Chapter 15

A fine large new hotel was among the buildings which the late fire at Charleston destroyed, and the house where we now are is the best at present in the city. It is kept by a very obliging and civil colored woman, who seems extremely desirous of accommodating us to our minds; but her servants (they are her slaves, in spite of her and their common complexion) would defy the orderly genius of the superintendent of the Astor House. Their laziness, their filthiness, their inconceivable stupidity, and unconquerable good humor, are enough to drive one stark, staring mad. The sitting-room we occupy is spacious, and not ill-furnished, and especially airy, having four windows and a door, none of which can or will shut. We are fortunately rid of that familiar fiend of the North, the anthracite coal, but do not enjoy the luxury of burning wood. Bituminous coal, such as is generally used in England, is the combustible preferred here; and all my national predilections cannot reconcile me to it, in preference to the brilliant, cheerful, wholesome, poetical warmth of a wood fire. Our bedrooms are dismal dens, open to "a' the airts the wind can blaw," half furnished, and not by any means half clean. The furniture itself is old, and very infirm,--the tables all peach with one or other leg,--the chairs are most of them minus one or two bars,--the tongs cross their feet when you attempt to use them,--and one poker travels from room to room, that being our whole allowance for two fires.

We have had occasion to make only two trifling purchases since we have been here; but the prices (if these articles are any criterion) must be infinitely higher than those of the northern shopkeepers; but this we must expect as we go further south, for, of course, they have to pay double profits upon all the commonest necessaries of life, importing them, as they do, from distant districts. I must record a curious observation of Margery's, on her return from church Tuesday morning. She asked me if the people of this place were not very proud. I was struck with the question, as coinciding with a remark sometimes made upon the South, and supposed by some far-fetching cause-hunters to have its origin in some of their "domestic institutions." I told her that I knew no more of them than she did; and that I had had no opportunity of observing whether they were or not.

"Well," she replied, "I think they are, for I was in church early, and I observed the countenances and manner of the people as they came in, and they struck me as the haughtiest, proudest-looking people I ever saw!"

This very curious piece of observation of hers I note down without comment. I asked her if she had ever heard, or read, the remark as applied to the southern people? She said, "Never," and I was much amused at this result of her physiognomical church speculations.

Last Thursday evening we left our hotel in Charleston, for the steamboat which was to carry us to Savannah: it was not to start until two in the morning; but, of course, we preferred going on board rather earlier, and getting to bed. The ladies' cabin, however, was so crowded with women and children, and so inconveniently small, that sleeping was out of the question in such an atmosphere. I derived much amusement from the very empress-like airs of an uncommonly handsome mulatto woman, who officiated as stewardess, but whose discharge of her duties appeared to consist in telling the ladies what they ought, and what they ought not to do, and lounging about with an indolent dignity, which was irresistibly droll, and peculiarly Southern.

The boat in which we were, not being considered sea-worthy, as she is rather old, took the inner passage, by which we were two nights and a day accomplishing this most tedious navigation, creeping through cuts and small muddy rivers, where we stuck sometimes to the bottom, and sometimes to the banks, which presented a most dismal succession of dingy, low, yellow swamps, and reedy marshes, beyond expression wearisome to the eye. About the middle of the day on Friday, we touched at the island of Edisto, where some of the gentlemen-passengers had business, that being the seat of their plantations, and where the several families reside--after the eldest member of which, Mr. Seabrook, the boat we were in was named.

Edisto, as I have mentioned before, is famous for producing the finest cotton in America--therefore, I suppose, in the world. As we were to wait here some time, we went on shore to walk. The appearance of the cotton-fields at this season of the year was barren enough; but, as a compensation, I here, for the first time, saw the evergreen oak-trees (the ilex, I presume) of the South. They were not very fine specimens of their kind, and disappointed me a good deal. The advantage they have of being evergreen is counterbalanced by the dark and almost dingy color of the foliage, and the leaf being minute in size, and not particularly graceful in form. These trees appeared to me far from comparable, either in size or beauty, to the European oak, when it has attained its full growth. We were walking on the estate of one of the Mr. Seabrooks, which lay unenclosed on each side of what appeared to be the public road through the island.

At a short distance from the landing we came to what is termed a ginning-house--a building appropriated to the process of freeing the cotton from the seed. It appeared to be open to inspection; and we walked through it. Here were about eight or ten stalls on either side, in each of which a man was employed at a machine, worked like a turner's or knife-grinder's wheel, by the foot, which, as fast as he fed it with cotton, parted the snowy flakes from the little black first cause, and gave them forth soft, silky, clean, and fit to be woven into the finest lace or muslin. This same process of ginning is performed in many places, and upon our own cotton-estate, by machinery; the objection to which however, is, that the staple of the cotton--in the length of which consists its chief excellence--is supposed by some planters to be injured, and the threads broken, by the substitution of an engine for the task performed by the human fingers in separating the cotton and presenting it to the gin.

After walking through this building, we pursued our way past a large, rambling, white wood house, and down a road, bordered on each side with evergreen oaks. While we were walking, a young man on horseback passed us, whose light hair, in a very picturesque contempt of modern fashion, absolutely flowed upon the collar of his coat, and was blown back as he rode, like the disheveled tresses of a woman. On Edisto Island such a noble exhibition of individuality would probably find few censors.

As we returned towards the boat we stopped to examine an irregular scrambling hedge of the wild orange, another of the exquisite shrubs of this paradise of evergreens. The form and foliage of this plant are beautiful, and the leaf, being bruised, extremely fragrant; but, as its perfume indicates, it is a rank poison, containing a great portion of prussic acid. It grows from cuttings rapidly and freely, and might be formed into the most perfect hedge, being well adapted, by its close, bushy growth, to that purpose.

After leaving Edisto, we pursued the same tedious, meandering course, over turbid waters, and between low-lying swamps, till the evening closed in. The afternoon had been foggy and rainy and wretched. The cabin was darkened by the various outer protections against the weather, so that we could neither read nor work. Our party, on leaving the island, had received an addition of some young ladies, who were to go on shore again in the middle of the night, at a stopping-place called Hilton Head. As they did not intend to sleep, they seemed to have no idea of allowing any one else to do so; and the giggling and chattering with which they enlivened the dreary watches of the night, certainly rendered anything like repose impossible; so I lay, devoutly wishing for Hilton Head, where the boat stopped between one and two in the morning. I had just time to see our boarding-school angels leave us, and a monstrous awkward-looking woman, who at first struck me as a man in disguise, enter the cabin, before my eyes sealed themselves in sleep, which had been hovering over them, kept aloof only by the incessant conversational racket of my young fellow-travelers.

I was extremely amused at two little incidents which occurred the next morning before we were called to breakfast. The extraordinary-looking woman who came into the boat during the night, and who was the most masculine-looking lady I ever saw, came and stood by me, and, seeing me nursing my baby, abruptly addressed me with "Got a baby with you?" I replied in the affirmative, which trouble her eyes might have spared me. After a few minutes' silence, she pursued her unceremonious catechism with "Married woman?" This question was so exceedingly strange, though put in the most matter-of-course sort of way, that I suppose my surprise exhibited itself in my countenance, for the lady presently left me--not, however, appearing to imagine that she had said or done anything at all unusual. The other circumstance which amused me was to hear another lady observe to her neighbor, on seeing Margery bathing my children (a ceremony never omitted night and morning, where water can be procured); "How excessively ridiculous!" Which same worthy lady, on leaving the boat at Savannah, exclaimed, as she huddled on her cloak, that she never had felt so "_mean_ in her life!" and, considering that she had gone to bed two nights with the greater part of her day clothes on her, and had abstained from any "ridiculous" ablutions, her _mean_ sensations did not, I confess, much surprise me.

When the boat stopped at Savannah, it poured with rain; and in a perfect deluge, we drove up to the Pulaski House, thankful to escape from the tedious confinement of a _slow_ steamboat,--an intolerable nuisance and anomaly in the nature of things. The hotel was, comparatively speaking, very comfortable; infinitely superior to the one where we had lodged at Charleston, as far as bed accommodations went. Here, too, we obtained the inestimable luxury of a warm bath; and the only disagreeable thing we had to encounter was that all but universal pest in this crowd-loving country, a public table. This is always a trial of the first water to me; and that day particularly I was fatigued, and out of spirits, and the din and confusion of a long _table d'hôte_ was perfectly intolerable, in spite of the assiduous attentions of a tiresome worthy old gentleman, who sat by me and persisted in endeavoring to make me talk. Finding me impracticable, however, he turned, at length, in despair, to the hostess, who sat at the head of her table, and inquired in a most audible voice if it were true, as he had understood, that Mr. and Mrs. Butler were in the hotel? This, of course, occasioned some little amusement; and the good old gentleman being informed that I was sitting at his elbow, went off into perfect convulsions of apologies, and renewed his exertions to make me discourse, with more zeal than ever, asking me, among other things, when he had ascertained that I had never before been to the South, "How I liked the appearance of 'our blackies' (the negroes)?--no want of cheerfulness, no despondency, or misery in their appearance, eh, madam?" As I thought this was rather begging the question, I did not trouble the gentleman with my impressions. He was a Scotchman, and his adoption of "our blackies" was, by his own account, rather recent, to be so perfectly satisfactory; at least, so it seems to me, who have some small prejudices in favor of freedom and justice yet to overcome, before I can enter into all the merits of this beneficent system, so productive of cheerfulness and contentment in those whom it condemns to perpetual degradation.

Our night-wanderings were not yet ended, for the steamer in which we were to proceed to Darien was to start at ten o'clock that evening, so that we had but a short interval of repose at this same Pulaski House, and I felt sorry to leave it, in proportion to the uncertainty of our meeting with better accommodation for a long time. The _Ocmulgee_ (the Indian name of a river in Georgia, and the cognomen of our steamboat) was a tiny, tidy little vessel, the exceeding small ladies' cabin of which we, fortunately, had entirely to ourselves.

On Sunday morning the day broke most brilliantly over those southern waters, and as the sun rose, the atmosphere became clear and warm, as in the early northern summer. We crossed two or three sounds of the sea. The land in sight was a mere forest of reeds, and the fresh, sparkling, crisping waters had a thousand times more variety and beauty. At the mouth of the Altamaha is a small cluster of houses, scarce deserving the name of a village, called Doboy. At the wharf lay two trading-vessels; the one with the harp of Ireland waving on her flag; the other with the union-jack flying at her mast. I felt vehemently stirred to hail the beloved symbol; but, upon reflection, forbore outward demonstrations of the affectionate yearnings of my heart towards the flag of England, and so we boiled by them into this vast volume of turbid waters, whose noble width, and rapid rolling current, seem appropriately called by that most euphonious and sonorous of Indian names, the Alatamaha, which, in the common mode of speaking it, gains by the loss of the second syllable, and becomes more agreeable to the ear, as it is usually pronounced, the Altamaha.

On either side lay the low, reedy swamps, yellow, withered Lilliputian forests, rattling their brittle canes in the morning breeze.... Through these dreary banks we wound a most sinuous course for a long time; at length the irregular buildings of the little town of Darien appeared, and as we grazed the side of the wharf, it seemed to me as if we had touched the outer bound of civilized creation. As soon as we showed ourselves on the deck we were hailed by a shout from the men in two pretty boats, which had pulled alongside of us; and the vociferations of "Oh, massa! how you do, massa? Oh, missis! oh! lily missis! me too glad to see you!" accompanied with certain interjectional shrieks, whoops, whistles, and grunts, that could only be written down in negro language, made me aware of our vicinity to our journey's end. The strangeness of the whole scene, its wildness (for now beyond the broad river and the low swamp lands the savage-looking woods arose to meet the horizon), the rapid retrospect which my mind hurried through of the few past years of my life; the singular contrasts which they presented to my memory; the affectionate shouts of welcome of the poor people, who seemed to hail us as descending divinities, affected me so much that I burst into tears, and could hardly answer their demonstrations of delight. We were presently transferred into the larger boat, and the smaller one being freighted with our luggage, we pulled off from Darien, not, however, without a sage remark from Margery, that, though we seemed to have traveled to the very end of the world, here yet were people and houses, ships, and even steamboats; in which evidences that we were not to be plunged into the deepest abysses of savageness she seemed to take no small comfort.

We crossed the river, and entered a small arm of it, which presently became still narrower and more straight, assuming the appearance of an artificial cut or canal, which indeed it is, having been dug by General Oglethorpe's men (tradition says, in one night), and afforded him the only means of escape from the Spaniards and Indians, who had surrounded him on all sides, and felt secure against all possibility of his eluding them. The cut is neither very deep nor very long, and yet both sufficiently to render the general's exploit rather marvelous. General Oglethorpe was the first British governor of Georgia; Wesley's friend and disciple. The banks of this little canal were mere dykes, guarding rice-swamps, and presented no species of beauty; but in the little creek, or inlet, from which we entered it, I was charmed with the beauty and variety of the evergreens growing in thick and luxuriant underwood, beneath giant, straggling cypress trees, whose branches were almost covered with the pendant wreaths of gray moss peculiar to these southern woods. Of all parasitical plants (if, indeed, it properly belongs to that class) it assuredly is the most melancholy and dismal. All creepers, from the polished, dark-leaved ivy, to the delicate clematis, destroy some portion of the strength of the trees around which they cling, and from which they gradually suck the vital juices; but they, at least, adorn the forest-shafts round which they twine, and hide, with a false, smiling beauty, the gradual ruin and decay they make. Not so this dismal moss: it does not appear to grow, or to have root, or even clinging fibre of any sort, by which it attaches itself to the bark or stem. It hangs in dark gray, drooping masses from the boughs, swinging in every breeze like matted, grizzled hair. I have seen a naked cypress with its straggling arms all hung with this banner of death, looking like a gigantic tree of monstrous cobwebs,--the most funereal spectacle in all the vegetable kingdom.

After emerging from the cut, we crossed another arm of the Altamaha (it has as many as Briareus)--I should rather, perhaps, call them mouths, for this is near its confluence with the sea, and these various branches are formed by a numerous sisterhood of small islands, which divide this noble river into three or four streams, each of them wider than England's widest, the Thames. We now approached the low, reedy banks of Butler's Island, and passed the rice-mill and buildings surrounding it, all of which, it being Sunday, were closed. As we neared the bank, the steersman took up a huge conch, and in the barbaric fashion of early times in the Highlands, sounded out our approach. A pretty schooner, which carries the produce of the estate to Charleston and Savannah, lay alongside the wharf, which began to be crowded with negroes, jumping, dancing, shouting, laughing, and clapping their hands (a usual expression of delight with savages and children), and using the most extravagant and ludicrous gesticulations to express their ecstasy at our arrival.

On our landing from the boat, the crowd thronged about us like a swarm of bees; we were seized, pulled, pushed, carried, dragged, and all but lifted in the air by the clamorous multitude. I was afraid my children would be smothered. Fortunately, Mr. O----, the overseer, and the captain of the little craft above-mentioned, came to our assistance, and by their good offices the babies and nurse were protected through the crowd. They seized our clothes, kissed them--then our hands, and almost wrung them off. One tall, gaunt negress flew to us, parting the throng on either side, and embraced us in her arms. I believe I was almost frightened; and it was not until we were safely housed, and the door shut upon our riotous escort, that we indulged in a fit of laughing, quite as full, on my part, of nervousness as of amusement. Later in the day I attempted to take some exercise, and thought I had escaped observation; but, before I had proceeded a quarter of a mile, I was again enveloped in a cloud of these dingy dependents, who gathered round me, clamoring welcome, staring at me, stroking my velvet pelisse, and exhibiting at once the wildest delight and the most savage curiosity. I was obliged to relinquish my proposed walk, and return home. Nor was the door of the room where I sat, and which was purposely left open, one moment free from crowds of eager faces, watching every movement of myself and the children, until evening caused our audience to disperse. This zeal in behalf of an utter stranger, merely because she stood to them in the relation of a mistress, caused me not a little speculation. These poor people, however, have a very distinct notion of the duties which ownership should entail upon their proprietors, however these latter may regard their obligation towards their dependents; and as to their vehement professions of regard and affection for me, they reminded me of the saying of the satirist, that "gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come."

BUTLER'S ISLAND, GEORGIA, January 8th, 1839.

I have some doubt whether any exertion whatever of your imaginative faculties could help you to my whereabouts or whatabouts this day, dearest Emily; and therefore, for your enlightenment, will refer you to my date, and inform you that yesterday I paid my first visit to the Sick House, or infirmary, of our estate; and this morning spent three hours and a half there, cleaning with my own hands the filthy room where the sick lay, and washing and dressing poor little nearly new-born negro babies. My avocations the whole morning have been those of a sister of charity, and I doubt if the unwearied and unshrinking benevolence of those pious creatures ever led them, for their souls' sake, into more abominable receptacles of filth, degradation, and misery.

It is long enough since I first mentioned to you my intention of coming down to these plantations, if I was permitted to do so. As the time for setting forth on our journey drew near, I became not a little appalled at the details I heard of what were likely to be the difficulties of the mere journey: at the very end of December, with a baby at the breast, and a child as young as S----, to travel upwards of a thousand miles, in this half-civilized country, and through the least civilized part of it, was no joke. However, happily, it was accomplished safely, though not without considerable suffering and heart-achings on my part.... These and other befallings may serve for talking matter, if ever we should meet again. We all arrived here safely on Sunday last, and my thoughts are engrossed with the condition of these people, from whose labor we draw our subsistence; of which, now that I am here, I feel ashamed.

The place itself is one of the wildest corners of creation--if, indeed, any part of this region can be considered as thoroughly _created_ yet. It is not consolidated, but in mere process of formation,--a sort of hasty-pudding of amphibious elements, composed of a huge, rolling river, thick and turbid with mud, and stretches of mud banks, forming quaking swamps, scarcely reclaimed from the water. The river wants _straining_ and the land draining, to make either of them properly wet or dry.

This island, which is only a portion of our Georgia estate, contains several thousand acres, and is about eight miles round, and formed of nothing but the deposits (leavings, in fact) of the Altamaha, whose brimming waters, all thick with alluvial matter, roll round it, and every now and then threaten to submerge it. The whole island is swamp, dyked like the Netherlands, and trenched and divided by ditches and a canal, by means of which the rice-fields are periodically overflowed, and the harvest transported to the threshing mills. A duck, an eel, or a frog might live here as in Paradise; but a creature of dry habits naturally pines for less wet. To mount a horse is, of course, impossible, and the only place where one can walk is the banks or dykes that surround the island, and the smaller ones that divide the rice-fields.

I mean to take to rowing, boats being plentiful, and "water, water everywhere"; indeed, in spring, the overseer tells me we may have to go from house to house in boats, the whole island being often flooded at that season.