother.“How long has it been going on that way?” asked we.“Well, it’s been going on some days, now, and keeps getting worse. ’Twas right bad last night, in the night. Reckoned I should lose it, one spell. Take some butter.”We were quite faint with hunger when we rode up, but didn’t eat much of the corn-cake and pork. The woman andthe high-pressure child sat still and watched us, and we sat still and did our best, making much of the milk.“Have you had a physician to see that child?” asked my brother, drawing back his chair.She had not.“Will you come to me, my dear?”The child came to him, he felt its pulse and patted its hot forehead, looked down its throat, and leaned his ear on its chest.“Are you a doctor, sir?”“Yes, madam.”“Got some fever; hasn’t it?”“Yes.”“Not nigh so much as’t had last night.”“Have you done anything for it?”“Well, thar was a gentleman here; he told me sweet ile and sugar would be good for’t, and I gave it a good deal of that: made it sick, it did. I thought, perhaps, that would do it good.”“Yes. You have had something like this in your family before, haven’t you? You don’t seem much alarmed.”“Oh yes, sir; that ar one (pointing to the frowzy girl, whose name was Angelina) had it two or three times—onst most as bad as this. All my children have had it. Is she bad, doctor?”“Yes. I should say this was a very serious thing.”“Have you any medicine in the house?” he asked, after the woman had returned from a journey to the kitchen. She opened a drawer of the bureau, half full of patent medicines and some common drugs. “There’s a whole heap o’ truck in thar. I don’t know what it all is. Whatever you want just help yourself. I can’t read writin’; you must pick it out.”Such as were available were taken out and given to the mother, with directions about administering them, which she promised to obey. “But the first and most important thing for you to do is to shut the door, and make up the fire, and put the child to bed, and try to keep this wind off her.”“Lord! sir, you can’t keepherin bed—she’s too wild.”“Well, you must put some more clothes on her. Wrap her up, and try to keep her warm. The very best thing you can do for her is to give her a warm bath. Have you not got a washing tub?”“Oh! yes, sir, I can do that. She’ll go to bed pretty early; she’s used to going ’tween sundown and dark.”“Well, give her the warm bath, then, and if she gets worse send for a physician immediately. You must be very careful of her, madam.”We walked to the stable, and as the horses had not finished eating their corn, I lounged about the quarters, and talked with the negro.There was not a single soul in the quarters or in sight of the house except ourselves, the woman and her children, and the old negro. The negro women must have taken their sucklings with them, if they had any, to the field where they were at work.The old man said they had “ten or eleven field-hands, such as they was,” and his master would sell sixty to seventy bags of cotton: besides which they made all the corn and pork they wanted, and something over, and raised some cattle.We found our way back to the town only late in the evening. We had ridden most of the day over heavily-timbered, nearly flat, rich bottom land. It is of very great fertility; but, being subject to overflow, is not very attractive, in spite of its proximity to a market.But it must be remembered that they were having the first use of a very fine alluvial soil, and were subject to floods and fevers. The yellow fever or cholera another year might kill half their negroes, or a flood of the Red River (such as occurred August, 1849, and October, 1851) destroy their whole crop, and so use up several years’ profits.A slate hung in the piazza, with the names of all the cotton-pickers, and the quantity picked the last picking day by each, thus: Gorge, 152; David, 130; Polly, 98; Hanna, 96; Little Gorge, 52, etc. The whole number of hands noted was fourteen. Probably there were over twenty slaves, big and little, on the plantation.When our horses were ready, we paid the negro for taking care of them, and I went in and asked the woman what I might pay her.“What!” she asked, looking in my face as if angry.I feared she was offended by my offering money for her hospitality, and put the question again as delicately as I could. She continued her sullen gaze at me for a moment, and then answered as if the words had been bullied out of her by a Tombs lawyer—“Dollar, I reckon.”“What!” thought I, but handed her the silver.Riding out at the bars let down for us by the old negro, we wondered if the child would be living twenty-four hours later, and if it survived, what its moral chances were. Poor, we thought. Five miles from a neighbour; ten, probably, from a Louisiana[40]school; hound-pups and negroes for playmates.On the Emigrant Road into Texas.—Five minutes’ ride took us deep into the pines. Nachitoches, and with it all the tumult and bother of social civilization, had disappeared. Under the pines and beyond them was a new, calm, free life, upon which we entered with a glow of enthusiasm, which, however, hardly sufficed to light up a whole day of pine shadows, and many times afterwards glimmered very dull over days on days of cold corn-bread and cheerless winter prairies.For two days, we rode through these pines over a sandy surface, having little rise and fall, watered here and there by small creeks and ponds, within reach of whose overflow, present or past, stand deciduous trees, such as, principally, oaks and cotton-woods, in a firmer and richer soil. Wherever the road crosses or approaches these spots, there is or has been usually a plantation.The road could hardly be called a road. It was only a way where people had passed along before. Each man had taken such a path as suited him, turning aside to avoid, on high ground, the sand; on low ground, the mud. We chose, generally, the untrodden elastic pavement of pine leaves, at a little distance from the main track.We overtook, several times in the course of each day, the slow emigrant trains, for which this road, though less frequented than years ago, is still a chief thoroughfare. Inexorable destiny it seems that drags or drives on, always Westward, these toilworn people. Several families were frequently moving together, coming from the same district, or chance met and joined, for company, on the long road from Alabama, Georgia, or the Carolinas. Before you come upon them you hear, ringing through the woods, the fierce cries and blows with which they urge on their jaded cattle. Then the stragglers appear, lean dogs or fainting negroes, ragged and spiritless. An old granny, hauling on, by the hand, a weak boy—tooold to ride and too young to keep up. An old man, heavily loaded, with a rifle. Then the white covers of the waggons, jerking up and down as they mount over a root or plunge into a rut, disappearing, one after another, where the road descends. Then the active and cheery prime negroes, not yet exhausted, with a joke and a suggestion about tobacco. Then the black pickininnies, staring, in a confused heap, out at the back of the waggon, more and more of their eyes to be made out among the table legs and bedding, as you get near; behind them, further in, the old people and young mothers, whose turn it is to ride. As you get by, the white mother and babies, and the tall, frequently ill-humoured master, on horseback, or walking with his gun, urging up the black driver and his oxen. As a scout ahead, is a brother, or an intelligent slave, with the best gun, on the look-out for a deer or a turkey. We passed in the day perhaps one hundred persons attached to these trains, probably an unusual number; but the immigration this year had been retarded and condensed by the fear of yellow fever, the last case of which, at Nachitoches, had indeed begun only the night before our arrival. Our chances of danger were considered small, however, as the hard frosts had already come. One of these trains was made up of three large waggons, loaded with furniture, babies, and invalids, two or three light waggons, and a gang of twenty able field-hands. They travel ten or fifteen miles a day, stopping wherever night overtakes them. The masters are plainly dressed, often in home-spun, keeping their eyes about them, noticing the soil, sometimes making a remark on the crops by the roadside; but generally dogged, surly, and silent. The women are silent too, frequently walking, to relieve the teams; and weary, haggard, mud be-draggled, forlorn, and disconsolate, yet hopeful and careful. The negroes, mud-incrusted, wrapped in old blankets or gummy-bags,suffering from cold, plod on, aimless, hopeless, thoughtless, more indifferent, apparently, than the oxen, to all about them.We met, in course of the day, numerous cotton waggons, two or three sometimes together, drawn by three or four pairs of mules or oxen, going slowly on toward Nachitoches or Grand Ecore, each managed by its negro-driver. The load is commonly five bales (of 400 lbs. each), and the cotton comes in this tedious way, over execrable roads, distances of 100 and even 150 miles. It is usually hauled from the eastern tier of Texan counties to the Sabine; but this year there had been no rise of water in the rivers, and from all this region it must be carried to Red River. The distance from the Sabine is here about fifty miles, and the cost of this transportation about one cent a pound; the freight from Grand Ecore to New Orleans from one to one and a quarter cents. If hauled 150 miles in this way, as we were told, the profit remaining, after paying the charges of transportation and commission, all amounting to about five cents, must be exceedingly small in ordinary years.At night we met three or four of these teams half-mired in a swamp, distant some quarter of a mile one from another, and cheering themselves in the dark with prolonged and musical “Yohoi’s,” sent ringing through the woods. We got through this with considerable perplexity ourselves, and were very glad to see the light of the cabin where we had been recommended to stop.This was “Mrs. Stokers’,” about half way to the Sabine. We were received cordially, every house here expecting to do inn-duty, but were allowed to strip and take care of our own horses, the people by no means expecting to do landlord’s duty, but taking guests on sufferance. The house was a double log cabin—two log erections, that is, joined by onelong roof, leaving an open space between. A gallery, extending across the whole front, serves for a pleasant sitting-room in summer, and for a toilet-room at all seasons. A bright fire was very welcome. Supper, consisting of pork, fresh and salt, cold corn-bread, and boiled sweet potatoes, was served in a little lean-to behind the house. After disposing of this we were shown to our room, the other cabin, where we whiled away our evening, studying, by the light of the great fire, a book of bear stories, and conversing with the young man of the family, and a third guest. The room was open to the rafters, and had been built up only as high as the top of the door upon the gallery side, leaving a huge open triangle to the roof, through which the wind rushed at us with a fierce swoop, both while we were sitting at the fire and after we retreated to bed. Owing to this we slept little, and having had a salt supper, lay very thirsty upon the deep feather bed. About four o’clock an old negro came in to light the fire. Asking him for water, we heard him breaking the ice for it outside. When we washed in the piazza the water was thick with frost, crusty, and half inclined not to be used as a fluid at all.After a breakfast, similar in all respects to the supper, we saddled and rode on again. The horses had had a dozen ears of corn, night and morning, with an allowance of fodder (maize leaves). For this the charge was $1 25 each person. This is a fair sample of roadside stopping-places in Western Louisiana and Texas. The meals are absolutely invariable, save that fresh pork and sweet potatoes are frequently wanting. There is always, too, the black decoction of the South called coffee, than which it is often difficult to imagine any beverage more revolting. The bread is made of corn-meal, stirred with water and salt, and baked in a kettle covered with coals. The corn for breakfast is frequently unhusked at sunrise. Anegro, whose business it is, shells and grinds it in a hand-mill for the cook. Should there be any of the loaf left after breakfast, it is given to the traveller, if he wish it, with a bit of pork, for a noon-“snack,” with no further charge. He is conscious, though, in that case, that he is robbing the hounds, always eagerly waiting, and should none remain, none can be had without a new resort to the crib. Wheat bread, if I am not mistaken, we met with but twice, out of Austin, in our whole journey across the State.The country was very similar to that passed over the day before, with perhaps rather more of the cultivable loam. A good part of the land had, at some time, been cleared, but much was already turned over to the “old-field pines,” some of them even fifteen years or more. In fact, a larger area had been abandoned, we thought, than remained under cultivation. With the land, many cabins have, of course, also been deserted, giving the road a desolate air. If you ask, where are the people that once occupied these, the universal reply is, “Gone to Texas.”The plantations occur, perhaps, at an average distance of three or four miles. Most of the remaining inhabitants live chiefly, to appearances, by fleecing emigrants. Every shanty sells spirits, and takes in travellers. We passed through but one village, which consisted of six dwellings. The families obtained their livelihood by the following occupations: one by shoeing the horses of emigrants; one by repairing the wheels of their waggons; one by selling them groceries. The smallest cabin contained a physician. It was not larger than a good-sized medicine chest, but had the biggest sign. The others advertised “corn and fodder.” The prices charged for any article sold, or service performed, were enormous; full one hundred per cent, over those of New Orleans.We met Spaniards once or twice on the road, and the populationof this district is thought to be one half of Spanish origin. They have no houses on the road, however, but live in little hamlets in the forest, or in cabins contiguous to each other, about a pond. They make no progress in acquiring capital of their own, but engage in hunting and fishing, or in herding cattle for larger proprietors of the land. For this business they seem to have an hereditary adaptation, far excelling negroes of equal experience.The number of cattle raised here is now comparatively small, most of the old herd proprietors having moved on to pastures new in Western Texas. The cane, which is a natural growth of most good soils at the South, is killed if closely fed upon. The blue-joint grass (not the blue-grass of Kentucky) takes its place, and is also indigenous upon a poorer class of soils in this region. This is also good food for cattle, but is killed in turn if closely pastured. The ground then becomes bare or covered with shrubs, and the “range” is destroyed. The better class of soils here bear tolerable crops of cotton, but are by no means of value equal to the Red River bottoms or the new soils of any part of Texas. The country is, therefore, here in similar condition to that of the Eastern Slave States. The improvements which the inhabitants have succeeded in making in the way of clearing the forest, fencing and tilling the land, building dwellings, barns, and machinery, making roads and bridges, and introducing the institutions of civilization, not compensating in value the deterioration in the productiveness of the soil. The exhausted land reverts to wilderness.Eastern Texas.—Shortly after noon rain began to fall from the chilly clouds that had been threatening us, and sleet and snow were soon driving in our faces. Our animals were disposed to flinch, but we were disposed to sleep in Texas, andpushed on across the Sabine. We found use for all our wraps, and when we reached the ferry-house our Mackintoshes were like a coat of mail with the stiff ice, and trees and fields were covered. In the broad river bottom we noticed many aquatic birds, and the browsing line under the dense mass of trees was almost as clean cut as that of Bushy Park. The river, at its low stage, was only three or four rods across. The old negro who ferried us over, told us he had taken many a man to the other side, before annexation, who had ridden his horse hard to get beyond the jurisdiction of the States.If we were unfortunate in this stormy entrance into Texas, we were very fortunate in the good quarters we lighted upon. The ferry has long been known as Gaines’s Ferry, but is now the property of Mr. Strather, an adjacent planter, originally from Mississippi, but a settler of long standing. His log-house had two stories, and being the first we had met having glass windows, and the second, I think, with any windows at all, takes high rank for comfort on the road. At supper we had capital mallard-ducks from the river, as well as the usual Texan diet.We were detained by the severity of the weather during the following day, and were well entertained with huntsman’s stories of snakes, game, and crack shots. Mr. S. himself is the best shot in the county. A rival, who had once a match against him for two thousand dollars, called the day before the trial, and paid five hundred dollars to withdraw. He brought out his rifle for us, and placed a bullet, at one hundred and twenty yards, plump in the spot agreed upon. His piece is an old Kentucky rifle, weighing fourteen pounds, barrel fourty-four inches in length, and throwing a ball weighing forty-four to the pound.A guest, who came in, helped us to pass the day by exciting our anticipations of the West, and by his free andgood advice. He confirmed stories we had heard of the danger to slavery in the West by the fraternizing of the blacks with the Mexicans. They helped them in all their bad habits, married them, stole a living from them, and ran them off every day to Mexico. This man had driven stages or herded cattle in every state of the Union, and had a notion that he liked the people and the state of Alabama better than any other. A man would get on faster, he thought, in Iowa, than anywhere else. He had been stage-driver in Illinois during the cold winter of 1851-2, and had driven a whole day when the mercury was at its furthest below zero, but had never suffered, so much from cold as on his present trip, during a norther on a Western prairie. He was now returning from Alexandria, where he had taken a small drove of horses. He cautioned us, in travelling, always to see our horses fed with our own eyes, and to “hang around” them till they had made sure of a tolerable allowance, and never to leave anything portable within sight of a negro. A stray blanket was a sure loss.Mr. S. has two plantations, both on upland, but one under the care of an overseer, some miles from the river. The soil he considers excellent. He averaged, last year, seven and a half bales to the hand; this year, four and a half bales. The usual crop of corn here is thirty bushels (shelled) to the acre.Hearing him curse the neighbouring poor people for stealing hogs, we inquired if thieves were as troublesome here as in the older countries. “If there ever were any hog-thieves anywhere,” said he, “it’s here.” In fact, no slave country, new or old, is free from this exasperating pest of poor whites. In his neighbourhood were several who ostensibly had a little patch of land to attend to, but who really, he said, derived their whole lazy subsistence from their richer neighbours’ hog droves.The negro-quarters here, scattered irregularly about the house, were of the worst description, though as good as local custom requires. They are but a rough inclosure of logs, ten feet square, without windows, covered by slabs of hewn wood four feet long. The great chinks are stopped with whatever has come to hand—a wad of cotton here, and a corn-shuck there. The suffering from cold within them in such weather as we experienced, must be great. The day before, we had seen a young black girl, of twelve or fourteen years, sitting on a pile of logs before a house we passed, in a driving sleet, having for her only garment a short chemise. It is impossible to say whether suchshiftlessnesswas the fault of the master or of the girl. Probably of both, and a part of the peculiar Southern and South-western system of “get along,” till it comes better weather.The storm continuing a third day, we rode through it twenty-five miles further to San Augustine. For some distance the country remains as in Louisiana. Then the pines gradually disappear, and a heavy clay soil, stained by an oxide of iron to a uniform brick red, begins. It makes most disagreeable roads, sticking close, and giving an indelible stain to every article that touches it. This tract is known as the Red Lands of Eastern Texas.On a plantation not far from the river, we learned they had made eight bales to the hand. Mentioning it, afterwards, to a man who knew the place, he said they had planted earlier than their neighbours, and worked night and day, and, he believed, had lied, besides. They had sent cotton both by Galveston and by Grand Ecore, and had found the cost the same, about $8 per bale of 500 lbs.We called at a plantation offered for sale. It was described in the hand-bills as having a fine house. We foundit a cabin without windows. The proprietor said he had made ten bales to the hand, and would sell with all the improvements, a new gin-house, press, etc., for $6 per acre.The roadside, though free from the gloom of pines, did not cheer up, the number of deserted wrecks of plantations not at all diminishing. The occupied cabins were no better than before. We had entered our promised land; but the oil and honey of gladness and peace were nowhere visible. The people we met were the most sturdily inquisitive I ever saw. Nothing staggered them, and we found our account in making a clean breast of it as soon as they approached.We rode through the shire-town, Milam, without noticing it. Its buildings, all told, are six in number.We passed several immigrant trains in motion, in spite of the weather. Their aspect was truly pitiful. Splashed with a new coating of red mud, dripping, and staggering, beating still the bones of their long worn-out cattle, they floundered helplessly on.San Augustine made no very charming impression as we entered, nor did we find any striking improvement on longer acquaintance. It is a town of perhaps fifty or sixty houses, and half a dozen shops. Most of the last front upon a central square acre of neglected mud. The dwellings are clap-boarded, and of a much higher class than the plantation dwellings. As to the people, a resident told us there was but one man in the town that was not in the constant habit of getting drunk, and that this gentleman relaxed his Puritanic severity during our stay in view of the fact that Christmas came but once that year.Late on Christmas eve, we were invited to the window by our landlady, to see the pleasant local custom of The Christmas Serenade. A band of pleasant spirits started from thesquare, blowing tin horns, and beating tin pans, and visited in succession every house in the village, kicking in doors, and pulling down fences, until every male member of the family had appeared, with appropriate instruments, and joined the merry party. They then marched to the square, and ended the ceremony with a centupled tin row. In this touching commemoration, as strangers, we were not urged to participate.A gentleman of the neighbourhood, addicted, as we knew, to a partiality towards a Rip Van Winkle, tavern-lounging style of living, told us he was himself regarded by many of his neighbours with an evil eye, on account of his “stuck-up” deportment, and his habit of minding too strictly his own business. He had been candidate for representative, and had, he thought, probably been defeated on this ground, as he was sure his politics were right.Not far from the village stands an edifice, which, having three stories and sashed windows, at once attracted our attention. On inquiry, we learned a story, curiously illustrative of Texan and human life. It appeared that two universities were chartered for San Augustine, the one under the protection of the Methodists, the other of the Presbyterians. The country being feebly settled, the supply of students was short, and great was the consequent rivalry between the institutions. The neighbouring people took sides upon the subject so earnestly, that, one fine day, the president of the Presbyterian University was shot down in the street. After this, both dwindled, and seeing death by starvation staring them in the face, they made an arrangement by which both were taken under charge of the fraternity of Masons. The buildings are now used under the style of “The Masonic Institute,” the one for boys, the otherfor girls. The boys occupy only the third story, and the two lower stories are falling to ludicrous decay—the boarding dropping off, and the windows on all sides dashed in.The Mexican habitations of which San Augustine was once composed, have all disappeared. We could not find even a trace of them.END OF VOL. I.
The largest part of the cotton crop of the United States is now produced in the Mississippi valley, including the lands contiguous to its great Southern tributary streams, the Red River and others. The proportion of the whole crop which is produced in this region is constantly and very rapidly increasing. This increase is chiefly gained by the forming of new plantations and the transfer of slave-labour westward. The common planter of this region lives very differently to those whose plantations I have hitherto described. What a very different person he is, and what a very different thing his plantation is from the class usually visited by travellers in the South, I learned by an extended experience. I presume myself to have been ordinarily well-informed when I started from home, but up to this point in my first journey had no correct idea of the condition and character of the common cotton-planters. I use the word common in reference to the whole region: there are some small districts in which the common planter is a rich man—really rich. But over the whole district there are comparatively few of these, and in this chapter I wish to show what the many are—as I found them. I shall draw for this purpose upon a record of experience extending through nearly twelve months, but obtained in different journeys and in two different years.
My first observation of the common cotton-planters washad on the steamboat, between Montgomery and Mobile, and has already been described. My second experience among them was on a steamboat bound up Red River.
On a certain Saturday morning, when I had determined upon the trip, I found that two boats, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles, were advertised to leave the same evening, for the Red River. I went to the levee, and, finding the Saint Charles to be the better of the two, I asked her clerk if I could engage a state-room. There was just one state-room berth left unengaged; I was requested to place my name against its number on the passenger-book; and did so, understanding that it was thus secured for me.
Having taken leave of my friends, I had my luggage brought down, and went on board at half-past three—the boat being advertised to sail at four. Four o’clock passed, and freight was still being taken on—a fire had been made in the furnace, and the boat’s big bell was rung. I noticed that the Swamp Fox was also firing up, and that her bell rang whenever ours did—though she was not advertised to sail till five. At length, when five o’clock came, the clerk told me he thought, perhaps, they would not be able to get off at all that night—there was so much freight still to come on board. Six o’clock arrived, and he felt certain that, if they did get off that night, it would not be till very late. At half-past six, he said the captain had not come on board yet, and he was quite sure they would not be able to get off that night. I prepared to return to the hotel, and asked if they would leave in the morning. He thought not. He was confident they would not. He was positive they could not leave now, before Monday—Monday noon. Monday at twelve o’clock—I might rely upon it.
Monday morning,The Picayunestated, editorially, that the floating palace, the St. Charles, would leave for Shreveport,at five o’clock, and if anybody wanted to make a quick and luxurious trip up Red River, with a jolly good soul, Captain Lickup was in command. It also stated, in another paragraph, that, if any of its friends had any business up Red River, Captain Pitchup was a whole-souled veteran in that trade, and was going up with that remarkably low draft-favourite, the Swamp Fox, to leave at four o’clock that evening. Both boats were also announced, in the advertising columns, to leave at four o’clock.
As the clerk had said noon, however, I thought there might have been a misprint in the newspaper announcements, and so went on board the St. Charles again before twelve. The clerk informed me that the newspaper was right—they had finally concluded not to sail till four o’clock. Before four, I returned again, and the boat again fired up, and rang her bell. So did the Swamp Fox. Neither, however, was quite ready to leave at four o’clock. Not quite ready at five. Even at six—not yet quite ready. At seven, the fires having burned out in the furnace, and the stevedores having gone away, leaving a quantity of freight yet on the dock, without advising this time with the clerk, I had my baggage re-transferred to the hotel.
A similar performance was repeated on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I found the berth I had engaged occupied by a very strong man, who was not very polite, when I informed him that I believed there was some mistake—that the berth he was using had been engaged to me. I went to the clerk, who said that he was sorry, but that, as I had not stayed on board at night, and had not paid for the berth, he had not been sure that I should go, and he had, therefore, given it to the gentleman who now had it in possession, and whom, he thought, it would not be best to try to reason out of it. He was very busy, he observed, because the boat was going tostart at four o’clock; if I would now pay him the price of passage, he would do the best he could for me. When he had time to examine, he could probably put me in some other state-room, perhaps quite as good a one as that I had lost. Meanwhile he kindly offered me the temporary use of his private state-room. I inquired if it was quite certain that the boat would get off at four; for I had been asked to dine with a friend, at three o’clock. There was not the smallest doubt of it—at four they would leave. They were all ready, at that moment, and only waited till four, because the agent had advertised that they would—merely a technical point of honour.
But, by some error of calculation, I suppose, she didn’t go at four. Nor at five. Nor at six.
At seven o’clock, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles were both discharging dense smoke from their chimneys, blowing steam, and ringing bells. It was obvious that each was making every exertion to get off before the other. The captains of both boats stood at the break of the hurricane deck, apparently waiting in great impatience for the mails to come on board.
The St. Charles was crowded with passengers, and her decks were piled high with freight. Bumboatmen, about the bows, were offering shells, and oranges, and bananas; and newsboys, and peddlers, and tract distributors, were squeezing about with their wares among the passengers. I had confidence in their instinct; there had been no such numbers of them the previous evenings, and I made up my mind, although past seven o’clock, that the St. Charles would not let her fires go down again.
Among the peddlers there were two of “cheap literature,” and among their yellow covers, each had two or three copies of the cheap edition (pamphlet) of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Theydid not cry it out as they did the other books they had, but held it forth among others, so its title could be seen. One of them told me he carried it because gentlemen often inquired for it, and he sold a good many; at least three copies were sold to passengers on the boat. Another young man, who looked like a beneficiary of the Education Society, endeavouring to pass a college vacation in a useful and profitable manner, was peddling a Bible Defence of Slavery, which he made eloquent appeals, in the manner of a pastoral visit, to us, each personally, to purchase. He said it was prepared by a clergyman of Kentucky, and every slaveholder ought to possess it. When he came to me, I told him that I owned no slaves, and therefore had no occasion for it. He answered that the world was before me, and I perhaps yet might own many of them. I replied so decidedly that I should not, that he appeared to be satisfied that my conscience would not need the book, and turned back again to a man sitting beside me, who had before refused to look at it. He now urged again that he should do so, and forced it into his hands, open at the title-page, on which was a vignette, representing a circle of coloured gentlemen and ladies, sitting around a fire-place with a white person standing behind them, like a servant, reading from a book. “Here we see the African race as it is in America, under the blessed——”
“Now you go to hell! I’ve told you three times I didn’t want your book. If you bring it here again I’ll throw it overboard. I own niggers; and I calculate to own more of ’em, if I can get ’em, but I don’t want any damn’d preachin’ about it.”
That was the last I saw of the book-peddler.
It was twenty minutes after seven when the captain observed—scanning the levee in every direction, to see if there was another cart or carriage coming towards us—“No usewaiting any longer, I reckon: throw off, Mr. Heady.” (The Swamp Fox did not leave, I afterwards heard, till the following Saturday.)
We backed out, winded round head up, and as we began to breast the current a dozen of the negro boat-hands, standing on the freight, piled up on the low forecastle, began to sing, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and shirts lashed to poles, towards the people who stood on the sterns of the steamboats at the levee. After losing a few lines, I copied literally into my note-book:
“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.Chorus.—Oahoiohieu.De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.Cho.—Oahoiohieu,So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the furnaces).Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Give my lub to Dinah, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.For we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.”
“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.Chorus.—Oahoiohieu.De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.Cho.—Oahoiohieu,So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the furnaces).Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Give my lub to Dinah, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.For we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.”
“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.Chorus.—Oahoiohieu.
“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.
Chorus.—Oahoiohieu.
De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.Cho.—Oahoiohieu,
De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu,
So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the furnaces).Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the furnaces).
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Give my lub to Dinah, oh!Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Give my lub to Dinah, oh!
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
For we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
For we is gwine up de Red River.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.Cho.—Oahoiohieu.”
Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.
Cho.—Oahoiohieu.”
The wit introduced into these songs has, I suspect, been rather over estimated.
As soon as the song was ended, I went into the cabin to remind the clerk to obtain a berth for me. I found twobrilliant supper-tables reaching the whole length of the long cabin, and a file of men standing on each side of both of them, ready to take seats as soon as the signal was given.
The clerk was in his room, with two other men, and appeared to be more occupied than ever. His manner was, I thought, now rather cool, not to say rude; and he very distinctly informed me that every berth was occupied, and he didn’t know where I was to sleep. He judged I was able to take care of myself; and if I was not, he was quite sure that he had too much to do to give all his time to my surveillance. I then went to the commander, and told him that I thought myself entitled to a berth. I had paid for one, and should not have taken passage in the boat, if it had not been promised me. I was not disposed to fight for it, particularly as the gentleman occupying the berth engaged to me was a deal bigger fellow than I, and also carried a bigger knife; but I thought the clerk was accountable to me for a berth, and I begged that he would inform him so. He replied that the clerk probably knew his business; he had nothing to do with it; and walked away from me. I then addressed myself to a second clerk, or sub-officer of some denomination, who more good-naturedly informed me that half the company were in the same condition as myself, and I needn’t be alarmed, cots would be provided for us.
As I saw that the supper-table was likely to be crowded, I asked if there would be a second table. “Yes, they’ll keep on eatin’ till they all get through.” I walked the deck till I saw those who had been first seated at the table coming out; then going in, I found the table still crowded, while many stood waiting to take seats as fast as any were vacated. I obtained one for myself at length, and had no sooner occupied it than two half-intoxicated and garrulous men took the adjoining stools.
It was near nine o’clock before the tables were cleared away, and immediately afterwards the waiters began to rig a framework for sleeping-cots in their place. These cots were simply canvas shelves, five feet and a half long, two wide, and less than two feet apart, perpendicularly. A waiter, whose good will I had purchased at the supper-table, gave me a hint to secure one of them for myself, as soon as they were erected, by putting my hat in it. I did so, and saw that others did the same. I chose a cot as near as possible to the midship doors of the cabin, perceiving that there was not likely to be the best possible air, after all the passengers were laid up for the night, in this compact manner.
Nearly as fast as the cots were ready they were occupied. To make sure that mine was not stolen from me, I also, without much undressing, laid myself away. A single blanket was the only bed-clothing provided. I had not lain long, before I was driven, by an exceedingly offensive smell, to search for a cleaner neighbourhood; but I found all the cots, fore and aft were either occupied or engaged. I immediately returned, and that I might have adernier ressort, left my shawl in that I had first obtained.
In the forward part of the cabin there was a bar, a stove, a table, and a placard of rules, forbidding smoking, gambling, and swearing in the cabin, and a close company of drinkers, smokers, card-players, and constant swearers. I went out, and stepped down to the boiler-deck. The boat had been provided with very poor wood, and the firemen were crowding it into the furnaces whenever they could find room for it, driving smaller sticks between the larger ones at the top, by a battering-ram method.
Most of the firemen were Irish born; one with whom I conversed was English. He said they were divided into three watches, each working four hours at a time, and all handsliable to be called, when wooding, or landing, or taking on freight, to assist the deck hands. They were paid now but thirty dollars a month—ordinarily forty, and sometimes sixty—and board. He was a sailor bred. This boat-life was harder than seafaring, but the pay was better, and the trips were short. The regular thing was to make two trips, and then lay up for a spree. It would be too hard upon a man, he thought, to pursue it regularly; two trips “on end” was as much as a man could stand. He must then take a “refreshment.” Working this way for three weeks, and then refreshing for about one, he did not think it was unhealthy, no more so than ordinary seafaring. He concluded, by informing me that the most striking peculiarity of the business was, that it kept a man, notwithstanding wholesale periodical refreshment, very dry. He was of opinion that after the information I had obtained, if I gave him at least the price of a single drink, and some tobacco, it would be characteristic of a gentleman.
Going round behind the furnace, I found a large quantity of freight: hogsheads, barrels, cases, bales, boxes, nail-rods, rolls of leather, ploughs, cotton, bale-rope, and fire-wood, all thrown together in the most confused manner, with hot steam-pipes, and parts of the engine crossing through it. As I explored further aft, I found negroes lying asleep, in all postures, upon the freight. A single group only, of five or six, appeared to be awake, and as I drew near they commenced to sing a Methodist hymn, not loudly, as negroes generally do, but, as it seemed to me, with a good deal of tenderness and feeling; a few white people—men, women, and children—were lying here and there, among the negroes. Altogether, I learned we had two hundred of these deck passengers, black and white. A stove, by which they could fry bacon, was the only furniture provided for them by theboat. They carried with them their provisions for the voyage, and had their choice of the freight for beds.
As I came to the bows again, and was about to ascend to the cabin, two men came down, one of whom I recognized to have been my cot neighbour. “Where’s a bucket?” said he. “By thunder! this fellow was so strong I could not sleep by him, so I stumped him to come down and wash his feet.” “I am much obliged to you,” said I; and I was, very much; the man had been lying in the cot beneath mine, to which I now returned and soon fell asleep.
I awoke about midnight. There was an unusual jar in the boat, and an evident excitement among people whom I could hear talking on deck. I rolled out of my cot, and stepped out on the gallery. The steamboat Kimball was running head-and-head with us, and so close that one might have jumped easily from our paddle-box on to her guards. A few other passengers had turned out beside myself, and most of the waiters were leaning on the rail of the gallery. Occasionally a few words of banter passed between them and the waiters of the Kimball; below, the firemen were shouting as they crowded the furnaces, and some one could be heard cheering them: “Shove her up, boys! Shove her up! Give her hell!” “She’s got to hold a conversation with us before she gets by, anyhow,” said one of the negroes. “Ye har that ar’ whistlin’?” said a white man; “tell ye thar an’t any too much water in her bilers when ye har that.” I laughed silently, but was not without a slight expectant sensation, which Burke would perhaps have called sublime. At length the Kimball slowly drew ahead, crossed our bow, and the contest was given up. “De ole lady too heavy,” said a waiter; “if I could pitch a few ton of dat ar freight off her bow, I’d bet de Kimball would be askin’ her to show de way mighty quick.”
At half-past four o’clock a hand-bell was rung in the cabin, and soon afterwards I was informed that I must get up, that the servants might remove the cot arrangement, and clear the cabin for the breakfast-table.
Breakfast was not ready till half-past seven. The passengers, one set after another, and then the pilots, clerks, mates, and engineers, and then the free coloured people, and then the waiters, chambermaids, and passengers’ body servants, having breakfasted, the tables were cleared, and the cabin swept. The tables were then again laid for dinner. Thus the greater part of the cabin was constantly occupied, and the passengers who had no state-rooms were driven to herd in the vicinity of the card-tables and the bar, the lobby (Social Hall, I believe it is called), in which most of the passengers’ baggage was deposited, or to go outside. Every part of the boat, except the bleak hurricane deck, was crowded; and so large a number of equally uncomfortable and disagreeable people I think I never saw elsewhere together. We made very slow progress, landing, it seems to me, after we entered Red River, at every “bend,” “bottom,” “bayou,” “point,” and “plantation” that came in sight; often for no other object than to roll out a barrel of flour, or a keg of nails; sometimes merely to furnish newspapers to a wealthy planter, who had much cotton to send to market, and whom it was therefore desirable to please.
I was sitting one day on the forward gallery, watching a pair of ducks, that were alternately floating on the river, and flying further ahead as the steamer approached them. A man standing near me drew a long barrelled and very finely-finished pistol from his coat pocket, and, resting it against a stanchion, took aim at them. They were, I judged, full the boat’s own length—not less than two hundred feet—from us, and were just raising their wings to fly, when he fired. Oneof them only rose; the other flapped round and round, and when within ten yards of the boat, dived. The bullet had broken its wing. So remarkable a shot excited, of course, not a little admiration and conversation. Half a dozen other men standing near at once drew pistols or revolvers from under their clothing, and several were fired at floating chips, or objects on the shore. I saw no more remarkable shooting, however; and that the duck should have been hit at such a distance, was generally considered a piece of luck. A man who had been “in the Rangers” said that all his company could put a ball into a tree, the size of a mans body, at sixty paces, at every shot, with Colt’s army revolver, not taking steady aim, but firing at the jerk of the arm.
This pistol episode was almost the only entertainment in which the passengers engaged themselves, except eating, drinking, smoking, conversation, and card-playing. Gambling was constantly going on, day and night. I don’t think there was an interruption to it of fifteen minutes in three days. The conversation was almost exclusively confined to the topics of steamboats, liquors, cards, black-land, red-land, bottom-land, timber-land, warrants, and locations, sugar, cotton, corn, and negroes.
After the first night, I preferred to sleep on the trunks in the social hall, rather than among the cots in the crowded cabin, and several others did the same. There were, in fact, not cots enough for all the passengers excluded from the state-rooms. I found that some, and I presume most of the passengers, by making the clerk believe that they would otherwise take the Swamp Fox, had obtained their passage at considerably less price than I had paid.
On the third day, just after the dinner-bell had rung, and most of the passengers had gone into the cabin, I was sittingalone on the gallery, reading a pamphlet, when a well-dressed middle-aged man accosted me.
“Is that the book they call Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you are reading, sir?”
“No, sir.”
“I did not know but it was; I see that there are two or three gentlemen on board that have got it. I suppose I might have got it in New Orleans: I wish I had. Have you ever seen it, sir?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m told it shows up Slavery in very high colours.”
“Yes, sir, it shows the evils of Slavery very strongly.”
He took a chair near me, and said that, if it represented extreme cases as if they were general, it was not fair.
Perceiving that he was disposed to discuss the matter, I said that I was a Northern man, and perhaps not well able to judge; but that I thought that a certain degree of cruelty was necessary to make slave-labour generally profitable, and that not many were disposed to be more severe than they thought necessary. I believed there was little wanton cruelty. He answered, that Northern men were much mistaken in supposing that slaves were generally ill-treated. He was a merchant, but he owned a plantation, and he just wished I could see his negroes. “Why, sir,” he continued, “my niggers’ children all go regularly to a Sunday-school, just the same as my own, and learn verses, and catechism, and hymns. Every one of my grown-up niggers are pious, every one of them, and members of the church. I’ve got an old man that can pray——well, sir, I only wish I had as good a gift at praying! I wish you could just hear him pray. There are cases in which niggers are badly used; but they are not common. There are brutes everywhere. You have men, at the North, who whip their wives—and they kill them sometimes.”
“Certainly, we have, sir; there are plenty of brutes at the North; but our law, you must remember, does not compel women to submit themselves to their power. A wife, cruelly treated, can escape from her husband, and can compel him to give her subsistence, and to cease from doing her harm. A woman could defend herself against her husband’s cruelty, and the law would sustain her.”
“It would not be safe to receive negroes’ testimony against white people; they would be always plotting against their masters, if you did.”
“Wives are not always plotting against their husbands.”
“Husband and wife is a very different thing from master and slave.”
“Your remark, that a bad man might whip his wife, suggested an analogy, sir.”
“If the law was to forbid whipping altogether, the authority of the master would be at an end.”
“And if you allow bad men to own slaves, and allow them to whip them, and deny the slave the privilege of resisting cruelty, do you not show that you think it is necessary to permit cruelty, in order to sustain the authority of masters, in general, over their slaves? That is, you establish cruelty as a necessity of Slavery—do you not?”
“No more than of marriage, because men may whip their wives cruelly.”
“Excuse me, sir; the law does all it can, to prevent such cruelty between husband and wife; between master and slave it does not, because it cannot, without weakening the necessary authority of the master—that is, without destroying Slavery. It is, therefore, a fair argument against Slavery, to show how cruelly this necessity, of sustaining the authority of cruel and passionate men over their slaves, sometimes operates.”
He asked what it was Uncle Tom “tried to make out.”
I narrated the Red River episode, and asked if such things could not possibly occur.
“Yes,” replied he, “but very rarely. I don’t know a man, in my parish, that could do such a thing. There are two men, though, in——, bad enough to do it, I believe; but it isn’t a likely story, at all. In the first place, no coloured woman would be likely to offer any resistance, if a white man should want to seduce her.”
After further conversation, he said, that a planter had been tried for injuring one of his negroes, at the court in his parish, the preceding summer. He had had a favourite, among his girls, and suspecting that she was unduly kind to one of his men, in an anger of jealousy he mutilated him. There was not sufficient testimony to convict him; “but,” he said, “everybody believes he was guilty, and ought to have been punished. Nobody thinks there was any good reason for his being jealous of the boy.”
I remarked that this story corroborated “Uncle Tom’s Cabin;” it showed that it was all possible.
“Ah!” he answered, “but then nobody would have any respect for a man that treated his niggers cruelly.”
I wondered, as I went into dinner, and glanced at the long rows of surly faces, how many men there were there whose passions would be much restrained by the fear of losing the respect of their neighbours.[39]
My original purpose had been to go high up Red River at this time, but the long delay in the boat’s leaving New Orleans, and her slow passage, obliged me to change my plans. Thefollowing year, I returned, in company with my brother, as narrated in “The Texas Journey.” Some portion of what follows is taken from that volume.
At a place called Alexandria, our progress was arrested by falls in the river which cannot be passed by boats at low stages of the water. The village is every bit a Southern one—all the houses being one story in height, and having an open verandah before them, like the English towns in the West Indies. It contains, usually, about 1,000 inhabitants, but this summer had been entirely depopulated by the yellow fever. Of 300 who remained, 120, we were told, died. Most of the runaway citizens had returned, when we passed, though the last case of fever was still in uncertain progress.
It has apparently not the least reputation for morality. At Nachitoches, the next village above on the river, a couple of men were waiting for their breakfast at the inn, when one, who looked and spoke more like a New Englander than a Southerner, said to the other, whom I presumed to be an Alexandrian—possibly Elder Slocum himself:—
“I had a high old dream, last night.”
“What was it?”
“Dreamt I was in hell.”
“Rough country?”
“Boggy—sulphur bogs. By and by I cum to a great pair of doors. Something kinder drew me right to ’em, and I had to open ’em, and go in. As soon as I got in, the doors slammed to, behind me, and there I see old boss devil lying asleep, on a red-hot sofy. He woke up, and rubbed his eyes, and when he see me, he says, ‘Halloo! that you?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ says I. ‘Where’d you come from?’ says he. ‘From Alexandria, sir,’ says I. ‘Thought so,’ says he, and he took down a big book, and wrote something in to’t with a red-hot spike. ‘Well, sir, what’s going on now in Alexandria?’ says he. ‘Having a“protracted meeting” there, sir,’ says I. ‘Look here, my friend,’ says he, ‘you may stop lyin’, now you’ve got here.’ ‘I aint lyin’, sir,’ says I. ‘Oh!’ says he, ‘I beg your pardon; I thought it was Alexandria on Red River, you meant.’ ‘So it was,’ says I, ‘and they are having a protracted meeting there, sure as you’re alive.’ ‘Hell they are!’ says he, jumpin’ right up; ‘boy, bring my boots!’ A little black devil fetched him a pair of hot brass boots, and he began to draw ’em on. ‘Whose doin’ is that?’ says he. ‘Elder Slocum’s, sir,’ says I. ‘Elder Slocum’s! Why in hell couldn’t you have said so, before?’ says he. ‘Here, boy, take away these boots;’ and he kicked ’em off, and laid down again.”
French blood rather predominates in the population in the vicinity of Nachitoches, but there is also a considerable amount of the Spanish and Indian mongrel breed. These are often handsome people, but vagabonds, almost to a man. Scarcely any of them have any regular occupation, unless it be that of herding cattle; but they raise a little maize, and fish a little, and hunt a little, and smoke and lounge a great deal, and are very regular in their attendance on divine worship, at the cathedral.
In the public bar-room I heard a person, who I suppose would claim the appellation of a gentleman, narrating how he had overreached a political opponent, in securing the “Spanish vote” at an election, and it appeared from the conversation that it was considered entirely, and as a matter of course, purchasable by the highest bidder. A man who would purchase votes at the North, would, at least, be careful not to mention it so publicly.
We spent several days in Nachitoches, purchasing horses and completing the preparations for our vagrant life in Texas.
One mild day of our stay we made a trip of some ten or fifteen miles out and back, at the invitation of a planter, whoseacquaintance we had made at the hotel. We started in good season, but were not long in losing our way and getting upon obscure roads through the woods. The planter’s residence we did not find, but one day’s experience is worth a note.
We rode on from ten o’clock till three, without seeing a house, except a deserted cabin, or meeting a human being. We then came upon a ferry across a small stream or “bayou,” near which was a collection of cabins. We asked the old negro who tended the ferry if we could get something to eat anywhere in the neighbourhood. He replied that his master sometimes took in travellers, and we had better call and try if the mistress wouldn’t let us have some dinner.
The house was a small square log cabin, with a broad open shed or piazza in front, and a chimney, made of sticks and mud, leaning against one end. A smaller detached cabin, twenty feet in the rear, was used for a kitchen. A cistern under a roof, and collecting water from three roofs, stood between. The water from the bayou was not fit to drink, nor is the water of the Red River, or of any springs in this region. The people depend entirely on cisterns for drinking water. It is very little white folks need, however—milk, whisky, and, with the better class, Bordeaux wine, being the more common beverages.
About the house was a large yard, in which were two or three China trees, and two fine Cherokee roses; half a dozen hounds; several negro babies; turkeys and chickens, and a pet sow, teaching a fine litter of pigs how to root and wallow. Three hundred yards from the house was a gin-house and stable, and in the interval between were two rows of comfortable negro cabins. Between the house and the cabins was a large post, on which was a bell to call the negroes. A rack for fastening horses stood near it. On the bell-post and on each of the rack-posts were nailed the antlers of a buck, aswell as on a large oak-tree near by. On the logs of the kitchen a fresh deer-skin was drying. On the railing of the piazza lay a saddle. The house had but one door and no window, nor was there a pane of glass on the plantation.
Entering the house, we found it to contain but a single room, about twenty feet by sixteen. Of this space one quarter was occupied by a bed—a great four-poster, with the curtains open, made up in the French style, with a strong furniture-calico day-coverlid. A smaller camp bed stood beside it. These two articles of furniture nearly filled the house on one side the door. At the other end was a great log fire-place, with a fine fire. The outer door was left constantly open to admit the light. On one side the fire, next the door, was a table; a kind of dresser, with crockery, and a bureau stood on the other side, and there were two deer-skin seated chairs and one (Connecticut made) rocking chair.
A bold-faced, but otherwise good-enough-looking woman of a youngish middle age, was ironing a shirt on the table. We stated our circumstances, and asked if we could get some dinner from her. She reckoned we could, she said, if we’d wait till she was done ironing. So we waited, taking seats by the fire, and examining the literature and knick-knacks on the mantel-piece. These consisted of three NachitochesChronicles, a Patent Office Agricultural Report, “Christie’s Galvanic Almanac,” a Bible, “The Pirate of the Gulf,” a powder-horn, the sheath of a bowie-knife, a whip-lash, and a tobacco-pipe.
Three of the hounds, a negro child, and a white child, had followed us to the door of the cabin, three chickens had entered before us, a cat and kittens were asleep in the corner of the fire-place. By the time we had finished reading the queer advertisements in French of runaway negroes in theChronicletwo of the hounds and the black child had retired, and a tan-coloured hound, very lean, and badly crippled in one leg, hadentered and stood asking permission with his tail to come to the fire-place. The white child, a frowzy girl of ten, came toward us. I turned and asked her name. She knitted her brows, but made no verbal reply. I turned my chair towards her, and asked her to come to me. She hung her head for an instant, then turned, ran to the hound and struck him a hard blow in the chops. The hound quailed. She struck him again, and he turned half around; then she began with her feet, and kicked him out, taking herself after him.
At length the woman finished her ironing, and went to the kitchen, whence quickly returning, she placed upon the table a plate of cold, salt, fat pork; a cup of what to both eye and tongue seemed lard, but which she termed butter; a plate of very stale, dry, flaky, micaceous corn-bread; a jug of molasses, and a pitcher of milk.
“Well, now it’s ready, if you’ll eat it,” she said, turning to us. “Best we’ve got. Sit up. Take some pone;” and she sat down in the rocker at one end of the table. We took seats at the other end.
“Jupiter! what’s the matter with this child?” A little white child that had crawled up into the gallery, and now to my side—flushed face, and wheezing like a high-pressure steamboat.
“Got the croup, I reckon,” answered the woman. “Take some ’lasses.”
The child crawled into the room. With the aid of a hand it stood up and walked round to its mother.
“How long has it been going on that way?” asked we.
“Well, it’s been going on some days, now, and keeps getting worse. ’Twas right bad last night, in the night. Reckoned I should lose it, one spell. Take some butter.”
We were quite faint with hunger when we rode up, but didn’t eat much of the corn-cake and pork. The woman andthe high-pressure child sat still and watched us, and we sat still and did our best, making much of the milk.
“Have you had a physician to see that child?” asked my brother, drawing back his chair.
She had not.
“Will you come to me, my dear?”
The child came to him, he felt its pulse and patted its hot forehead, looked down its throat, and leaned his ear on its chest.
“Are you a doctor, sir?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Got some fever; hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Not nigh so much as’t had last night.”
“Have you done anything for it?”
“Well, thar was a gentleman here; he told me sweet ile and sugar would be good for’t, and I gave it a good deal of that: made it sick, it did. I thought, perhaps, that would do it good.”
“Yes. You have had something like this in your family before, haven’t you? You don’t seem much alarmed.”
“Oh yes, sir; that ar one (pointing to the frowzy girl, whose name was Angelina) had it two or three times—onst most as bad as this. All my children have had it. Is she bad, doctor?”
“Yes. I should say this was a very serious thing.”
“Have you any medicine in the house?” he asked, after the woman had returned from a journey to the kitchen. She opened a drawer of the bureau, half full of patent medicines and some common drugs. “There’s a whole heap o’ truck in thar. I don’t know what it all is. Whatever you want just help yourself. I can’t read writin’; you must pick it out.”
Such as were available were taken out and given to the mother, with directions about administering them, which she promised to obey. “But the first and most important thing for you to do is to shut the door, and make up the fire, and put the child to bed, and try to keep this wind off her.”
“Lord! sir, you can’t keepherin bed—she’s too wild.”
“Well, you must put some more clothes on her. Wrap her up, and try to keep her warm. The very best thing you can do for her is to give her a warm bath. Have you not got a washing tub?”
“Oh! yes, sir, I can do that. She’ll go to bed pretty early; she’s used to going ’tween sundown and dark.”
“Well, give her the warm bath, then, and if she gets worse send for a physician immediately. You must be very careful of her, madam.”
We walked to the stable, and as the horses had not finished eating their corn, I lounged about the quarters, and talked with the negro.
There was not a single soul in the quarters or in sight of the house except ourselves, the woman and her children, and the old negro. The negro women must have taken their sucklings with them, if they had any, to the field where they were at work.
The old man said they had “ten or eleven field-hands, such as they was,” and his master would sell sixty to seventy bags of cotton: besides which they made all the corn and pork they wanted, and something over, and raised some cattle.
We found our way back to the town only late in the evening. We had ridden most of the day over heavily-timbered, nearly flat, rich bottom land. It is of very great fertility; but, being subject to overflow, is not very attractive, in spite of its proximity to a market.
But it must be remembered that they were having the first use of a very fine alluvial soil, and were subject to floods and fevers. The yellow fever or cholera another year might kill half their negroes, or a flood of the Red River (such as occurred August, 1849, and October, 1851) destroy their whole crop, and so use up several years’ profits.
A slate hung in the piazza, with the names of all the cotton-pickers, and the quantity picked the last picking day by each, thus: Gorge, 152; David, 130; Polly, 98; Hanna, 96; Little Gorge, 52, etc. The whole number of hands noted was fourteen. Probably there were over twenty slaves, big and little, on the plantation.
When our horses were ready, we paid the negro for taking care of them, and I went in and asked the woman what I might pay her.
“What!” she asked, looking in my face as if angry.
I feared she was offended by my offering money for her hospitality, and put the question again as delicately as I could. She continued her sullen gaze at me for a moment, and then answered as if the words had been bullied out of her by a Tombs lawyer—
“Dollar, I reckon.”
“What!” thought I, but handed her the silver.
Riding out at the bars let down for us by the old negro, we wondered if the child would be living twenty-four hours later, and if it survived, what its moral chances were. Poor, we thought. Five miles from a neighbour; ten, probably, from a Louisiana[40]school; hound-pups and negroes for playmates.
On the Emigrant Road into Texas.—Five minutes’ ride took us deep into the pines. Nachitoches, and with it all the tumult and bother of social civilization, had disappeared. Under the pines and beyond them was a new, calm, free life, upon which we entered with a glow of enthusiasm, which, however, hardly sufficed to light up a whole day of pine shadows, and many times afterwards glimmered very dull over days on days of cold corn-bread and cheerless winter prairies.
For two days, we rode through these pines over a sandy surface, having little rise and fall, watered here and there by small creeks and ponds, within reach of whose overflow, present or past, stand deciduous trees, such as, principally, oaks and cotton-woods, in a firmer and richer soil. Wherever the road crosses or approaches these spots, there is or has been usually a plantation.
The road could hardly be called a road. It was only a way where people had passed along before. Each man had taken such a path as suited him, turning aside to avoid, on high ground, the sand; on low ground, the mud. We chose, generally, the untrodden elastic pavement of pine leaves, at a little distance from the main track.
We overtook, several times in the course of each day, the slow emigrant trains, for which this road, though less frequented than years ago, is still a chief thoroughfare. Inexorable destiny it seems that drags or drives on, always Westward, these toilworn people. Several families were frequently moving together, coming from the same district, or chance met and joined, for company, on the long road from Alabama, Georgia, or the Carolinas. Before you come upon them you hear, ringing through the woods, the fierce cries and blows with which they urge on their jaded cattle. Then the stragglers appear, lean dogs or fainting negroes, ragged and spiritless. An old granny, hauling on, by the hand, a weak boy—tooold to ride and too young to keep up. An old man, heavily loaded, with a rifle. Then the white covers of the waggons, jerking up and down as they mount over a root or plunge into a rut, disappearing, one after another, where the road descends. Then the active and cheery prime negroes, not yet exhausted, with a joke and a suggestion about tobacco. Then the black pickininnies, staring, in a confused heap, out at the back of the waggon, more and more of their eyes to be made out among the table legs and bedding, as you get near; behind them, further in, the old people and young mothers, whose turn it is to ride. As you get by, the white mother and babies, and the tall, frequently ill-humoured master, on horseback, or walking with his gun, urging up the black driver and his oxen. As a scout ahead, is a brother, or an intelligent slave, with the best gun, on the look-out for a deer or a turkey. We passed in the day perhaps one hundred persons attached to these trains, probably an unusual number; but the immigration this year had been retarded and condensed by the fear of yellow fever, the last case of which, at Nachitoches, had indeed begun only the night before our arrival. Our chances of danger were considered small, however, as the hard frosts had already come. One of these trains was made up of three large waggons, loaded with furniture, babies, and invalids, two or three light waggons, and a gang of twenty able field-hands. They travel ten or fifteen miles a day, stopping wherever night overtakes them. The masters are plainly dressed, often in home-spun, keeping their eyes about them, noticing the soil, sometimes making a remark on the crops by the roadside; but generally dogged, surly, and silent. The women are silent too, frequently walking, to relieve the teams; and weary, haggard, mud be-draggled, forlorn, and disconsolate, yet hopeful and careful. The negroes, mud-incrusted, wrapped in old blankets or gummy-bags,suffering from cold, plod on, aimless, hopeless, thoughtless, more indifferent, apparently, than the oxen, to all about them.
We met, in course of the day, numerous cotton waggons, two or three sometimes together, drawn by three or four pairs of mules or oxen, going slowly on toward Nachitoches or Grand Ecore, each managed by its negro-driver. The load is commonly five bales (of 400 lbs. each), and the cotton comes in this tedious way, over execrable roads, distances of 100 and even 150 miles. It is usually hauled from the eastern tier of Texan counties to the Sabine; but this year there had been no rise of water in the rivers, and from all this region it must be carried to Red River. The distance from the Sabine is here about fifty miles, and the cost of this transportation about one cent a pound; the freight from Grand Ecore to New Orleans from one to one and a quarter cents. If hauled 150 miles in this way, as we were told, the profit remaining, after paying the charges of transportation and commission, all amounting to about five cents, must be exceedingly small in ordinary years.
At night we met three or four of these teams half-mired in a swamp, distant some quarter of a mile one from another, and cheering themselves in the dark with prolonged and musical “Yohoi’s,” sent ringing through the woods. We got through this with considerable perplexity ourselves, and were very glad to see the light of the cabin where we had been recommended to stop.
This was “Mrs. Stokers’,” about half way to the Sabine. We were received cordially, every house here expecting to do inn-duty, but were allowed to strip and take care of our own horses, the people by no means expecting to do landlord’s duty, but taking guests on sufferance. The house was a double log cabin—two log erections, that is, joined by onelong roof, leaving an open space between. A gallery, extending across the whole front, serves for a pleasant sitting-room in summer, and for a toilet-room at all seasons. A bright fire was very welcome. Supper, consisting of pork, fresh and salt, cold corn-bread, and boiled sweet potatoes, was served in a little lean-to behind the house. After disposing of this we were shown to our room, the other cabin, where we whiled away our evening, studying, by the light of the great fire, a book of bear stories, and conversing with the young man of the family, and a third guest. The room was open to the rafters, and had been built up only as high as the top of the door upon the gallery side, leaving a huge open triangle to the roof, through which the wind rushed at us with a fierce swoop, both while we were sitting at the fire and after we retreated to bed. Owing to this we slept little, and having had a salt supper, lay very thirsty upon the deep feather bed. About four o’clock an old negro came in to light the fire. Asking him for water, we heard him breaking the ice for it outside. When we washed in the piazza the water was thick with frost, crusty, and half inclined not to be used as a fluid at all.
After a breakfast, similar in all respects to the supper, we saddled and rode on again. The horses had had a dozen ears of corn, night and morning, with an allowance of fodder (maize leaves). For this the charge was $1 25 each person. This is a fair sample of roadside stopping-places in Western Louisiana and Texas. The meals are absolutely invariable, save that fresh pork and sweet potatoes are frequently wanting. There is always, too, the black decoction of the South called coffee, than which it is often difficult to imagine any beverage more revolting. The bread is made of corn-meal, stirred with water and salt, and baked in a kettle covered with coals. The corn for breakfast is frequently unhusked at sunrise. Anegro, whose business it is, shells and grinds it in a hand-mill for the cook. Should there be any of the loaf left after breakfast, it is given to the traveller, if he wish it, with a bit of pork, for a noon-“snack,” with no further charge. He is conscious, though, in that case, that he is robbing the hounds, always eagerly waiting, and should none remain, none can be had without a new resort to the crib. Wheat bread, if I am not mistaken, we met with but twice, out of Austin, in our whole journey across the State.
The country was very similar to that passed over the day before, with perhaps rather more of the cultivable loam. A good part of the land had, at some time, been cleared, but much was already turned over to the “old-field pines,” some of them even fifteen years or more. In fact, a larger area had been abandoned, we thought, than remained under cultivation. With the land, many cabins have, of course, also been deserted, giving the road a desolate air. If you ask, where are the people that once occupied these, the universal reply is, “Gone to Texas.”
The plantations occur, perhaps, at an average distance of three or four miles. Most of the remaining inhabitants live chiefly, to appearances, by fleecing emigrants. Every shanty sells spirits, and takes in travellers. We passed through but one village, which consisted of six dwellings. The families obtained their livelihood by the following occupations: one by shoeing the horses of emigrants; one by repairing the wheels of their waggons; one by selling them groceries. The smallest cabin contained a physician. It was not larger than a good-sized medicine chest, but had the biggest sign. The others advertised “corn and fodder.” The prices charged for any article sold, or service performed, were enormous; full one hundred per cent, over those of New Orleans.
We met Spaniards once or twice on the road, and the populationof this district is thought to be one half of Spanish origin. They have no houses on the road, however, but live in little hamlets in the forest, or in cabins contiguous to each other, about a pond. They make no progress in acquiring capital of their own, but engage in hunting and fishing, or in herding cattle for larger proprietors of the land. For this business they seem to have an hereditary adaptation, far excelling negroes of equal experience.
The number of cattle raised here is now comparatively small, most of the old herd proprietors having moved on to pastures new in Western Texas. The cane, which is a natural growth of most good soils at the South, is killed if closely fed upon. The blue-joint grass (not the blue-grass of Kentucky) takes its place, and is also indigenous upon a poorer class of soils in this region. This is also good food for cattle, but is killed in turn if closely pastured. The ground then becomes bare or covered with shrubs, and the “range” is destroyed. The better class of soils here bear tolerable crops of cotton, but are by no means of value equal to the Red River bottoms or the new soils of any part of Texas. The country is, therefore, here in similar condition to that of the Eastern Slave States. The improvements which the inhabitants have succeeded in making in the way of clearing the forest, fencing and tilling the land, building dwellings, barns, and machinery, making roads and bridges, and introducing the institutions of civilization, not compensating in value the deterioration in the productiveness of the soil. The exhausted land reverts to wilderness.
Eastern Texas.—Shortly after noon rain began to fall from the chilly clouds that had been threatening us, and sleet and snow were soon driving in our faces. Our animals were disposed to flinch, but we were disposed to sleep in Texas, andpushed on across the Sabine. We found use for all our wraps, and when we reached the ferry-house our Mackintoshes were like a coat of mail with the stiff ice, and trees and fields were covered. In the broad river bottom we noticed many aquatic birds, and the browsing line under the dense mass of trees was almost as clean cut as that of Bushy Park. The river, at its low stage, was only three or four rods across. The old negro who ferried us over, told us he had taken many a man to the other side, before annexation, who had ridden his horse hard to get beyond the jurisdiction of the States.
If we were unfortunate in this stormy entrance into Texas, we were very fortunate in the good quarters we lighted upon. The ferry has long been known as Gaines’s Ferry, but is now the property of Mr. Strather, an adjacent planter, originally from Mississippi, but a settler of long standing. His log-house had two stories, and being the first we had met having glass windows, and the second, I think, with any windows at all, takes high rank for comfort on the road. At supper we had capital mallard-ducks from the river, as well as the usual Texan diet.
We were detained by the severity of the weather during the following day, and were well entertained with huntsman’s stories of snakes, game, and crack shots. Mr. S. himself is the best shot in the county. A rival, who had once a match against him for two thousand dollars, called the day before the trial, and paid five hundred dollars to withdraw. He brought out his rifle for us, and placed a bullet, at one hundred and twenty yards, plump in the spot agreed upon. His piece is an old Kentucky rifle, weighing fourteen pounds, barrel fourty-four inches in length, and throwing a ball weighing forty-four to the pound.
A guest, who came in, helped us to pass the day by exciting our anticipations of the West, and by his free andgood advice. He confirmed stories we had heard of the danger to slavery in the West by the fraternizing of the blacks with the Mexicans. They helped them in all their bad habits, married them, stole a living from them, and ran them off every day to Mexico. This man had driven stages or herded cattle in every state of the Union, and had a notion that he liked the people and the state of Alabama better than any other. A man would get on faster, he thought, in Iowa, than anywhere else. He had been stage-driver in Illinois during the cold winter of 1851-2, and had driven a whole day when the mercury was at its furthest below zero, but had never suffered, so much from cold as on his present trip, during a norther on a Western prairie. He was now returning from Alexandria, where he had taken a small drove of horses. He cautioned us, in travelling, always to see our horses fed with our own eyes, and to “hang around” them till they had made sure of a tolerable allowance, and never to leave anything portable within sight of a negro. A stray blanket was a sure loss.
Mr. S. has two plantations, both on upland, but one under the care of an overseer, some miles from the river. The soil he considers excellent. He averaged, last year, seven and a half bales to the hand; this year, four and a half bales. The usual crop of corn here is thirty bushels (shelled) to the acre.
Hearing him curse the neighbouring poor people for stealing hogs, we inquired if thieves were as troublesome here as in the older countries. “If there ever were any hog-thieves anywhere,” said he, “it’s here.” In fact, no slave country, new or old, is free from this exasperating pest of poor whites. In his neighbourhood were several who ostensibly had a little patch of land to attend to, but who really, he said, derived their whole lazy subsistence from their richer neighbours’ hog droves.
The negro-quarters here, scattered irregularly about the house, were of the worst description, though as good as local custom requires. They are but a rough inclosure of logs, ten feet square, without windows, covered by slabs of hewn wood four feet long. The great chinks are stopped with whatever has come to hand—a wad of cotton here, and a corn-shuck there. The suffering from cold within them in such weather as we experienced, must be great. The day before, we had seen a young black girl, of twelve or fourteen years, sitting on a pile of logs before a house we passed, in a driving sleet, having for her only garment a short chemise. It is impossible to say whether suchshiftlessnesswas the fault of the master or of the girl. Probably of both, and a part of the peculiar Southern and South-western system of “get along,” till it comes better weather.
The storm continuing a third day, we rode through it twenty-five miles further to San Augustine. For some distance the country remains as in Louisiana. Then the pines gradually disappear, and a heavy clay soil, stained by an oxide of iron to a uniform brick red, begins. It makes most disagreeable roads, sticking close, and giving an indelible stain to every article that touches it. This tract is known as the Red Lands of Eastern Texas.
On a plantation not far from the river, we learned they had made eight bales to the hand. Mentioning it, afterwards, to a man who knew the place, he said they had planted earlier than their neighbours, and worked night and day, and, he believed, had lied, besides. They had sent cotton both by Galveston and by Grand Ecore, and had found the cost the same, about $8 per bale of 500 lbs.
We called at a plantation offered for sale. It was described in the hand-bills as having a fine house. We foundit a cabin without windows. The proprietor said he had made ten bales to the hand, and would sell with all the improvements, a new gin-house, press, etc., for $6 per acre.
The roadside, though free from the gloom of pines, did not cheer up, the number of deserted wrecks of plantations not at all diminishing. The occupied cabins were no better than before. We had entered our promised land; but the oil and honey of gladness and peace were nowhere visible. The people we met were the most sturdily inquisitive I ever saw. Nothing staggered them, and we found our account in making a clean breast of it as soon as they approached.
We rode through the shire-town, Milam, without noticing it. Its buildings, all told, are six in number.
We passed several immigrant trains in motion, in spite of the weather. Their aspect was truly pitiful. Splashed with a new coating of red mud, dripping, and staggering, beating still the bones of their long worn-out cattle, they floundered helplessly on.
San Augustine made no very charming impression as we entered, nor did we find any striking improvement on longer acquaintance. It is a town of perhaps fifty or sixty houses, and half a dozen shops. Most of the last front upon a central square acre of neglected mud. The dwellings are clap-boarded, and of a much higher class than the plantation dwellings. As to the people, a resident told us there was but one man in the town that was not in the constant habit of getting drunk, and that this gentleman relaxed his Puritanic severity during our stay in view of the fact that Christmas came but once that year.
Late on Christmas eve, we were invited to the window by our landlady, to see the pleasant local custom of The Christmas Serenade. A band of pleasant spirits started from thesquare, blowing tin horns, and beating tin pans, and visited in succession every house in the village, kicking in doors, and pulling down fences, until every male member of the family had appeared, with appropriate instruments, and joined the merry party. They then marched to the square, and ended the ceremony with a centupled tin row. In this touching commemoration, as strangers, we were not urged to participate.
A gentleman of the neighbourhood, addicted, as we knew, to a partiality towards a Rip Van Winkle, tavern-lounging style of living, told us he was himself regarded by many of his neighbours with an evil eye, on account of his “stuck-up” deportment, and his habit of minding too strictly his own business. He had been candidate for representative, and had, he thought, probably been defeated on this ground, as he was sure his politics were right.
Not far from the village stands an edifice, which, having three stories and sashed windows, at once attracted our attention. On inquiry, we learned a story, curiously illustrative of Texan and human life. It appeared that two universities were chartered for San Augustine, the one under the protection of the Methodists, the other of the Presbyterians. The country being feebly settled, the supply of students was short, and great was the consequent rivalry between the institutions. The neighbouring people took sides upon the subject so earnestly, that, one fine day, the president of the Presbyterian University was shot down in the street. After this, both dwindled, and seeing death by starvation staring them in the face, they made an arrangement by which both were taken under charge of the fraternity of Masons. The buildings are now used under the style of “The Masonic Institute,” the one for boys, the otherfor girls. The boys occupy only the third story, and the two lower stories are falling to ludicrous decay—the boarding dropping off, and the windows on all sides dashed in.
The Mexican habitations of which San Augustine was once composed, have all disappeared. We could not find even a trace of them.
END OF VOL. I.