LETTER IX.

FROM MONTGOMERY TO MOBILE.

MOBILE, Alabama, May 11.

THE wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable hills and unnavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery, any such misgivings vanish from my mind. So colossal an ark could have ascended no mythical stream, and the existence and capabilities of the Alabama were demonstrated by its presence.

Punctuality is reputed a rare virtue in the river steamers of the West and South, which seldom leave their wharves until they have bagged a fair complement of passengers, although steaming up and ringing gongs and bells every afternoon for a week or more before their departure, as if travellers were to be swarmed like bees. Whether stimulated by the infectious activity of these “war times,” or convinced that the “politeness of kings” is the best steamboat policy, the grandson of Erin who owns and commands the Southern Republic casts off his fastenings but half an hour after his promised start, and the short puff of the engine is enlivened by the wild strains of a steam-organ called a “calliope,” which gladdens us with the assurance that we are in the incomparable “land of Dixie.”

Reserving for a cooler hour the attractions of the lower floor--a Hades consecrated to machinery, freight, and negroes--we betake ourselves to the second landing, where we find a long dining-hall surrounded by two tiers of state rooms, the upper one accessible by a stairway leading to a gallery, which divides the “saloon” between floor and roof. We are shown to our quarters, which leave much to be desired and nothing to spare, and rush from their suffocating atmosphere to the outer balcony, where a faint breeze stirs the air. There is a roofed balcony above us that corresponds to the second tier of state rooms, from which a party of excited Secessionists are discharging revolvers at the dippers on the surface and the cranes on the banks of the river.

After we have dropped down five or six miles from Montgomery, the steam whistle announces our approach to a landing, and, as there is no wharf in view, we watch curiously the process by which our top-heavy craft, under the sway of a four-knot current, is to swing round in her invisible moorings. As we draw nigh to a wagon-worn indenture in the bank, the “scream” softens into the dulcet pipes of the “calliope,” and the steamer doubles upon her track, like an elephant turning at bay, her two engines being as independent of each other as Seceding States, and, slowly stemming the stream, lays her nose upon the bank, and holds it there, with the judicious aid of her paddles, until a long plank is run ashore from her bow, over which three passengers, with valises, make way for a planter and his family, who come on board. The gang-plank is hauled in, the steamer turns her head down stream with the expertness of a whale in a canal, and we resume our voyage. We renew these stoppages at various times before dark, landing here a barrel and there a box, and occasionally picking up a passenger.

After supper, which is served on a series of parallel tables running athwart the saloon, we return to enjoy from the balcony the cool obscurity of the evening in this climate, where light means heat. As we cleave the glass surface of the black water, the timber-clad banks seem to hem us in more closely and to shut up in the vista before us, and while we glide down with a rapidity which would need but the roar of rapids to prefigure a cataract beyond, we yield to the caprice of fancy, instituting comparisons between the dark perspective ahead and the mystery of the future.

Again a scream, and a ruddy light flashes from our prow and deepens the shades around us. This proceeds from the burning of “light wood”--a highly resinous pine--in a wire basket hung on gimbals and held like a landing-net below the bow of the steamer, so as to guide without blinding the pilot, who is ensconced like a Hansom cabman upon its roof. The torch-bearer raises his cresset as we steam up to the bank, and plants it in a socket, when a hawser is seized round a tree, and the crew turned ashore to “wood up.” There is a steep high bank above us, and while dusky forms are flitting to and fro with food for our furnaces, we survey a long stairway ascending the bank at a sharp angle in a cut, which is lost in the sheds that crown the eminence over head. This stair is flanked on either side by the bars of an iron tramway, up which freight is hauled when landed, and parallel to it is a wooden slide, down which bales of cotton and sacks of corn are shot upon the steamer. One or two passengers slowly ascend, and a voice in the air notifies us that a team is at hand with a load of ladies, who shortly after are seen picking their way down the flight of steps. The cresset is constantly replenished with fresh light wood, and the shadows cast by its flickering flame make us regret that we have not with us a Turner to preserve this scene, which would have been a study for Rembrandt or Salvator Rosa.

At midnight we halt for a couple of hours at Selma, a “rising town,” which has taken a start of late, owing to the arrival of a branch railway, that connects it with Tennessee and the Mississippi River. Here a huge _embarcadere_, several stories high, seems fastened to the side of the bank, and affords us an opportunity of stepping out from either story of the Southern Republic upon a corresponding landing. Upon one of these floors there are hackmen and hotel runners, competing for those who land, and indicating the proximity of a town, if not a city. Our captain had resolved upon making but a short stay, in lieu of tying up until morning--his usual practice--when an acquaintance comes on board and begs him to wait an hour for a couple of ladies and some children, whom he will hunt up a mile or so out of town. Times are hard, and the captain very cheerfully consents, not insensible to the flattering insinuation: “You know our folks never go with any one but you, if they can help it.”

The next day and evening are a repetition of the foregoing scenes, with more plantations in view and a general air of tillage and prosperity. We are struck by the uniformity of the soil, which everywhere seems of inexhaustible fertility, and by the unvarying breadth of the stream, which, but for its constantly recurring sinuosities, might pass for a broad ship canal. We also remark that the bluffs rarely sink into bottoms susceptible of overflow, and admire the verdure of the primitive forest, a tangle of magnolias in full flower, of laurel, and of various oaks peculiar to this region, and which, though never rising to the dignity of that noble tree in higher latitudes, are many of them extremely graceful. All this sylva of moderate stature is intertwined with creepers, and at intervals we see the Spanish moss, indicating the malarious exhalations of the soil beneath. The Indian corn, upon which the Southerners rely principally for food, has attained a height of two feet, and we were told that, in consequence of the war, it is sown in greater breadth than usual. The cotton plant has but just peeped above the earth, and, alluding to its tenderness, those around us express anxieties about that crop, which, it seems, are never allayed until it has been picked, bagged and pressed, shipped and sold.

As I am not engaged upon an itinerary, let these sketches suffice to convey an idea of the four hundred and seventeen miles of winding river which connect Montgomery with Mobile, to which place the Southern Republic conveyed us in thirty-four hours, stoppings included.

One of the Egyptian pyramids owes its origin to the strange caprice of a princess, and the Southern Republic is said to have been built with the proceeds of an accidental “haul” of Gold Coast natives, who fell into the net of her enterprising proprietor. This worthy, born of Irish parents in Milk street, is too striking a type of what the late Mr. Webster was wont to call a “Northern man with Southern principles,” not to deserve something more than a passing notice.

For out-and-out Southern notions there is nothing in Dixie’s Land like the successful emigrant from the North and East. Captain Meagher had at his fingers’ ends all the politico-economical facts and figures of the Southern side of the question, and rested his reasoning solely upon the more sordid and material calculations of the Secessionists. It was a question of tariffs. The North had, no doubt, provided the protection of a navy, the facilities of mails, the construction of forts, Custom Houses, and Post Offices, in the South, and placed countless well-paid offices at the disposal of gentlemen fond of elegant leisure; but for all these the South had been paying more than their value, and when Abolitionists were allowed to elect a Sectional President, and the system of forced labor, which is the basis of Southern prosperity, was threatened, the South were too happy to take a “snap judgment,” as in a _pie poudre_ Court, and declare the Federal compact forfeited and annulled forever.

During the long second day of our voyage, we examined the faces of the proletarians, whose color and constitutions so well adapted them for the Cyclopian realms of the main deck. Among them we detect several physiognomies which strike us as resembling seedlings from the Gold Coast rather than the second or third fruits of ancient transplantation. A fellow traveller gratifies at the same time our curiosity and our penetration. There are several native Africans, or, as they are called in Cuba, _bozales_, on board. They are the property of the argumentative captain, and were acquired by a coup de main, at which I have already hinted in this letter. It seems that a club of planters in this State and one or two others resolved, little more than a year ago, to import a cargo of Africans. They were influenced partly by cupidity and partly by fancy to set the United States laws at defiance, and to evince their contempt for New England philanthropy. The job was accepted by an Eastern house, which engaged to deliver the cargo at a certain point on the coast within certain limits of time.

Whether the shipment arrived earlier than anticipated, or whether Captain Meagher was originally designed as the person to whom the bold and delicate manoeuvre of landing them should be intrusted, it is certain that on a certain Sunday in last July he took a little coasting trip in his steamer Czar, and appeared at Mobile on the following morning in season to make his regular voyage up river. It is no less certain that he ran the dusky strangers in at night by an unfrequented pass, and landed them among the cane-brakes of his own plantation with sufficient celerity to be back at the moorings of the Czar without his absence having been noticed. The vessel from which the _bozales_ were delivered was scuttled and sunk, and her master and crew found their way North by rail.

But the parties in interest soon claimed to divide the spoils, when, to their infinite disgust, the enterprising Captain very coolly professed to ignore the whole business, and defied them to seek to recover by suit at law property the importation of which was regarded and would be punished as felony, if not as piracy, by the judicial tribunals. A case was made and issue joined, when the Captain proved a circumstantial _alibi_, and, having cast the claimants, doled them out a few _bonzes_, perhaps to escape assassination, as shells, while he kept the oyster in the shape of the pick of the importation, which he still holds, reconciling his conscience to the transaction by interpreting it as _salvage_.

All this is told us by our interlocutor, who was one of the losers by the affair, and who stigmatized the conduct of its hero as having been treacherous. The latter, after repeated jocular inquiries, suffers his vanity to subdue his reticence, and finishes by “acknowledging the corn.”

In the forenoon of the second day we meet two steamers ascending the river, with heavy cargoes, and are told that they are the Keyes and the Lewis, recently warned off, and _not seized_ by the blockading squadron off Pensacola. They are deep with provisions for the forces of the Confederate States Army before Pickens, which must now be dispatched from Montgomery by rail.

In Mobile, for the first time since leaving Washington, “we realize” the entire stagnation of business. There are but five vessels in port, chiefly English, which will suffice to carry away the _dêbris_ of the cotton crop. Exchange on the North is unsalable, owing to the impossibility of importing coin through the unsettled country, and bills on London are of slow sale at par, which would leave a profit of seven per cent. upon the importation of gold from your side.

* * * * *

MOBILE, Sunday, May 11.

The heat of the city rendered an excursion to which I was invited, for the purpose of visiting the forts at the entrance of the bay, exceedingly agreeable, and I was glad to get out from the smell of warm bricks to the breezy waters of the sea. The party comprised many of the leading merchants and politicians of this city, which is the third in importance as a port of exportation in the United States of America. There was not a man among them who did not express, with more or less determination, the resolve never to submit to the rule of the accursed North. Let there be no mistake whatever as to the unanimity which exists at present in the South to fight for what it calls its independence, and to carry on a war to the knife with the Government of the United States. I have frequently had occasion to remark the curious operation of the doctrine of State Rights on the minds of the people: but an examination of the institutions of the country as they actually exist leads to the inference that, where the tyranny of the majority is at once irresponsible and cruel, it is impossible for any man, where the doctrine prevails, to resist it with safety or success. It is the inevitable result of the action of this majority, as it operates in America, first to demoralize and finally to absorb the minority; and even those who have maintained what are called “Union doctrines,” and who are opposed to secession or revolution, have bowed their heads before the majesty of the mass, and have hastened to signify their acquiescence in the decisions which they have hitherto opposed. The minority, cowardly in consequence of the arbitrary and vindictive character of the overwhelming power against which it has struggled, and disheartened by defeat, of which the penalties are tremendous in such conflicts as these, hastens to lick the feet of the conqueror, and rushes with frantic cheers after the chariot in the triumph which celebrates its own humiliation. If there be a minority at all on this great question of Secession in the Southern States, it hides in holes and corners, inaccessible to the light of day, and sits there in darkness and sorrow, silent and fearful, if not dumb and hopeless. There were officers who had served with distinction under the flag of the United States, now anxious to declare that it was not their flag, and that they had no affection for it, although they were ready to admit they would have continued to serve under it if the States had not gone out. A man’s State, in fact, under the operation of these majority doctrines to which I have adverted, holds hostages for his fidelity to the majority, not only in such land or fortune as he may possess within her bounds, but in his family, his relatives, and kin, and if the State revolts, the officer who remains faithful to the flag of the United States is considered by the authorities of the revolting State a traitor, and, what is worse, he is treated in the persons of those he leave behind him as the worst kind of political renegade. General Scott, but a few months ago the most honored of men in a Republic which sets such store on military success, is now reviled and abused because, being a Virginian by birth, he did not immediately violate his oath, abandon his post, and turn to fight against the flag which he has illustrated by repeated successes, during a career of half a century, the moment his State passes an ordinance of Secession.

An intelligent and accomplished officer, who accompanied me to-day around the forts under his command, told me that he had all along resisted Secession, but that when his State went out he felt it was necessary to resign his commission in the United States army, and to take service with the Confederates. Among the most determined opponents of the North, and the most vehement friends of what are called here “domestic institutions,” are the British residents, English, Irish, and Scotch, who have settled here for trading purposes, and who are frequently slave-holders. These men have no State rights to uphold, but they are convinced of the excellence of things as they are, or find it their interest to be so.

The waters of two rivers fall into the head of the Bay of Mobile, which is, in fact, a narrow sea creek between low, sandy banks, covered with pine and forest trees, broken here and there into islands, and extending some thirty miles inland, with a breadth varying from three to seven miles. No attempt has been made apparently to improve the waters or to provide docks or wharfage for the numerous cotton ships which lie out at the mouth of the bay, more than twenty-five miles from Mobile. All the cotton has to be sent down to them in lighters, and the number of men thus employed in the cotton season in loading the barges, navigating and transferring the cargoes to the ships, is very considerable, and their rate of wages is high.

The horror entertained by a merchant captain of the shore is well known, and skippers are delighted at an anchorage so far from land, which at the same time detains the crews in the ships and prevents absenteeism and “running.” At present there are but seven ships at the anchorage, nearly all British, and one of the latter appears in the distance hard and fast ashore, though whether she got there in consequence of the light not being burning or from neglect, it is impossible to say. Fort Gaines, on the right bank of the channel, near the entrance, is an unfinished shell of a fort, which was commenced by the United States engineers some time ago, and which it would not be easy to finish without a large outlay of money and labor. It is not well placed to resist either a land attack or an assault by boats. A high sand-bank in front of one of the faces screens the fire, and a wood on another side, if occupied by riflemen, would render it difficult to work the barbette guns. It is not likely, however, that the fort will be attacked. The channel it commands is only fit for light vessels. From this fort to the other side of the channel, where Fort Morgan stands, the distance is over three miles, and the deep water channel is close to the latter fort. The position at Gaines is held by a strong body of Alabama troops--stout, sturdy men, who have volunteered from farm, field, or desk. They are armed with ordinary muskets of the old pattern, and their uniform is by no means uniform; but the men look fit for service. The fort would take a garrison of five hundred men if fully mounted, but the parapets are mere partition walls of brickwork crenelled; the bomb-proofs are unfinished, and but for a few guns mounted on the sand-hills, the place is a defenceless shell-trap. There are no guns in the casemates, and there is no position ready to bear the weight of a gun in barbette. The guns which are on the beach are protected by sand-bags traversed, and are more formidable than the whole fortress. The steamer proceeded across the channel to Fort Morgan, which is a work of considerable importance, and is assuming a formidable character under the superintendence of Colonel Hardee, formerly of the United States army. It has a regular trace, bastion, and curtain, with a dry ditch and drawbridge, well-made casemates and bomb-proofs, and a tolerable armament of columbiads, 42 and 32-pounders, a few 10-inch mortars, and light guns in the external works at the salients. The store of ammunition seems ample. Some of the fuses are antiquated, and the gun-carriages are old-fashioned. The open parade and the unprotected gorges of the casemates would render the work extremely unpleasant under a shell fire, and the buildings and barracks inside are at present open to the influence of heat. The magazines are badly traversed and inadequately protected. A very simple and apparently effective contrivance for dispensing with the use of the sabot in shells was shown to me by Colonel Maury, the inventor. It consists of two circular grummets of rope, one at the base and the other at the upper circumference of the shell, made by a simple machinery to fit tightly to the sphere, and bound together by thin copper wire. The grummets fit the bore of the gun exactly, and act as wads, allowing the base of the shell to rest in close contact with the charge, and breaking into oakum on leaving the muzzle. Those who know what mischief can be done by the fragments of the sabot when fired over the heads of troops will appreciate this simple invention, which is said to give increased range to the horizontal shell. There must be about sixty guns in this work; it is over-garrisoned, and, indeed, it seems to be the difficulty here to know what to do with the home volunteers. Rope mantlets are used on the breeches of some of the barbette guns. At night the harbor is in perfect darkness. Notwithstanding the defences I have indicated, it would be quite possible to take Fort Morgan with a moderate force well supplied with the means of vertical fire.

“Are there any mosquitoes here?” inquired I of the waiter, on the day of my arrival. “Well, there’s a few, I guess; but I wish there were ten times as many.” “In the name of goodness why do you say so?” asked I, with some surprise and indignation. “Because we’d get rid of the ---- Black Republicans out of Fort Pickens all the sooner,” replied he. There is a strange unilateral tendency in the minds of men in judging of the operation of causes and results in such a contest as that which now prevails between the North and the South. The waiter reasoned and spoke like many of his betters. The mosquitoes, for whose aid he was so anxious, were regarded by him as true Southerners, who would only torture his enemies. The idea of these persecuting little fiends being so unpatriotic as to vex the Confederates in their sandy camp never entered into his mind for a moment. In the same way a gentleman of intelligence, who was speaking to me of the terrible sufferings which would be inflicted on the troops at Tortugas and at Pickens by fever, dysentery, and summer heats, looked quite surprised when I asked him “whether these agencies would not prove equally terrible to the troops of the Confederates?”