Part 14

As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending a service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people are supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr. Shandy’s homuncule was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good--or where it would be most desirable--very bad Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable, accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow weighing down his young life that softened him to almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone by--of Paris and poetry, of England and London hotels, of the great _Carême_, and of Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics--_de omni scibili_. The storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents--the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by--not a boat on its broad surface. The road passed by plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen, belonging to small planters, with only some ten or twelve slaves all told. The houses were poor and ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning’s place, and drove to the overseer’s--a large heavy-eyed old man, who asked us into his house from out of the rain till the boat was ready--and the river did not look inviting--full of drift trees, swirls and mighty eddies. In the plain room in which we sat there was a volume of _Spurgeon’s Sermons_ and of Baxter’s works. “This rain will do good to the corn,” said the overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin’ to do leetly, as they ’eve clearied out the fields pretty well.” We drove down to a poor shed on the levee called the ferry-house, attended by one stout young slave who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole a little longer. “What are those?” quoth I, “Dem’s oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman’s brisk reply. “I’m very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat’s the trute, Massa.” “There, go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we entered the shed for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman sitting” smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed, and morose--young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chickens about the size of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four years of age, not over-dressed--indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a point upon it”--crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the use of a small piece of silver presented to her--having no precise ideas on coinage or toffy--her parent took the obolus in charge with unmistakable decision; but still she would not stir a step to aid our Charon, who now insisted on the “key ov de oarhouse.” The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. Charon pushed his skiff into the water--there was a good deal of rain it--in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep. I got in, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was caulked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world. “Why! deuce take you” (I said, at least that, in my wrath), “don’t you see the boat is leaky?” “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in, tho’.” Another skiff proved to be staunch. I bade good-bye to my friend, and sat down in my boat, which was soon forced up along the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view, from my lonely position, was curious, but not at all picturesque. The landscape had disappeared at once. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was constituted by a broad river--just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank, and directly in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage gateway and wickets of wood, painted white in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road far as the eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering flowers, rose, jessamine and creepers clinging to the pillars supporting the verandah. The proprietor, who had espied my approach, issued forth with a section of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house was larger and better than the residences even of the richest planters, though it was in need of some little repair, and had been built perhaps fifty years ago, in the old Irish fashion, and who built well, ate well, drank well, and, finally, paid very well. The view from the belvedere was one of the most striking of its kind in the world. If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be cultivated for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and Orange-grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful business.

When my eyes “uncurtained the early morning,” I might have imagined myself in the magic garden of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and multifarious were the carols of the birds, which were the only happy colored people I saw in my Southern tour, notwithstanding the assurances of the many ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to prove to me that the palm of terrestrial felicity must be awarded to their negroes. As I stepped through my window upon the verandah, a sharp chirp called my attention to a mocking-bird perched upon a rose-bush beneath, whom my presence seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated behind my curtain, whence I observed her flight to a nest, cunningly hid in a creeping-rose trailed around a neighboring column of the house, where she imparted a breakfast of spiders and grasshoppers to her gaping and clamorous offspring. While I was admiring the motherly grace of this melodious fly-catcher, a servant brought coffee, and announced that the horses were ready, and that I might have a three hours’ ride before breakfast. At Houmas _les jours se suivent et se ressemblent_, and an epitome of the first will serve as a type for all, with the exception of such variations in the kitchen and produce as the ingenuity and exhaustless hospitality of my host were never tired of framing.

If I regretted the absence of our English agriculturist when I beheld the 6,000 acres of cane and 1,600 of maize unfolded from the belvedere the day previous, I longed for his presence still more when I saw those evidences of luxuriant fertility attained without the aid of phosphates or guano. The rich Mississippi bottoms need no manure; a rotation of maize with cane affords them the necessary recuperative action. The cane of last year’s plant is left in stubble, and renews its growth this spring under the title of _ratoons_. When the maize is in tassel, cow-peas are dropped between the rows; and when the lordly stalk, of which I measured many twelve and even fifteen feet in height, bearing three and sometimes four ears, is topped to admit the ripening sun, the pea-vine twines itself around the trunk, with a profusion of leaf and tendril that supplies the planter with the most desirable fodder for his mules in “rolling-time,” which is their season of trial. Besides this, the corn-blades are culled and cured. These are the best meals of the Southern race-horse, and constitute nutritious hay without dust. The cow-pea is said to strengthen the system of the earth for the digestion of a new crop of sugar-cane. A sufficient quantity of the cane of last season is reserved from the mill, and laid in pits, where the ends of the stalk are carefully closed with earth until spring. After the ground has been plowed into ridges, these canes are laid in the endless tumuli, and not long after their interment, a fresh sprout springs at each joint of these interminable flutes.

As we ride through the wagon roads, of which there are not less than thirty miles in this confederation of four plantations, held together by the purse and the life of our host--the unwavering exactitude of the rows of cane, which run without deviation at right angles with the river down to the cane-brake, two miles off, proves that the negro would be a formidable rival in a ploughing match. The cane has been “laid by,” that is, it requires no more labor, and will soon “lap,” or close up, though the rows are seven feet apart. It feathers like a palm-top; a stalk which was cut measured six feet, although from the ridges it was but waist high. On dissecting it near the root, we find five nascent joints not a quarter of an inch apart. In a few weeks more, these will shoot up like a spy-glass pulled out to its focus.

There are four lordly sugar-houses, as the grinding-mills and boiling and crystalizing buildings are called, and near each is to be found the negro village, or “quarter,” of that section of the plantation. A wide avenue, generally lined with trees, runs through these hamlets, which consist of twenty or thirty white cottages, single storied, and divided into four rooms. They are whitewashed, and at no great distance might be mistaken for New-England villages, with a town-hall which often serves in the latter for a “meeting-house,” with occasionally a row of stores on the ground floor.

The people, or “hands,” are in the field, and the only inhabitants of the settlements are scores of “picaninnies,” who seem a jolly congregation, under the care of crones, who here, as in an Indian village, act as nurses of the rising generation, destined from their births to the limits of a social Procrustean bed. The increase of property on the estate is about five per cent. per annum by the birth of children.

We ride an hour before coming upon any “hands” at work in the fields. There is an air of fertile desolation that prevails in no other cultivated land. The regularity of the cane, its gardenlike freedom from grass or weeds, and the _ad unguem_ finish and evenness of the furrows, would seem the work of nocturnal fairies, did we not realize the system of “gang labor” exemplified in a field we at length reach, where some thirty men and women were giving with the hoe the last polish to the earth around the cane, which would not be molested again until gathered for the autumnal banquet of the rolling-mills.

Small drains and larger ditches occur at almost every step. All these flow into a canal, some fifteen feet wide, which runs between the plantation and the uncleared forest, and carries off the water to a “bayou” still more remote. There are twenty miles of deep ditching before the plantation, exclusive of the canal; and as this is the contract work of “Irish navvies,” the sigh with which our host alluded to this heavy item in plantation expenses was expressive. The work is too severe for African thews, and experience has shown it a bad economy to overtask the slave. The sugar-planter lives in apprehension of four enemies. These are, the river when rising, drought, too much or unseasonable rain, and frost. The last calls into play all his energies, and tasks his utmost composure. In Louisiana, the cane never ripens as it does in Cuba, and they begin to grind as early in October as the amount of juices will permit. The question of a crop is one of early or late frost. With two months’ exemption they rely, in a fair season, upon a hogshead of 1,200 pounds to the acre; and if they can run their mills until January, the increase is more than proportionate, each of its latter days in the earth adding saccharine virtue to the cane.

At an average of a hogshead to the acre, each working hand is good for seven hogsheads a year, which, at last years’ prices--eight cents per pound for ordinary qualities--would be a yield of £140 per annum for each full geld hand.

Two hogsheads to the acre are not unfrequently, and even three have been, produced upon rich lands in a good season. Estimating the sugar at seventy per cent., and the refuse, _bagasse_, at thirty per cent., the latter figure would give us two tons and a quarter to the acre, which opens one’s eyes to the tireless activity of nature in this semi-tropical region.

From the records of Houmas, I find that in 1857, the year of its purchase at about £300,000, it yielded a gross of $304,000, say £63,000, upon the investment.

In the rear of this great plantation there are 18,000 additional acres of cane-brake which are being slowly reclaimed, like the fields now rejoicing in crops, as fast as the furnace of the sugar-house calls for fuel. Were it desirable to accelerate the preparation of this reserve for planting, it might be put in tolerable order in three years at a cost of £15 per acre. We extended our ride into this jungle, on the borders of which, in the unfinished clearing, I saw plantations of “negro corn,” the sable cultivators of which seem to have disregarded the symmetry practiced in the fields of their master, who allows them from Saturday noon until Monday’s cockcrow for the care of their private interests, and, in addition to this, whatever hours in the week they can economize by the brisk fulfilment of their allotted tasks. Some of these patches are sown broadcast, and the corn has sprung up like Zouave _tirailleurs_ in their most fantastic vagaries, rather than like the steady regimental drill of the cane and maize we have been traversing.

Corn, chickens, and eggs, are, from time immemorial, the perquisites of the negro, who has the monopoly of the two last-named articles in all well-ordered Louisiana plantations. Indeed, the white man cannot compete with them in raising poultry, and our host was evidently delighted when one of his negroes, who had brought a dozen Muscovy ducks to the mansion, refused to sell them to him except for cash. “But, Louis, won’t you trust me? Am I not good for three dollars?” “Good enough, massa; but dis nigger want de money to buy flour and coffee for him young family. Folks at Donaldsonville will trust massa--won’t trust nigger.” The money was paid, and, as the negro left us, his master observed with a sly, humorous twinkle: “That fellow sold forty dollars’ worth of corn last year, and all of them feed their chickens with my corn, and sell their own.”

There are three overseers at Houmas, one of whom superintends the whole plantation, and likewise looks after another estate of 8,000 acres, some twelve miles down the river, which our host added to his possessions two years since, at a cost of £150,000. In any part of the world, and in any calling, Mr. S---- (I do not know if he would like to see his name in print) would be considered an able man. Mr. S. attends to most of the practice requiring immediate attention. We visited one of these hospitals, and found half-a-dozen patients ill of fever, rheumatism and indigestion, and apparently well cared for by a couple of stout nurses. The truckle bedsteads were garnished with mosquito bars, and I was told that the hospital is a favorite resort, which its inmates leave with reluctance. The pharmaceutical department was largely supplied with a variety of medicines, quinine and preparations of sulphites of iron. “Poor drugs,” said Mr. S., “are a poor economy.”

I have mentioned engineering as one of the requisites of a competent overseer. To explain this I must observe that Houmas is esteemed very high land, and that in its cultivated breadth there is only a fall of eight feet to carry off its surplus matter. In the plantation of Governor Manning, which adjoins it, an expensive steam-draining machine is employed to relieve his fields of this incumbrance, which is effected by the revolutions of a fan-wheel some twenty feet in diameter, which laps up the water from a narrow trough into which all the drainage flows, and tosses it into an adjoining bayou.

On Governor Manning’s plantation we saw the process of clearing the primitive forest, of which 150 acres were sown in corn and cotton beneath the tall girdled trees that awaited the axe, while an equal breadth on the other side of a broad and deep canal was reluctantly yielding its tough and fibrous soil, from which the jungle had just been removed, to the ploughs of some fifty negroes, drawn by two mules each. Another season of lustration by maize or cotton, and the rank soil will be ready for the cane.

The cultivation of sugar differs from that of cotton in requiring a much larger outlay of capital. There is little required for the latter besides negroes and land, which may be bought on credit, and a year’s clothing and provisions. There is a gambling spice in the chances of a season which may bring wealth or ruin--a bale to the acre, which may produce 7_d._ or only 5_d._ per lb. In a fair year the cotton planter reckons upon ten or twelve bales to the hand, in which case the annual yield of a negro varies from £90 to £120. His enemies are drought, excessive rains, the ball-worm, and the army-worm; his best friend “a long picking season.”

There is more steadiness in the price of sugar, and a greater certainty of an average crop. But the cost of a sugar-house, with its mill, boilers, vacuum pans, centrifugal and drying apparatus, cannot be less than £10,000, and the consumption of fuel, thousands of cords of which are cut up by the “hands,” is enormous. There were cases of large fortunes earned by planting sugar with small beginnings, but these had chiefly occurred among early settlers, who had obtained their hands for a song. A creole, who recently died at the age of fifty-five, in the neighborhood, and who began with only a few thousand dollars, had amassed more than $1,000,000 in twenty-five years, and two of his sons--skilful planters--were likely to die each richer than his father.

This year the prospects of sugar are dreary enough, at least while the civil war lasts, and my host, with a certainty of 6,500 hogsheads upon his various plantations, has none of a market. In this respect cotton has the advantage of keeping longer than sugar. At last year’s prices, and with the United States protective tariff of 20 per cent. to shield him from foreign competition, his crop would have yielded him over £100,000. But all the sweet teeth of the Confederate States army can hardly “make a hole” in the 450,000 hogsheads which this year is expected to yield in Louisiana and Texas. Under the new tariff of the seceding states, the loss of protection to Louisiana alone may be stated, within bounds, at $8,000,000 per annum--which is making the planters pay pretty dear for their secession whistle.

When I arrived at Houmas there was the greatest anxiety for rain, and over the vast level plateau every cloud was scanned with avidity. Now, a shower seemed bearing right down upon us, when it would break, like a flying soap-bubble, and scatter its treasures short of the parched fields in which we felt interested. The wind shifted, and hopes were raised that the next thunder-cloud would prove less illusory. But, no! “Kenner” has got it all. On the fifth day, however, the hearts of all the planters and their parched fields were gladdened by half a day of general and generous rain, beneath which our host’s cane fairly reeled and revelled. It was now safe for the season, and so was the corn. But “one man’s meat is another’s poison,” and we heard more than one “Jeremiad” from those whose fields had not been placed in the condition which enabled those of our friend to carry off a potation of twelve hours of tropical rain with the ease of an alderman or lord chancellor made happier or wiser by his three bottles of port.

What is termed _hacienda_ in Cuba, _rancho_ in Mexico, and “plantation” elsewhere, is styled “habitation” by the creoles of Louisiana, whose ancestors began more than a century ago to reclaim its jungles.