Nacogdoches.—In this town of 500 inhabitants, we found
there was no flour. At San Augustine we had inquired in
vain at all the stores for refined sugar. Not satisfied with
some blankets that were shown us, we were politely recommended
by the shopkeeper to try other stores. At each of
the other stores we were told they had none: the only
blankets in town we should find at ——’s, naming the
one we had just quitted. The same thing occurred with
several other articles.
Houston County.—This day’s ride and the next were
through a very poor country, clay or sand soil, bearing short
oaks and black-jack. We passed one small meadow, or
prairie, covered with coarse grass. Deserted plantations appeared
again in greater numbers than the occupied. One
farm, near which we stopped, was worked by eight field hands.
The crop had been fifty bales; small, owing to a dry season.
The corn had been exceedingly poor. The hands, we noticed,
came in from the fields after eight o’clock.
The deserted houses, B. said, were built before the date of
Texan Independence. After Annexation the owners had
moved on to better lands in the West. One house he pointed
out as having been the residence of one of a band of pirates
who occupied the country thirty or forty years ago. They
had all been gradually killed.
During the day we met two men on horseback, one upon
wheels, and passed one emigrant family. This was all the
motion upon the principal road of the district.
The second day’s camp was a few miles beyond the town of
Crockett, the shire-town of Houston County. Not being able
to find corn for our horses, we returned to the village for it.
We obtained what we wanted for a day’s rest, which we
proposed for Sunday, the following day, and loaded it into our
emptied hampers. We then looked about the town for current
provisions for ourselves. We were rejoiced to find a German
baker, but damped by finding he had only molasses-cakes
and candies for sale. There was no flour in the town, except
the little of which he made his cakes. He was from Hamburgh,
and though he found a tolerable sale, to emigrants principally,
he was very tired of Crockett, and intended to move
to San Antonio among his countrymen. He offered us coffee,
and said he had had beer, but on Christmas-day a mass of
people called on him; he had “treated” them all, and they
had finished his supply.
We inquired at seven stores, and at the two inns for butter,
flour, or wheat-bread, and fresh meat. There was none in
town. One innkeeper offered us salt beef, the only meat, except
pork, in town. At the stores we found crackers, worth
in New York 6 cents a pound, sold here at 20 cents; poor
raisins, 30 cents; Manilla rope, half-inch, 30 cents a pound.
When butter was to be had it came in firkins from New York,
although an excellent grazing country is near the town.
Trinity Bottom.—On landing on the west side of the
Trinity, we entered a rich bottom, even in winter, of an
almost tropical aspect. The road had been cut through a
cane-brake, itself a sort of Brobdignag grass. Immense trees,
of a great variety of kinds, interlaced their branches and
reeled with their own rank growth. Many vines, especially
huge grape-vines, ran hanging from tree to tree, adding to the
luxuriant confusion. Spanish moss clung thick everywhere,
supplying the shadows of a winter foliage.
These bottom lands bordering the Trinity are among the
richest of rich Texas. They are not considered equal, in
degree of fatness, to some parts of the Brazos, Colorado, and
Guadaloupe bottoms, but are thought to have compensation in
reliability for steady cropping.
We made our camp on the edge of the bottom, and for
safety against our dirty persecutors, the hogs, pitched our
tent within a large hog-yard, putting up the bars to exclude
them. The trees within had been sparingly cut, and we
easily found tent-poles and fuel at hand.
The plantation on which we were thus intruding had just
been sold, we learned, at two dollars per acre. There were
seven hundred acres, and the buildings, with a new gin-house,
worth nearly one thousand dollars, were included in the price.
With the land were sold eight prime field-hands. A quarter
of the land was probably subject to overflow, and the limits
extended over some unproductive upland.
When field-hands are sold in this way with the land, the
family servants, who have usually been selected from the field-hands,
must be detached to follow the fortunes of the seller.
When, on the other hand, the land is sold simply, the whole
body of slaves move away, leaving frequently wives and children
on neighbouring plantations. Such a cause of separation
must be exceedingly common among the restless, almost
nomadic, small proprietors of the South.
But the very word “sale,” applied to a slave, implies this
cruelty, leaving, of course, the creature’s whole happiness to
his owner’s discretion and humanity.
As if to give the lie to our reflections, however, the rascals
here appeared to be particularly jolly, perhaps adopting Mark
Tapley’s good principles. They were astir half the night,
talking, joking, and singing loud and merrily.
This plantation had made this year seven bales to the hand.
The water for the house, we noticed, was brought upon heads
a quarter of a mile, from a rain-pool, in which an old negress
was washing.
At an old Settler’s.—The room was fourteen feet square,
with battens of split boards tacked on between the broader
openings of the logs. Above, it was open to the rafters,
and in many places the sky could be seen between the
shingles of the roof. A rough board box, three feet square,
with a shelf in it, contained the crockery-ware of the establishment;
another similar box held the store of meal,
coffee, sugar, and salt; a log crib at the horse-pen held the
corn, from which the meal was daily ground, and a log
smoke or store-house contained the store of pork. A canopy-bed
filled one quarter of the room; a cradle, four chairs
seated with untanned deer-hide, a table, a skillet or bake-kettle,
a coffee-kettle, a frying-pan, and a rifle laid across
two wooden pegs on the chimney, with a string of patches,
powder-horn, pouch, and hunting-knife, completed the furniture
of the house. We all sat with hats and overcoats on,
and the woman cooked in bonnet and shawl. As I sat in
the chimney-corner I could put both my hands out, one laid
on the other, between the stones of the fire-place and the
logs of the wall.
A pallet of quilts and blankets was spread for us in the
lean-to, just between the two doors. We slept in all our
clothes, including overcoats, hats, and boots, and covered entirely
with blankets. At seven in the morning, when we
threw them off, the mercury in the thermometer in our
saddle-bags, which we had used for a pillow, stood at 25°
Fahrenheit.
We contrived to make cloaks and hoods from our blankets,
and after going through with the fry, coffee and pone again,
and paying one dollar each for the entertainment of ourselves
and horses, we continued our journey.
Caldwell.—Late in the same evening we reached a hamlet,
the “seat of justice” of Burleson County. We were obliged
to leave our horses in a stable, made up of a roof, in which
was a loft for the storage of provender, set upon posts,
without side-boarding, so that the norther met with no obstruction.
It was filled with horses, and ours alone were
blanketed for the night. The mangers were very shallow
and narrow, and as the corn was fed on the cob, a considerable
proportion of it was thrown out by the horses in their
efforts to detach the edible portion. With laudable economy,
our landlord had twenty-five or thirty pigs running at large
in the stable, to prevent this overflow from being wasted.
The “hotel” was an unusually large and fine one; the
principal room had glass windows. Several panes of these
were, however, broken, and the outside door could not be
closed from without; and when closed, was generally pried
open with a pocket-knife by those who wished to go out.
A great part of the time it was left open. Supper was served
in another room, in which there was no fire, and the outside
door was left open for the convenience of the servants in
passing to and from the kitchen, which, as usual here at
large houses, was in a detached building. Supper was, however,
eaten with such rapidity that nothing had time to
freeze on the table.
There were six Texans, planters and herdsmen, who had
made harbour at the inn for the norther, two German shopkeepers
and a young lawyer, who were boarders, besides our
party of three, who had to be seated before the fire. We
kept coats and hats on, and gained as much warmth, from
the friendly manner in which we drew together, as possible.
After ascertaining, by a not at all impertinent or inconsiderate
method of inquiry, where we were from, which way
we were going, what we thought of the country, what we
thought of the weather, and what were the capacities and the
cost of our fire-arms, we were considered as initiated members
of the crowd, and “the conversation became general.”
The matter of most interest came up in this wise: “The
man made a white boy, fourteen or fifteen years old, get up
and go out in the norther for wood, when there was a great,
strong nigger fellow lying on the floor doing nothing. God!
I had an appetite to give him a hundred, right there.”
“Why, you wouldn’t go out into the norther yourself,
would you, if you were not obliged to?” inquired one, laughingly.
“I wouldn’t have a nigger in my house that I was afraid
to set to work, at anything I wanted him to do, at any time.
They’d hired him out to go to a new place next Thursday,
and they were afraid if they didn’t treat him well, he’d run
away. If I couldn’t break a nigger of running away, I
wouldn’t have him any how.”
“I can tell you how you can break a nigger of running
away, certain,” said another. “There was an old fellow I
used to know in Georgia, that always cured his so. If a
nigger ran away, when he caught him, he would bind his
knee over a log, and fasten him so he couldn’t stir; then
he’d take a pair of pincers and pull one of his toe-nails out
by the roots; and tell him that if he ever run away again,
he would pull out two of them, and if he run away again
after that, he told them he’d pull out four of them, and so
on, doubling each time. He never had to do it more than
twice—it always cured them.”
One of the company then said that he was at the present
time in pursuit of a negro. He had bought him of a relative
in Mississippi, and had been told that he was a great
runaway. He had, in fact, run away from his relative three
times, and always when they caught him he was trying to
get back to Illinois;[1] that was the reason he sold him.
“He offered him to me cheap,” he continued, “and I bought
him because he was a first-rate nigger, and I thought perhaps
I could break him of running away by bringing him
down to this new country. I expect he’s making for Mexico
now. I am a-most sure I saw his tracks on the road about
twelve miles back, where he was a-coming on this way.
Night before last I engaged with a man who’s got some first-rate
nigger dogs to meet me here to-night; but I suppose
the cold keeps him back.” He then asked us to look out for
him as we went on west, and gave us a minute description of
him that we might recognize him. He was “a real black
nigger,” and carried off a double-barrelled gun with him.
Another man, who was going on by another road westward,
offered to look for him that way, and to advertise him.
Would he be likely to defend himself with the gun if he
should try to secure him? he asked. The owner said he
had no doubt he would. He was as humble a nigger when
he was at work as ever he had seen; but he was a mighty
resolute nigger—there was no man had more resolution.
“Couldn’t I induce him to let me take the gun by pretending
I wanted to look at it, or something? I’d talk to him
simple; make as if I was a stranger, and ask him about the
road, and so on, and finally ask him what he had got for a
gun, and to let me look at it.” The owner didn’t believe
he’d let go of the gun; he was a “nigger of sense—as much
sense as a white man; he was not one of your kinkey-headed
niggers.” The chances of catching him were discussed.
Some thought they were good, and some that the owner
might almost as well give it up, he’d got such a start. It
was three hundred miles to the Mexican frontier, and he’d
have to make fires to cook the game he would kill, and could
travel only at night; but then every nigger or Mexican he
could find would help him, and if he had so much sense, he’d
manage to find out his way pretty straight, and yet not have
white folks see him.
We slept in a large upper room, in a company of five, with
a broken window at the head of our bed, and another at our
side, offering a short cut to the norther across our heads.
We were greatly amused to see one of our bed-room companions
gravely spit in the candle before jumping into bed,
explaining to some one who made a remark, that he always
did so, it gave him time to see what he was about before it
went out.
The next morning the ground was covered with sleet, and
the gale still continued (a pretty steady close-reefing breeze)
during the day.
We wished to have a horse shod. The blacksmith, who
was a white man, we found in his shop, cleaning a fowling-piece.
It was too d——d cold to work, he said, and he was
going to shoot some geese; he, at length, at our urgent
request, consented to earn a dollar; but, after getting on his
apron, he found that we had lost a shoe, and took it off again,
refusing to make a shoe while this d——d norther lasted,
for any man. As he had no shoes ready made, he absolutely
turned us out of the shop, and obliged us to go
seventy-five miles further, a great part of the way over a
pebbly road, by which the beast lost three shoes before he
could be shod.
This respect for the north wind is by no means singular
here. The publication of the week’s newspaper in Bastrop
was interrupted by the norther, the editor mentioning, as a
sufficient reason for the irregularity, the fact that his printing-office
was in the north part of the house.
Austin.—Before leaving Eastern Texas behind us, I must
add a random note or two, the dates of which it would have
been uncivil to indicate.
We stopped one night at the house of a planter, now
twenty years settled in Eastern Texas. He was a man of
some education and natural intelligence, and had, he told us,
an income, from the labour of his slaves, of some $4,000.
His residence was one of the largest houses we had seen in
Texas. It had a second story, two wings and a long gallery.
Its windows had been once glazed, but now, out of eighty
panes that originally filled the lower windows, thirty only
remained unbroken. Not a door in the house had been ever
furnished with a latch or even a string; when they were
closed, it was necessary to claw or to ask some one inside to
push open. (Yet we happened to hear a neighbour expressing
serious admiration of the way these doors fitted.) The
furniture was of the rudest description.
One of the family had just had a hæmorrhage of the lungs;
while we were at supper, this person sat between the big fireplace
and an open outside door, having a window, too, at his
side, in which only three panes remained. A norther was
blowing, and ice forming upon the gallery outside. Next day
at breakfast, the invalid was unable to appear on account of a
“bad turn.”
On our supper-table was nothing else than the eternal fry,
pone and coffee. Butter, of dreadful odour, was here added
by exception. Wheat flour they never used. It was “too
much trouble.”
We were waited upon by two negro girls, dressed in short-waisted,
twilled-cotton gowns, once white, now looking as if
they had been worn by chimney-sweeps. The water for the
family was brought in tubs upon the heads of these two girls,
from a creek, a quarter of a mile distant, this occupation
filling nearly all their time.
This gentleman had thirty or forty negroes, and two legitimate
sons. One was an idle young man. The other was, at
eight years old, a swearing, tobacco-chewing bully and ruffian.
We heard him whipping a puppy behind the house, and
swearing between the blows, his father and mother being at
hand. His language and tone was an evident imitation of
his father’s mode of dealing with his slaves.
“I’ve got an account to settle with you; I’ve let you go
about long enough; I’ll teach you who’s your master; there,
go now, God damn you, but I havn’t got through with you
yet.”
“You stop that cursing,” said his father, at length, “it
isn’t right for little boys to curse.”
“What do you do when you get mad?” replied the boy;
“reckon you cuss some; so now you’d better shut up.”
In the whole journey through Eastern Texas, we did not
see one of the inhabitants look into a newspaper or a book,
although we spent days in houses where men were lounging
about the fire without occupation. One evening I took up a
paper which had been lying unopened upon the table of the
inn where we were staying, and smiled to see how painfully
news items dribbled into the Texas country papers, the loss of
the tug-boat “Ajax,” which occurred before we left New York,
being here just given as the loss of the “splendid steamer Ocax.”
A man who sat near said—
“Reckon you’ve read a good deal, hain’t you?”
“Oh, yes; why?”
“Reckon’d you had.”
“Why?”
“You look as though you liked to read. Well, it’s a good
thing. S’pose you take a pleasure in reading, don’t you?”
“That depends, of course, on what I have to read. I
suppose everybody likes to read when they find anything
interesting to them, don’t they?”
“No; it’s damn tiresome to some folks, I reckon, any how,
’less you’ve got the habit of it. Well, it’s a good thing; you
can pass away your time so.”
The sort of interest taken in foreign affairs is well enough
illustrated by the views of a gentleman of property in Eastern
Texas, who was sitting with us one night, “spitting in the
fire,” and talking about cotton. Bad luck he had had—only
four bales to the hand; couldn’t account for it—bad luck;
and next year he didn’t reckon nothing else but that there
would be a general war in Europe, and then he’d be in a
pretty fix, with cotton down to four cents a pound. Curse
those Turks! If he thought there would be a general war,
he would take every d——d nigger he’d got, right down to
New Orleans, and sell them for what they’d bring. They’d
never be so high again as they were now, and if there should
come a general war they wouldn’t be worth half as much next
year. There always were infernal rascals somewhere in the
world trying to prevent an honest man from getting a living.
Oh, if they got to fighting, he hoped they’d eat each other
up. They just ought to be, all of them—Turks, and Russians,
and Prussians, and Dutchmen, and Frenchmen—just
be put in a bag together, and slung into hell. That’s what
he’d do with them.
Remarking, one day, at the house of a woman who was
brought up at the North, that there was much more comfort
at her house than any we had previously stopped at, she told
us that the only reason the people didn’t have any comfort
here was, that they wouldn’t take any trouble to get anything.
Anything that their negroes could make they would
eat; but they would take no pains to instruct them, or to
get anything that didn’t grow on the plantation. A neighbour
of hers owned fifty cows, she supposed, but very rarely had
any milk and scarcely ever any butter, simply because his
people were too lazy to milk or churn, and he wouldn’t take
the trouble to make them.
This woman entirely sustained the assertion that Northern
people, when they come to the South, have less feeling for
the negroes than Southerners themselves usually have. We
asked her (she lived in a village) whether she hired or owned
her servants. They owned them all, she said. When they
first came to Texas they hired servants, but it was very
troublesome; they would take no interest in anything; and
she couldn’t get along with them. Then very often their
owners, on some pretext (ill-treatment, perhaps), would take
them away. Then they bought negroes. It was very expensive:
a good negro girl cost seven or eight hundred
dollars, and that, we must know, was a great deal of money
to be laid out in a thing that might lie right down the next
day and die. They were not much better either than the
hired servants.
Folks up North talked about how badly the negroes were
treated; she wished they could see how much work her girls
did. She had four of them, and she knew they didn’t do half
so much work as one good Dutch girl such as she used to
have at the North. Oh! the negroes were the laziest things
in creation; there was no knowing how much trouble they
gave to look after them. Up to the North, if a girl went out
into the garden for anything, when she came back she would
clean her feet, but these nigger girls will stump right in and
track mud all over the house. What do they care? They’d
just as lief clean the mud after themselves as anything else—their
time isn’t any value to themselves. What do they care
for the trouble it gives you? Not a bit. And you may
scold ’em and whip ’em—you never can break ’em into better
habits.
I asked what were servants’ wages when they were hired
out to do housework? They were paid seven or eight dollars
a month; sometimes ten. She didn’t use to pay her girl at
the North but four dollars, and she knew she would do more
work than any six of the niggers, and not give half so much
trouble as one. But you couldn’t get any other help here
but niggers. Northern folks talk about abolishing slavery,
but there wouldn’t be any use in that; that would be ridiculous,
unless you could some way get rid of the niggers.
Why, they’d murder us all in our beds—that’s what they’d
do. Why, over to Fannin, there was a negro woman that
killed her mistress with an axe, and her two little ones. The
people just flocked together, and hung her right up on the
spot; they ought to have piled some wood round her, and
burned her to death; that would have been a good lesson to
the rest. We afterwards heard her scolding one of her girls,
the girl made some exculpatory reply, and getting the best
of the argument, the mistress angrily told her if she said
another word she would have two hundred lashes given her.
She came in and remarked that if she hadn’t felt so nervous
she would have given that girl a good whipping herself;
these niggers are so saucy, it’s very trying to one who has to
take care of them.
Servants are, it is true, “a trial,” in all lands, ages, and
nations. But note the fatal reason this woman frankly gives
for the inevitable delinquencies of slave-servants, “Their
time isn’t any value to themselves!”
The women of Eastern Texas seemed to us, in general, far
superior to their lords. They have, at least, the tender
hearts and some of the gentle delicacy that your “true
Texan” lacks, whether mistresses of slaves, or only of their
own frying-pan. They are overworked, however, as soon as
married, and care gives them thin faces, sallow complexions,
and expressions either sad or sour.
Another night we spent at the house of a man who came
here, when a boy, from the North. His father was a
mechanic, and had emigrated to Texas just before the war of
Independence. He joined the army, and his son had been
brought up—rather had grown up—Southern fashion, with
no training to regular industry. He had learned no trade.
What need? His father received some thousand acres of
land in payment of his services. The son earned some
money by driving a team; bought some cattle, took a wife,
and a house, and now had been settled six years, with a young
family. He had nothing to do but look after his cattle, go
to the nearest town and buy meal and coffee occasionally, and
sell a few oxen when the bill was sent in. His house was
more comfortless than nine-tenths of the stables of the North.
There were several windows, some of which were boarded
over, some had wooden shutters, and some were entirely open.
There was not a pane of glass. The doors were closed with
difficulty. We could see the stars, as we lay in bed, through
the openings of the roof; and on all sides, in the walls of
the room, one’s arm might be thrust out. Notwithstanding,
that night the mercury fell below 25° of our Fahrenheit
thermometer. There was the standard food and beverage,
placed before us night and morning. We asked if there was
much game near him? There were a great many deer. He
saw them every day. Did he shoot many? He never shot
any; ’twas too much trouble. When he wanted “fresh,”
’twas easier to go out and stick a hog (the very words he
used). He had just corn enough to give our horses one feed—there
was none left for the morning. His own horses
could get along through the winter on the prairie. He made
pets of his children, but was cross and unjust to his wife, who
might have been pretty, and was affectionate. He was without
care—thoughtless, content, with an unoccupied mind.
He took no newspaper—he read nothing. There was,
indeed, a pile of old books which his father had brought from
the North, but they seemed to be all of the Tract Society
sort, and the dust had been undisturbed upon them, it might
have been, for many years.
Manchac Spring.—We found a plantation that would
have done no discredit to Virginia. The house was large
and well constructed, standing in a thick grove, separated
from the prairie by a strong worm-fence. Adjacent, within,
was the spring, which deserved its prominence of mention
upon the maps. It had been tastefully grottoed with heavy
limestone rocks, now water-stained and mossy, and the pure
stream came gurgling up, in impetuous gallons, to pour
itself in a bright current out upon the prairie. The fountains
of Italy were what came to mind, and “Fontana de
Manciocco” would have secured a more natural name.
Everything about the house was orderly and neat. The
proprietor came out to receive us, and issued orders about the
horses, which we felt, from their quiet tone, would be obeyed
without our supervision. When we were ushered into a
snug supper-room and found a clean table set with wheat-bread,
ham, tea, and preserved fruits, waited on by tidy
and ready girls, we could scarce think we had not got beyond
the bounds of Texas. We were, in fact, quit, for some time
to come, of the lazy poverty of Eastern Texas.
Lower Guadaloupe.—Not finding a suitable camping
place, we stumbled, after dark, into a large plantation upon
the river bottom.
The irruption of our train within the plantation fences
caused a furious commotion among the dogs and little negroes,
and it was with no little difficulty we could explain to
the planter, who appeared with a candle, which was instantly
blown out upon the porch, our peaceable intentions. Finally,
after a general striking out of Fanny’s heels and the master’s
boots, aided by the throwing of our loose lariats into the
confused crowd, the growling and chattering circle about us
was sufficiently enlarged and subdued for us to obtain a hearing,
and we were hospitably received.
“Ho, Sam! You Tom, here! Call your missus. Suke!
if you don’t stop that infernal noise I’ll have you drowned!
Here, Bill! Josh! some of you! why don’t you help the
gentleman? Bring a lantern here! Packed, are you, sir.
Hold on, you there; leave the gun alone. Now, clear out
with you, you little devils, every one of you! Is there no
one in the house? St! after ’em, Tiger! Can’t any of you
find a lantern? Where’s Bill, to take these horses? What
are you doing there? I tell you to be off, now, every one of
you! Tom! take a rail and keep ’em off there!”
In the midst of the noise we go through the familiar motions,
and land our saddles and hampers upon the gallery,
then follow what appears to be the headmost negro to the
stable, and give him a hint to look well out for the horses.
This is our first reintroduction to negro servants after our
German experiences, and the contrast is most striking and
disagreeable. Here were thirty or forty slaves, but not an
order could be executed without more reiteration, and threats,
and oaths, and greater trouble to the master and mistress,
than would be needed to get a squadron under way. We
heard the master threaten his negroes with flogging, at least
six times, before we went to bed. In the night a heavy rain
came up, and he rose, on hearing it, to arrange the cistern
spout, cursing again his infernal niggers, who had turned it
off for some convenience of their own. In the morning, we
heard the mistress scolding her girls for having left articles
outside which had been spoiled by the wet, after repeated
orders to bring them in. On visiting the stables we found
the door fastened by a board leaned against it.
All the animals were loose, except the mule, which I had
fastened myself. The rope attached to my saddle was stolen,
and a shorter one substituted for it, when I mentioned the
fact, by which I was deceived, until we were too far off to
return. The master, seeing the horses had yet had no fodder,
called to a boy to get some for them, then, countermanding
his order, told the boy to call some one else, and go himself
to drive the cows out of the garden. Then, to another boy,
he said, “Go and pull two or three bundles of fodder out of
the stack and give these horses.” The boy soon came with
two small bundles. “You infernal rascal, couldn’t you tote
more fodder than that? Go back and bring four or five
bundles, and be quick about it, or I’ll lick you.” The
boy walked slowly back, and returned with four bundles more.
But on entering at night we were struck with the air of
comfort that met us. We were seated in rocking-chairs in a
well-furnished room, before a blazing fire, offered water to
wash, in a little lean-to bed-room, and, though we had two
hours to wait for our supper, it was most excellent, and we
passed an agreeable evening in intelligent conversation with
our host.
After his curiosity about us was satisfied, we learned from
him that, though a young man, he was an old settler, and
had made a comfortable fortune by his plantation. His wife
gave us a picturesque account of their waggon journey here
with their people, and described the hardships, dangers,
and privations they had at first to endure. Now they were
far more comfortable than they could have ever hoped to
have been in the State from which they came. They thought
their farm the best cotton land in the world. It extended
across a mile of timbered bottom land from the river, then
over a mile of bottom prairie, and included a large tract of
the big prairie “for range.” Their field would produce, in a
favourable season, three bales to the acre; ordinarily a bale
and a half: the “bale” 400 lbs. They had always far more
than their hands could pick. It was much more free from
weeds than the States, so much so, that three hands would
be needed there to cultivate the same area as two here;
that is, with the same hands the crop would be one-third
greater.
But so anxious is every one in Texas to give all strangers
a favourable impression, that all statements as to the extreme
profit and healthfulness of lands must be taken with a grain
of allowance. We found it very difficult, without impertinent
persistence, to obtain any unfavourable facts. Persons not
interested informed us, that from one-third to one-half the
cotton crop on some of these rich plantations had been cut off
by the worm, on several occasions, and that negroes suffered
much with dysentery and pneumonia.
It cost them very little to haul their cotton to the coast or
to get supplies. They had not been more sickly than they
would have been on the Mississippi. They considered that
their steady sea-breeze was almost a sure preventive of such
diseases as they had higher up the country.
They always employed German mechanics, and spoke well
of them. Mexicans were regarded in a somewhat unchristian
tone, not as heretics or heathen, to be converted with flannel
and tracts, but rather as vermin, to be exterminated. The
lady was particularly strong in her prejudices. White folks
and Mexicans were never made to live together, anyhow, and
the Mexicans had no business here. They were getting so
impertinent, and were so well protected by the laws, that the
Americans would just have to get together and drive them
all out of the country.
On the Chockolate.—“Which way did you come?” asked
some one of the old man.
“From ——.”
“See anything of a runaway nigger over there, anywhar?”
“No, sir. What kind of a nigger was it?”
“A small, black, screwed-up-faced nigger.”
“How long has he been out?”
“Nigh two weeks.”
“Whose is he?”
“Judge ——’s, up here. And he cut the judge right
bad. Like to have killed the judge. Cut his young master,
too.”
“Reckon, if they caught him, ’twould go rather hard with
him.”
“Reckon ’twould. We caught him once, but he got away
from us again. We was just tying his feet together, and he
give me a kick in the face, and broke. I had my six-shooter
handy, and I tried to shoot him, but every barrel missed fire.
Been loaded a week. We shot at him three times with rifles,
but he’d got too far off, and we didn’t hit, but we must have
shaved him close. We chased him, and my dog got close to
him once. If he’d grip’d him, we should have got him; but
he had a dog himself, and just as my dog got within about a
yard of him, his dog turned and fit my dog, and he hurt him
so bad we couldn’t get him to run him again. We run him
close, though, I tell you. Run him out of his coat, and his
boots, and a pistol he’d got. But ’twas getting towards dark,
and he got into them bayous, and kept swimming from one
side to another.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Ten days.”
“If he’s got across the river, he’d get to the Mexicans in
two days, and there he’d be safe. The Mexicans’d take care
of him.”
“What made him run?”
“The judge gave him a week at Christmas, and when
the week was up, I s’pose he didn’t want to go to work
again. He got unruly, and they was a goin’ to whip
him.”
“Now, how much happier that fellow’d ’a’ been, if he’d just
stayed and done his duty. He might have just worked and
done his duty, and his master’d ’a’ taken care of him, and
given him another week when Christmas come again, and he’d
’a’ had nothing to do but enjoy himself again. These niggers,
none of ’em, knows how much happier off they are than if
they was free. Now, very likely, he’ll starve to death, or
get shot.”
“Oh, the judge treats his niggers too kind. If he was
stricter with them, they’d have more respect for him, and be
more contented, too.”
“Never do to be too slack with niggers.”
We were riding in company, to-day, with a California
drover, named Rankin. He was in search of cattle to drive
across the plains. He had taken a drove before from Illinois,
and told us that people in that State, of equal circumstances,
lived ten times better than here, in all matters of comfort and
refinement. He had suffered more in travelling in Texas,
than ever on the plains or the mountains. Not long before,
in driving some mules with his partner, they came to a house
which was the last on the road for fourteen miles. They had
nothing in the world in the house but a few ears of corn, they
were going to grind in their steel mill for their own breakfast,
and wouldn’t sell on any terms. “We hadn’t eaten anything
since breakfast, but we actually could get nothing. The only
other thing in the cabin, that could be eaten, was a pile of
deer-skins, with the hair on. We had to stake our mules,
and make a fire, and coil around it. About twelve o’clock
there came a norther. We heard it coming, and it made us
howl. We didn’t sleep a wink for cold.”
Houston.—We were sitting on the gallery of the hotel. A
tall, jet black negro came up, leading by a rope a downcast
mulatto, whose hands were lashed by a cord to his waist, and
whose face was horribly cut, and dripping with blood. The
wounded man crouched and leaned for support against one of
the columns of the gallery—faint and sick.
“What’s the matter with that boy?” asked a smoking
lounger.
“I run a fork into his face,” answered the negro.
“What are his hands tied for?”
“He’s a runaway, sir.”
“Did you catch him?”
“Yes, sir. He was hiding in the hay-loft, and when I
went up to throw some hay to the horses, I pushed the fork
down into the mow and it struck something hard. I didn’t
know what it was, and I pushed hard, and gave it a turn, and
then he hollered, and I took it out.”
“What do you bring him here, for?”
“Come for the key of the jail, sir, to lock him up.”
“What!” said another, “one darkey catch another darkey?
Don’t believe that story.”
“Oh yes, mass’r, I tell for true. He was down in our
hay-loft, and so you see when I stab him, I have to catch
him.”
“Why, he’s hurt bad, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he says I pushed through the bones.”
“Whose nigger is he?”
“He says he belong to Mass’r Frost, sir, on the Brazos.”
The key was soon brought, and the negro led the mulatto
away to jail. He walked away limping, crouching, and writhing,
as if he had received other injuries than those on his face.
The bystanders remarked that the negro had not probably
told the whole story.
We afterwards happened to see a gentleman on horseback,
and smoking, leading by a long rope through the deep mud,
out into the country, the poor mulatto, still limping and
crouching, his hands manacled, and his arms pinioned.
There is a prominent slave-mart in town, which holds a
large lot of likely-looking negroes, waiting purchasers. In the
windows of shops, and on the doors and columns of the hotel,
are many written advertisements, headed “A likely negro girl
for sale.” “Two negroes for sale.” “Twenty negro boys
for sale,” etc.
South-eastern Texas.—We were unable to procure at Houston
any definite information with regard to our proposed
route. The known roads thence are those that branch northward
and westward from their levee, and so thoroughly within
lines of business does local knowledge lie, that the eastern
shore is completely terra incognita. The roads east were said
to be bad after heavy rains, but the season had been dry, and
we determined to follow the direct and the distinct road, laid
down upon our map.
Now that I am in a position to give preliminary information,
however, there is no reason why the reader should enter this
region as ignorant as we did.
Our route took us by Harrisburg and San Jacinto to Liberty,
upon the Trinity; thence by Beaumont to the Sabine at Turner’s
ferry; thence by the Big Woods and Lake Charles to
Opelousas, the old capital of St. Landry Parish, at the western
head of the intricate navigation from New Orleans.
This large district, extending from the Trinity River to the
bayous of the Mississippi, has, throughout, the same general
characteristics, the principal of which are, lowness, flatness,
and wetness. The soil is variable, but is in greater part a
loose, sandy loam, covered with coarse grasses, forming level
prairies, which are everywhere broken by belts of pine forests,
usually bordering creeks and bayous, but often standing in
islands. The surface is but very slightly elevated above the
sea; I suppose, upon an average, less than ten feet. It is,
consequently, imperfectly drained, and in a wet season a large
proportion is literally covered with water, as in crossing it,
even in a dry time, we were obliged to wade through many
miles of marshy pools. The river-bottoms, still lower than
the general level, are subject to constant overflow by tide-water,
and what with the fallen timber, the dense undergrowth,
the mire-quags, the abrupt gullies, the patches of rotten or
floating corduroy, and three or four feet of dirty salt water, the
roads through them are not such as one would choose for a
morning ride. The country is sparsely settled, containing
less than one inhabitant to the square mile, one in four being
a slave.
The many pools, through which the usual track took us,
were swarming with venemous water-snakes, four or five
black moccasins often lifting at once their devilish heads
above the dirty surface, and wriggling about our horses’
heels. Beyond the Sabine, alligator holes are an additional
excitement, the unsuspicious traveller suddenly sinking through
the treacherous surface, and sometimes falling a victim, horse
and all, to the hideous jaws of the reptile, while overwhelmed
by the engulfing mire in which he lurks.
Upon the whole, this is not the spot in which I should
prefer to come to light, burn, and expire; in fact, if the
nether regions, as was suggested by the dream-gentleman of
Nachitoches, be “a boggy country,” the avernal entrance
might, I should think, with good probabilities, be looked for
in this region.
We passed, on both sides the Sabine, many abandoned
farms, and the country is but thinly settled. We found it
impossible to obtain any information about roads, and frequently
went astray upon cattle paths, once losing twenty
miles in a day’s journey. The people were chiefly herdsmen,
cultivating a little cotton upon river-banks, but ordinarily
only corn, with a patch of cane to furnish household sugar.
We tried in vain to purchase corn for our horses, and were
told that “folks didn’t make corn enough to bread them, and
if anybody had corn to give his horse, he carried it in his hat
and went out behind somewhere.” The herds were in poor
condition, and must in winter be reduced to the verge of
starvation. We saw a few hogs, converted, by hardship, to
figures so unnatural, that we at first took them for goats.
Most of the people we met were old emigrants, from Southern
Louisiana and Mississippi, and more disposed to gaiety and
cheer than the Texan planters. The houses showed a tendency
to Louisiana forms, and the table to a French style of
serving the jerked beef, which is the general dish of the
country. The meat is dried in strips, over smoky fires, and,
if untainted and well prepared, is a tolerably savoury food.
I hardly know whether to chronicle it as a border barbarism,
or a Creolism, that we were several times, in this neighbourhood,
shown to a bed standing next to that occupied by the
host and his wife, sometimes with the screen of a shawl,
sometimes without.
We met with one specimen of the Virginia habit of “dipping,”
or snuff-chewing, in the person of a woman who was
otherwise neat and agreeable, and observed that a young
lady, well-dressed, and apparently engaged, while we were
present, in reading, went afterward to light her pipe at the
kitchen fire, and had a smoke behind the house.
The condition of the young men appeared to incline decidedly
to barbarism. We stopped a night at a house in
which a drover, bringing mules from Mexico, was staying;
and, with the neighbours who had come to look at the
drove, we were thirteen men at table. When speaking with
us, all were polite and respectful, the women especially so;
but among one another, their coarseness was incredible. The
master of the house, a well-known gentleman of the county,
who had been absent when we arrived, and at supper-time,
came afterwards upon the gallery and commenced cursing
furiously, because some one had taken his pipe. Seeing us,
he stopped abruptly, and after lighting the pipe, said, in a
rather peremptory and formal, but not uncourteous tone:
“Where are you from, gentlemen?”
“From Beaumont, sir, last.”
“Been out West?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Travelling?”
“Yes, sir.”
After pausing a moment to make up his mind—
“Where do you live when you are at home, gentlemen,
and what’s your business in this country?”
“We live in New York, and are travelling to see the
country.”
“How do you like it?”
“Just here we find it flat and wet.”
“What’s your name?”
“Olmsted.”
“And what’s this gentleman’s name?”
“Olmsted.”
“Is it a Spanish name?”
“No, sir.”
He then abruptly left us, and the young men entertained
one another with stories of fights and horse-trades, and with
vulgar obscenities.
Shortly he returned, saying—
“Show you to bed now, gentlemen, if you wish.”
“We are ready, sir, if you will be good enough to get a
light.”
“A light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get a light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well” (after a moment’s hesitation), “I’ll get one.”
On reaching the bed-room, which was in a building adjoining,
he stood awaiting our pleasure. Thanking him, I turned
to take the light, but his fingers were the candlestick. He
continued to hold it, and six young men, who had followed us,
stood grouped around while we undressed, placing our clothes
upon the floor. Judy advanced to lie down by them. One
of the young men started forward, and said—
“I’ve got a right good knife.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a right good knife, if you want it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, only I’ve got a right good knife, and if you’d
like to kill that dog, I’ll lend it to you.”
“Please to tell me what you mean?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Keep your dog quiet, or I’ll kill her,” I suppose was the
interpretation. When we had covered ourselves in bed, the
host said—
“I suppose you don’t want the light no more?”
“No, sir;” and all bade us good night; but leaving the
door open, commenced feats of prolonged dancing, or stamping
upon the gallery, which were uproariously applauded.
Then came more obscenities and profanities, apropos to
fandango frolics described by the drovers. As we had barely
got to sleep, several came to occupy other beds in our room.
They had been drinking freely, and continued smoking in bed.
Upon the floor lay two boys of fourteen, who continued
shouting and laughing after the others had at length become
quiet. Some one soon said to one of them—
“You had better stop your noise; Frank says he’ll be
damn’d if he don’t come in and give you a hiding.”
Frank was trying to sleep upon the gallery.
“By ——,” the boy cried, raising himself, and drawing a
coat from under the pillow, “if he comes in here, I’ll be damn’d
if I don’t kill him. He dare not come in here. I would like
to see him come in here,” drawing from his coat pocket a
revolver, and cocking it. “By ——, you may come in here
now. Come in here, come in here! Do you here that?”
(revolving the pistol rapidly). “—— damn me, if I don’t kill
you, if you come near the door.”
This continued without remonstrance for some time, when
he lay down, asking his companion for a light for his pipe,
and continuing the noisy conversation until we fell asleep.
The previous talk had been much of knife and pistol fights
which had taken place in the county. The same boy was
obliging and amiable the next morning, assisting us to bring
in and saddle the horses at our departure.
One of the men here was a Yankee, who had lived so long
in the Slave States that he had added to his original ruralisms
a very complete collection of Southernisms, some of which
were of the richest we met with. He had been in the Texas
Rangers, and, speaking of the West, said he had been up
round the head of the Guadaloupe “heaps and cords of times,”
at the same time giving us a very picturesque account of the
county. Speaking of wolves, he informed us that on the
San Jacinto there were “any dimensions of them.” Obstinacy,
in his vocabulary, was represented by “damnation
cussedness.” He was unable to conceive of us in any other
light than as two peddlers who had mistaken their ground in
coming here.
At another house where we stopped (in which, by the way,
we ate our supper by the light of pine knots blazing in the
chimney, with an apology for the absence of candles), we
heard some conversation upon a negro of the neighbourhood,
who had been sold to a free negro, and who refused to live
with him, saying he wouldn’t be a servant to a nigger. All
agreed that he was right, although the man was well known
to be kind to his negroes, and would always sell any of them
who wished it. The slave had been sold because he wouldn’t
mind. “If I had a negro that wouldn’t mind,” said the
woman of the house, “I’d break his head, or I’d sell him;
I wouldn’t have one about me.” Her own servant was standing
behind her. “I do think it would be better if there
wasn’t any niggers in the world, they do behave so bad, some
of ’em. They steal just like hogs.”
South-western Louisiana.—Soon after crossing the Sabine,
we entered a “hummock,” or tract of more fertile, oak-bearing
land, known as the Big Woods. The soil is not rich, but
produces cotton, in good seasons nearly a bale to the acre,
and the limited area is fully occupied. Upon one plantation
we found an intelligent emigrant from Mississippi, who had
just bought the place, having stopped on his way into Texas,
because the time drew near for the confinement of his
wife. Many farms are bought by emigrants, he said,
from such temporary considerations: a child is sick, or a
horse exhausted; they stop for a few weeks; but summer
comes, and they conclude to put in a crop, and often never
move again.
It was before reaching the Big Woods, that alligator-holes
were first pointed out to us, with a caution to avoid them.
They extend from an aperture, obliquely, under ground, to a
large cavern, the walls of which are puddled by the motions
of the animal; and, being partly filled with water, form a
comfortable amphibious residence. A horseman is liable, not
only to breaking through near the orifice, but to being precipitated
into the den itself, where he will find awaiting him, a
disagreeable mixture of mire and angry jaws. In the deep
water of the bottoms, we met with no snakes; but the pools
were everywhere alive with them. We saw a great variety
of long-legged birds, apparently on friendly terms with all
the reptiles.
A day’s journey took us through the Big Woods, and across
Calcasieu to Lake Charles. We were not prepared to find
the Calcasieu a superb and solemn river, two hundred and
thirty yards across and forty-five feet deep. It is navigable
for forty miles, but at its mouth has a bar, on which is sometimes
only eighteen inches of water, ordinarily thirty inches.
Schooners of light draft ascend it, bringing supplies, and
taking out the cotton raised within its reach. Lake Charles
is an insignificant village, upon the bank of a pleasant, clear
lakelet, several miles in extent.
From the Big Woods to Opelousas, there was no change in
the monotonous scenery. Everywhere extended the immense
moist plain, being alternate tracts of grass and pine. Nearer
Opelousas, oak appears in groups with the pine, and the soil
is darker and more fertile. Here the land was mostly taken
up, partly by speculators, in view of the Opelousas Railway,
then commenced. But, in all the western portion of the district,
the land is still government property, and many of the
people squatters. Sales are seldom made, but the estimated
price of the land is fifty cents an acre.
Some of the timbered land, for a few years after clearing,
yields good crops of corn and sweet potatoes. Cotton is
seldom attempted, and sugar only for family use. Oats are
sometimes grown, but the yield is small, and seldom thrashed
from the straw. We noted one field of poor rye. So wet a
region and so warm a climate suggested rice, and, were the
land sufficiently fertile, it would, doubtless, become a staple
production. It is now only cultivated for home use, the
bayou bottoms being rudely arranged for flowing the crop.
But without manure no profitable return can be obtained
from breaking the prairie, and the only system of manuring
in use is that of ploughing up occasionally the cow-pens of
the herdsmen.
The road was now distinctly marked enough, but had frequent
and embarrassing forks, which occasioned us almost as
much annoyance as the clouds of musquitoes which, east of the
Sabine, hovered continually about our horses and our heads.
Notions of distance we found incredibly vague. At Lake
Charles we were informed that the exact distance to Opelousas
was ninety-six miles. After riding eight hours, we were
told by a respectable gentleman that the distance from his
house was one hundred and twenty miles. The next evening
the distance was forty miles; and the following evening a
gentleman who met us stated first that it was “a good long
way;” next, that it was “thirty or forty miles, and damn’d
long ones, too.” About four miles beyond him, we reached
the twentieth mile-post.
Across the bayous of any size, bridges had been constructed,
but so rudely built of logs that the traveller, where possible,
left them for a ford.
The people, after passing the frontier, changed in every
prominent characteristic. French became the prevailing
language, and French the prevailing manners. The gruff
Texan bidding, “Sit up, stranger; take some fry!” became a
matter of recollection, of which “Monsieur, la soupe est servie,”
was the smooth substitute. The good-nature of the people
was an incessant astonishment. If we inquired the way, a
contented old gentleman waddled out and showed us also his
wife’s house-pet, an immense white crane, his big crop of
peaches, his old fig-tree, thirty feet in diameter of shade, and
to his wish of “bon voyage” added for each a bouquet of the
jessamines we were admiring. The homes were homes, not
settlements on speculation; the house, sometimes of logs, it
is true, but hereditary logs, and more often of smooth lumber,
with deep and spreading galleries on all sides for the coolest
comfort. For form, all ran or tended to run to a peaked and
many-chimneyed centre, with, here and there, a suggestion of
a dormar window. Not all were provided with figs and jessamines,
but each had some inclosure betraying good intentions.
The monotonous landscape did not invite to loitering, and
we passed but three nights in houses by the road. The first
was that of an old Italian-French emigrant, known as “Old
Man Corse.” He had a name of his own, which he recalled
for us, but in forty years it had been lost and superseded by
this designation, derived from his birth-place, the island of
Corsica. This mixture of nationalities in language must be
breeding for future antiquaries a good deal of amusing labour.
Next day we were recommended to stop at Jack Bacon’s,
and, although we would have preferred to avoid an American’s,
did so rather than go further, and found our Jack
Bacon a Creole, named Jacques Béguin. This is equal to
Tuckapaw and Nakitosh, the general pronunciation of Attakapas
and Nachitoches.
The house of Old Man Corse stood in the shade of oaks,
figs, and cypresses, upon the bank of a little bayou, looking
out upon the broad prairie. It was large and comfortable,
with wide galleries and dormar windows, supported by a
negro-hut and a stable. Ornamental axe-work and rude
decorative joinery were abundant. The roof was of large
split shingles, much warped in the sun. As we entered and
took seats by the fire, the room reminded us, with its big
fire-place, and old smoke-stained and time-toned cypress
beams and ceiling, and its rude but comfortable aspect, of the
Acadian fireside:
“In doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fire-place, idly the farmer
Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths
Struggled together, like foes in a burning city. Behind him,
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic,
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness,
Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair,
Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser
Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine.”
The tall, elderly, busy housewife bustled about with preparations
for supper, while we learned that they had been
settled here forty years, and had never had reason to regret
their emigration. The old man had learnt French, but no
English. The woman could speak some “American,” as she
properly termed it. Asking her about musquitoes, we received
a reply in French, that they were more abundant
some years than others; then, as no quantitative adjective of
sufficient force occurred to her, she added, “Three years ago,
oh! heaps of musquitoes, sir, heaps! worse as now.”
She laid the table to the last item, and prepared everything
nicely, but called a negro girl to wait upon us. The girl
stood quiet behind us, the mistress helping us, and practically
anticipating all our wants.
The supper was of venison, in ragoût, with a sauce that
savoured of the south of France; there was a side dish of
hominy, a jug of sweet milk, and wheat-bread in loaf—the
first since Houston.
In an evening smoke, upon the settle, we learned that there
were many Creoles about here, most of whom learned English,
and had their children taught English at the schools. The
Americans would not take the trouble to learn French. They
often intermarried. A daughter of their own was the wife of
an American neighbour. We asked if they knew of a distinct
people here called Acadians. Oh yes, they knew many
settled in the vicinity, descended from some nation that came
here in the last century. They had now no peculiarities.
There were but few free negroes just here, but at Opelousas
and Niggerville there were many, some of whom were rich
and owned slaves, though a part were unmixed black in colour.
They kept pretty much by themselves, not attempting to
enter white society.
As we went to look at our horses, two negroes followed us
to the stable.
“Dat horse a Tennessee horse, mass’r,” said one.
“Yes, he was born in Tennessee.”
“Born in Tennessee and raised by a Dutchman,” said the
other, sotto voce, I suppose, quoting a song.
“Why, were you born in Tennessee?” I asked.
“No, sar, I was born in dis State.”
“How comes it you speak English so much better than
your master?”
“Ho, ho, my old mass’r, he don’ speak it at all; my missus
she speak it better’n my mass’r do, but you see I war raised
on de parara, to der eastward, whar thar’s heaps of ’Mericans;
so I larned it good.”
He spoke it, with a slight accent, while the other, whom
he called Uncle Tom, I observed did not. I asked Uncle
Tom if he was born in the State.
“No, sar! I was born in Varginny! in ole Varginny,
mass’r. I was raised in —— county [in the West]. I was
twenty-two year ole when I came away from thar, and I’ve
been in this country, forty year come next Christmas.”
“Then you are sixty years old.”
“Yes, sar, amos’ sixty. But I’d like to go back to Varginny.
Ho, ho! I ’ould like to go back and live in ole
Varginny, again.”
“Why so? I thought niggers generally liked this country
best—I’ve been told so—because it is so warm here.”
“Ho, ho! it’s mos’ too warm here, sometime, and I can’t
work at my trade here. Sometimes for three months I don’
go in my shop, on’y Sundays to work for mysef.”
“What is your trade?”
“I’m a blacksmith, mass’r. I used to work at blacksmithing
all the time in ole Virginny, ironin’ waggons, and shoein’
horses for the folks that work in the mines. But here, can’t
get nothun’ to do. In this here sile, if you sharpen up a
plough in the spring o’ the year, it’ll last all summer, and
horses don’ want shoeing once a year, here on the parara.
I’ve got a good mass’r here, tho’; the ole man ain’t hard on
his niggers.”
“Was your master hard in Virginia?”
“Well, I wos hired to different mass’rs, sar, thar, afore I
wos sole off. I was sole off to a sheriff’s sale, mass’r: I wos
sole for fifteen hunerd an’ fifty dollars; I fetched that on the
block, cash, I did, and the man as bought me he brung me
down here, and sole me for two thousand two hunerd
dollars.”
“That was a good price; a very high price in those days.”
“Yes, sar, it was that—ho, ho, ho! It was a man by the
name of ——, from Tennessee, what bought me. He made a
business of goin’ roun’ and buyin’ up people, and bringin’ ’em
down here, speculatin’ on ’em. Ho, ho! he did well that
time. But I’d ’a’ liked it better, for all that, to have stayed
in ole Varginny. ’Tain’t the heat, tho’ it’s too hot here
sometimes; but you know, sar, I was born and raised in Varginny,
and seems like ’twould be pleasanter to live thar. It’s
kinder natural to people to hanker arter the place they wos
raised in. Ho, ho! I’d like it a heap better, tho’ this ole
man’s a good mass’r; never had no better mass’r.”
“I suppose you became a Catholic after you got here?”
“Yes, sar” (hesitatingly).
“I suppose all the people are Catholics here?”
“Here? Oh, no, sar; they was whar I wos first in this
here country; they wos all Catholics there.”
“Well, they are all Catholics here, too—ain’t they?”
“Here, sar? Here, sar? Oh, no, sar!”
“Why, your master is not a Protestant, is he?”
After two deep groans, he replied in a whisper:
“Oh, sar, they don’ have no meetin’ o’ no kind, roun’
here!”
“There are a good many free negroes in this country,
ain’t there?”
“What! here, sar? Oh, no, sar; no such good luck as
that in this country.”
“At Opelousas, I understood, there were a good many.”
“Oh, but them wos born free, sar, under old Spain, sar.”
“Yes, those I mean.”
“Oh, yes, there’s lots o’ them; some of ’em rich, and
some of ’em—a good many of ’em—goes to the penitentiary—you
know what that is. White folks goes to the penitenti’ry,
too—ho! ho!—sometimes.”
“I have understood many of them were quite rich.”
“Oh, yes, o’ course they is: they started free, and ain’t
got nobody to work for but theirselves; of course they
gets rich. Some of ’em owns slaves—heaps of ’em. That
ar ain’t right.”
“Not right! why not?”
“Why, you don’ think it’s right for one nigger to own
another nigger! One nigger’s no business to sarve another.
It’s bad enough to have to sarve a white man without being
paid for it, without having to sarve a black man.”
“Don’t they treat their slaves well?”
“No, sar, they don’t. There ain’t no nations so bad
masters to niggers as them free niggers, though there’s some,
I’ve heard, wos very kind; but—I wouldn’t sarve ’em if they
wos—no!—Does you live in Tennessee, mass’r?”
“No—in New York.”
“There’s heaps of Quakers in New York, ain’t there,
mass’r?”
“No—not many.”
“I’ve always heard there was.”
“In Philadelphia there are a good many.”
“Oh, yes! in Philadelphia, and in Winchester, and in
New Jarsey. I know—ho! ho! I’ve been in those countries,
and I’ve seen ’em. I wos raised nigh by Winchester,
and I’ve been all about there. Used to iron waggons and
shoe horses in that country. Dar’s a road from Winchester
to Philadelphia—right straight. Quakers all along. Right
good people, dem Quakers—ho! ho!—I know.”[2]
We slept in well-barred beds, and awoke long after sunrise.
As soon as we were stirring, black coffee was sent into
us, and at breakfast we had café au lait in immense bowls
in the style of the crêmeries of Paris. The woman remarked
that our dog had slept in their bed-room. They had taken
our saddle-bags and blankets with them for security, and
Judy had insisted on following them. “Dishonest black
people might come here and get into the room,” explained
the old man. “Yes; and some of our own people in the
house might come to them. Such things have happened
here, and you never can trust any of them,” said the woman,
her own black girl behind her chair.
At Mr. Béguin’s (Bacon’s) we stopped on a Saturday
night: and I was obliged to feed my own horse in the morning,
the negroes having all gone off before daylight. The
proprietor was a Creole farmer, owning a number of labourers,
and living in comfort. The house was of the ordinary
Southern double-cabined style, the people speaking English,
intelligent, lively, and polite, giving us good entertainment at
the usual price. At a rude corn-mill belonging to Mr.
Béguin, we had noticed among the negroes an Indian boy, in
negro clothing, and about the house were two other Indians—an
old man and a young man; the first poorly clad, the
other gaily dressed in a showy printed calico frock, and
worked buckskin leggings, with beads and tinsel ornaments, a
great turban of Scotch shawl-stuff on his head. It appeared
they were Choctaws, of whom a good many lived in the
neighbourhood. The two were hired for farm labour at three
bits (37½ cents) a day. The old man had a field of his own,
in which stood handsome corn. Some of them were industrious,
but none were steady at work—often refusing to go
on, or absenting themselves from freaks. I asked about the
boy at the mill. He lived there and did work, getting no
wages, but “living there with the niggers.” They seldom
consort; our host knew but one case in which a negro had an
Indian wife.
At Lake Charles we had seen a troop of Alabamas, riding
through the town with baskets and dressed deerskins for sale.
They were decked with feathers, and dressed more showily
than the Choctaws, but in calico: and over their heads, on
horseback—curious progress of manners—all carried open,
black cotton umbrellas.
Our last night in this region was spent in a house which
we reached at sundown of a Sunday afternoon. It proved to
be a mere cottage, in a style which has grown to be common
along our road. The walls are low, of timber and mud; the
roof, high, and sloping from a short ridge in all directions;
and the chimney of sticks and mud. The space is divided
into one long living-room, having a kitchen at one end and a
bed-room at the other. As we rode up, we found only a
little boy, who answered us in French. His mother was
milking, and his father out in the field.
We rode on to the fence of the field, which enclosed twenty
acres, planted in cotton, corn, and sweet potatoes, and waited
until the proprietor reached us and the end of his furrow.
He stopped before replying, to unhitch his horse, then gave
consent to our staying in his house, and we followed his lead
to the yard, where we unsaddled our horses. He was a tall,
stalwart man in figure, with a large intellectual head, but as
uninformed, we afterwards discovered, as any European peasant;
though he wore, as it were, an ill-fitting dress of rude independence
in manner, such as characterises the Western man.
The field was well cultivated, and showed the best corn we
had seen east of the Brazos. Three negro men and two
women were at work, and continued hoeing until sunset.
They were hired, it appeared, by the proprietor, at four bits
(fifty cents) a day. He was in the habit of making use of
the Sundays of the slaves of the neighbourhood in this way,
paying them sometimes seventy-five cents a day.
On entering the house, we were met by two young boys,
gentle and winning in manner, coming up of their own accord
to offer us their hands. They were immediately set to work
by their father at grinding corn, in the steel-mill, for supper.
The task seemed their usual one, yet very much too severe for
their strength, as they were slightly built, and not over ten
years old. Taking hold at opposite sides of the winch, they
ground away, outside the door, for more than an hour, constantly
stopping to take breath, and spurred on by the voice
of the papa, if the delay were long.
They spoke only French, though understanding questions
in English. The man and his wife—an energetic but worn
woman—spoke French or English indifferently, even to one
another, changing, often, in a single sentence. He could not
tell us which was his mother tongue; he had always been as
much accustomed to the one as to the other. He said he
was not a Frenchman, but a native, American-born; but
afterwards called himself a “Dutch-American,” a phrase he
was unable to explain. He informed us that there were many
“Dutch-French” here, that is, people who were Dutch, but
who spoke French.
The room into which we were ushered, was actually without
an article of furniture. The floor was of boards, while
those of the other two rooms were of trodden clay. The
mud-walls had no other relief than the mantel, on which
stood a Connecticut clock, two small mirrors, three or four
cheap cups and saucers, and a paste brooch in the form of a
cross, pinned upon paper, as in a jeweller’s shop. Chairs
were brought in from the kitchen, having deer-hide seats,
from which sprang forth an atrocious number of fresh fleas.
We had two or three hours to wait for our late supper, and
thus more than ample time to converse with our host, who
proceeded to twist and light a shuck cigar. He made, he
said, a little cotton, which he hauled ten miles to be ginned
and baled. For this service he paid seventy-five cents a
hundred weight, in which the cost of bagging was not included.
The planter who baled it, also sold it for him, sending
it, with his own, to a factor in New Orleans, by steamboat
from Niggerville, just beyond Opelousas. Beside cotton, he
sold every year some beef cattle. He had a good many cows,
but didn’t exactly know how many. Corn, too, he sometimes
sold, but only to neighbours, who had not raised enough for
themselves. It would not pay to haul it to any market.
The same applied to sweet potatoes, which were considered
worth seventy-five cents a barrel.
The “range” was much poorer than formerly. It was
crowded, and people would have to take their stock somewhere
else in four or five years more, or they would starve. He
didn’t know what was going to become of poor folks, rich
people were taking up the public land so fast, induced by the
proposed railroad to New Orleans.
More or less stock was always starved in winter. The
worst time for them was when a black gnat, called the “eye-breaker,”
comes out. This insect breeds in the low woodlands,
and when a freshet occurs in winter is driven out in
swarms upon the prairies, attacking cattle terribly. They
were worse than all manner of musquitoes, flies, or other insects.
Cattle would herd together then, and wander wildly
about, not looking for the best feed, and many would get
killed. But this did not often happen.
Horses and cattle had degenerated much within his recollection.
No pains were taken to improve breeds. People,
now-a-days, had got proud, and when they had a fine colt
would break him for a carriage or riding-horse, leaving only
the common scurvy sort to run with the mares. This was
confirmed by our observation, the horses about here being
wretched in appearance, and the grass short and coarse.
When we asked to wash before supper, a shallow cake-pan
was brought and set upon the window-seat, and a mere rag
offered us for towel. Upon the supper-table, we found two
wash-bowls, one filled with milk, the other with molasses.
We asked for water, which was given us in one battered tin
cup. The dishes, besides the bacon and bread, were fried
eggs and sweet potatoes. The bowl of molasses stood in the
centre of the table, and we were pressed to partake of it, as
the family did, by dipping in it bits of bread. But how it
was expected to be used at breakfast, when we had bacon and
potatoes, with spoons, but no bread, I cannot imagine, the
family not breakfasting with us.
The night was warm, and musquitoes swarmed, but we
carried with us a portable tent-shaped bar, which we hung
over the feather bed, upon the floor, and rested soundly amid
their mad singing.
The distance to Opelousas, our Frenchman told us, was
fifteen miles by the road, though only ten miles in a direct
line. We found it lined with farms, whose division-fences the
road always followed, frequently changing its course in so
doing at a right angle. The country was very wet and unattractive.
About five miles from the town, begin plantations
on an extensive scale, upon better soil, and here were large
gangs of negroes at work upon cotton, with their hoes.
At the outskirts of the town, we waded the last pool, and
entered, with a good deal of satisfaction, the peaceful shaded
streets. Reaching the hotel, we were not so instantly struck
as perhaps we should have been, with the overwhelming advantages
of civilization, which sat in the form of a landlord,
slapping with an agate-headed, pliable cane, his patent leather
boots, poised, at easy height, upon one of the columns of
the gallery. We were suffered to take off our saddle-bags,
and to wait until waiting was no longer a pleasure, before
civilization, wringing his cane against the floor, but not removing
his cigar, brought his patent leathers to our vicinity.
After some conversation, intended as animated upon one
side and ineffably indifferent on the other, our horses obtained
notice from that exquisitely vague eye, but a further introduction
was required before our persons became less than transparent,
for the boots walked away, and became again a subject
of contemplation upon the column, leaving us, with our
saddle-bags, upon the steps. After inquiring, of a bystander
if this glossy individual were the actual landlord, we attacked
him in a tone likely to produce either a revolver-shot or a
room, but whose effect was to obtain a removal of the cigar
and a gentle survey, ending in a call for a boy to show the
gentlemen to number thirteen.
After an hour’s delay, we procured water, and were about
to enjoy very necessary ablutions, when we observed that the
door of our room was partly of uncurtained glass. A shirt
was pinned to this, and ceremonies were about beginning,
when a step came down the passage, and a gentleman put his
hand through a broken pane, and lifted the obstruction, wishing
“to see what was going on so damn’d secret in number thirteen.”
When I walked toward him hurriedly, in puris
naturalibus, he drew hastily and entered the next room.
On the gallery of the hotel, after dinner, a fine-looking man—who
was on the best of terms with every one—familiar with
the judge—and who had been particularly polite to me, at the
dinner-table, said to another:
“I hear you were very unlucky with that girl you bought
of me, last year?”
“Yes, I was; very unlucky. She died with her first child,
and the child died, too.”
“Well, that was right hard for you. She was a fine girl.
I don’t reckon you lost less than five thousand dollars, when
she died.”
“No, sir, not a dollar less.”
“Well, it came right hard upon you—just beginning so.”
“Yes, I was foolish, I suppose, to risk so much on the life
of a single woman; but I’ve got a good start again now,
for all that. I’ve got two right likely girls; one of them’s
got a fine boy, four months old, and the other’s with child—and
old Pine Knot’s as hearty as ever.”
“Is he? Hasn’t been sick at all, eh?”
“Yes; he was sick very soon after I bought him of you;
but he got well soon.”
“That’s right. I’d rather a nigger would be sick early,
after he comes into this country; for he’s bound to be acclimated,
sooner or later, and the longer it’s put off, the harder
it goes with him.”
The man was a regular negro trader. He told me that he
had a partner in Kentucky, and that they owned a farm
there, and another one here. His partner bought negroes, as
opportunity offered to get them advantageously, and kept them
on their Kentucky farm; and he went on occasionally, and
brought the surplus to their Louisiana plantation—where he
held them for sale.
“So-and-so is very hard upon you,” said another man, to
him as he still sat, smoking his cigar, on the gallery, after
dinner.
“Why so? He’s no business to complain; I told him just
exactly what the nigger was, before I sold him (laughing, as
if there was a concealed joke). It was all right—all right.
I heard that he sold him again for a thousand dollars; and
the people that bought him, gave him two hundred dollars to
let them off from the bargain. I’m sure he can’t complain of
me. It was a fair transaction. He knew just what he was
buying.”
An intelligent man whom I met here, and who had been
travelling most of the time during the last two years in
Louisiana, having business with the planters, described the
condition of the new slaveholders and the poorer planters as
being very miserable.
He had sometimes found it difficult to get food, even when
he was in urgent need of it, at their houses. The lowest
class live much from hand to mouth, and are often in
extreme destitution. This was more particularly the case
with those who lived on the rivers; those who resided on the
prairies were seldom so much reduced. The former now live
only on those parts of the river to which the back-swamp approaches
nearest; that is, where there is but little valuable
land, that can be appropriated for plantation-purposes. They
almost all reside in communities, very closely housed in poor
cabins. If there is any considerable number of them, there is
to be always found, among the cluster of their cabins, a
church, and a billiard and a gambling-room—and the latter is
always occupied, and play going on.
They almost all appear excessively apathetic, sleepy, and
stupid, if you see them at home; and they are always longing
and waiting for some excitement. They live for excitement,
and will not labour, unless it is violently, for a short time, to
gratify some passion.
This was as much the case with the women as the men.
The women were often handsome, stately, and graceful, and,
ordinarily, exceedingly kind; but languid, and incredibly
indolent, unless there was a ball, or some other excitement, to
engage them. Under excitement, they were splendidly animated,
impetuous, and eccentric. One moment they seemed
possessed by a devil, and the next by an angel.
The Creoles[3] are inveterate gamblers—rich and poor alike.
The majority of wealthy Creoles, he said, do nothing to
improve their estate; and are very apt to live beyond their
income. They borrow and play, and keep borrowing to play,
as long as they can; but they will not part with their land,
and especially with their home, as long as they can help it, by
any sacrifice.
The men are generally dissolute. They have large families,
and a great deal of family affection. He did not know that
they had more than Anglo-Saxons; but they certainly manifested
a great deal more, and, he thought, had more domestic
happiness. If a Creole farmer’s child marries, he will build
a house for the new couple, adjoining his own; and when
another marries, he builds another house—so, often his whole
front on the river is at length occupied. Then he begins to
build others, back of the first—and so, there gradually forms
a little village, wherever there is a large Creole family,
owning any considerable piece of land. The children are
poorly educated, and are not brought up to industry, at all.
The planters living near them, as their needs increase, lend
them money, and get mortgages on their land, or, in some
way or other, if it is of any value, force them to part
with it. Thus they are every year reduced, more and more,
to the poorest lands; and the majority now are able to get but
a very poor living, and would not be able to live at all in a
Northern climate. They are nevertheless—even the poorest
of them—habitually gay and careless, as well as kind-hearted,
hospitable, and dissolute—working little, and spending much
of their time at church, or at balls, or the gaming-table.
There are very many wealthy Creole planters, who are as
cultivated and intelligent as the better class of American
planters, and usually more refined. The Creoles, he said, did
not work their slaves as hard as the Americans; but, on the
other hand, they did not feed or clothe them nearly as well,
and he had noticed universally, on the Creole plantations, a
large number of “used-up hands”—slaves, sore and crippled,
or invalided for some cause. On all sugar plantations, he
said, they work the negroes excessively, in the grinding
season; often cruelly. Under the usual system, to keep the
fires burning, and the works constantly supplied, eighteen
hours’ work was required of every negro, in twenty-four—leaving
but six for rest. The work of most of them, too, was
very hard. They were generally, during the grinding season,
liberally supplied with food and coffee, and were induced, as
much as possible, to make a kind of frolic of it; yet, on the
Creole plantations, he thought they did not, even in the
grinding season, often get meat.
I remarked that the law, in Louisiana, required that meat
should be regularly served to the negroes.
“O, those laws are very little regarded.”
“Indeed?”
“Certainly. Suppose you are my neighbour; if you
maltreat your negroes, and tell me of it, or I see it, am I
going to prefer charges against you to the magistrates? I
might possibly get you punished according to law; but if I
did, or did not, I should have you, and your family and
friends, far and near, for my mortal enemies. There is a law
of the State that negroes shall not be worked on Sundays;
but I have seen negroes at work almost every Sunday, when I
have been in the country, since I have lived in Louisiana.[4] I
spent a Sunday once with a gentleman, who did not work
his hands at all on Sunday, even in the grinding season; and
he had got some of his neighbours to help him build a
school-house, which was used as a church on Sunday. He
said, there was not a plantation on either side of him, as far
as he could see, where the slaves were not generally worked
on Sunday; but that, after the church was started, several of
them quit the practice, and made their negroes go to the
meeting. This made others discontented; and after a year or
two, the planters voted new trustees to the school, and these
forbid the house to be used for any other than school purposes.
This was done, he had no doubt, for the purpose of breaking
up the meetings, and to lessen the discontent of the slaves
which were worked on Sunday.”
It was said that the custom of working the negroes on
Sunday was much less common than formerly; if so, he
thought that it must have formerly been universal.
He had lived, when a boy, for several years on a farm in
Western New York, and afterwards, for some time, at Rochester,
and was well acquainted with the people generally, in
the valley of the Genesee.
I asked him if he thought, among the intelligent class of
farmers and planters, people of equal property lived more
happily in New York or Louisiana. He replied immediately,
as if he had carefully considered the topic, that, with some
rare exceptions, farmers worth forty thousand dollars lived
in far greater comfort, and enjoyed more refined and elegant
leisure, than planters worth three hundred thousand, and
that farmers of the ordinary class, who laboured with their
own hands, and were worth some six thousand dollars, in the
Genesee valley, lived in far greater comfort, and in all respects
more enviably, than planters worth forty thousand dollars
in Louisiana. The contrast was especially favourable to
the New York farmer, in respect to books and newspapers.
He might travel several days, and call on a hundred planters,
and hardly see in their houses more than a single newspaper
a-piece, in most cases; perhaps none at all: nor any books,
except a Bible, and some government publications, that had
been franked to them through the post-office, and perhaps a
few religious tracts or school-books.
The most striking difference that he observed between
the Anglo-Americans of Louisiana and New York, was the
impulsive and unreflective habit of the former, in doing
business. He mentioned, as illustrative of this, the almost
universal passion among the planters for increasing their
negro-stock. It appeared evident to him, that the market
price of negroes was much higher than the prices of cotton
and sugar warranted; but it seemed as if no planter ever
made any calculation of that kind. The majority of planters,
he thought, would always run in debt to the extent of their credit
for negroes, whatever was asked for them, without making any
calculation of the reasonable prospects of their being able to
pay their debts. When any one made a good crop, he would
always expect that his next one would be better, and make
purchases in advance upon such expectation. When they were
dunned, they would attribute their inability to pay, to accidental
short crops, and always were going ahead risking
everything, in confidence that another year of luck would favour
them, and a big crop make all right.
If they had a full crop, probably there would be good crops
everywhere else, and prices would fall, and then they would
whine and complain, as if the merchants were to blame for
it, and would insinuate that no one could be expected to pay
his debts when prices were so low, and that it would be
dangerous to press such an unjust claim. And, if the crops
met with any misfortune, from floods, or rot, or vermin, they
would cry about it like children when rain fell upon a holiday,
as if they had never thought of the possibility of such a
thing, and were very hard used.[5]
He had talked with many sugar-planters who were strong
Cuba war and annexation men, and had rarely found that any
of these had given the first thought to the probable effect the
annexation of Cuba would have on their home interests. It
was mainly a romantic excitement and enthusiasm, inflamed
by senseless appeals to their patriotism and their combativeness.
They had got the idea, that patriotism was necessarily
associated with hatred and contempt of any other country but
their own, and the only foreigners to be regarded with favour
were those who desired to surrender themselves to us. They
did not reflect that the annexation of Cuba would necessarily
be attended by the removal of the duty on sugar, and would
bring them into competition with the sugar-planters of that
island, where the advantages for growing cane were so much
greater than in Louisiana.
To some of the very wealthy planters who favoured the
movement, and who were understood to have taken some of
the Junta[6] stock, he gave credit for greater sagacity. He
thought it was the purpose of these men, if Cuba could be
annexed, to get possession of large estates there: then, with
the advantages of their greater skill in sugar-making, and
better machinery than that which yet was in use in Cuba,
and with much cheaper land and labour, and a far better
climate for cane growing than that of Louisiana, it would be
easy for them to accumulate large fortunes in a few years;
but he thought the sugar-planters who remained in Louisiana
would be ruined by it.
The principal subscribers to the Junta stock at the South,
he thought, were land speculators; persons who expected that,
by now favouring the movement, they would be able to obtain
from the revolutionary government large grants of land in
the island as gratuities in reward of their services or at nominal
prices, which after annexation would rise rapidly in value;
or persons who now owned wild land in the States, and who
thought that if Cuba were annexed the African slave-trade
would be re-established, either openly or clandestinely, with
the States, and their lands be increased in value, by the
greater cheapness with which they could then be stocked with
labourers.
I find these views confirmed in a published letter from a
Louisiana planter, to one of the members of Congress, from
that State; and I insert an extract of that letter, as it is evidently
from a sensible and far-thinking man, to show on
how insecure a basis rests the prosperity of the slave-holding
interest in Louisiana. The fact would seem to be, that, if it
were not for the tariff on foreign sugars, sugar could not be
produced at all by slave-labour; and that a discontinuance of
sugar culture would almost desolate the State.
“The question now naturally comes up to you and to me, Do we
Louisianians desire the possession of Cuba? It is not what the provision
dealers of the West, or the shipowners of the North may wish for, but
what the State of Louisiana, as a State, may deem consistent with her
best interests. My own opinion on the subject is not a new one. It was
long ago expressed to high officers of our Government, neither of whom
ever hesitated to acknowledge that it was, in the main, correct. That
opinion was and is, that the acquisition of Cuba would prove the ruin of our
State. I found this opinion on the following reasons: Cuba has already
land enough in cultivation to produce, when directed by American skill,
energy, and capital, twenty millions of tons of sugar. In addition to this
she has virgin soil, only needing roads to bring it, with a people of the
least pretension to enterprise, into active working, sufficient nearly to
double this; all of which would be soon brought into productiveness were
it our own, with the whole American market free to it. If any man supposes
that the culture of sugar in our State can be sustained in the face of
this, I have only to say that he can suppose anything. We have very
nearly, if not quite, eighty millions invested in the sugar culture. My
idea is that three-fourths of this would, so far as the State is concerned, be
annihilated at a blow. The planter who is in debt, would find his negroes
and machinery sold and despatched to Cuba for him, and he who is independent
would go there in self-defence. What will become of the other
portion of the capital? It consists of land, on which I maintain there can
be produced no other crop but sugar, under present auspices, that will
bear the contest with cocoa,[7] and the expense and risk of levees, as it
regards the larger part of it, and the difficulty of transportation for the
remainder. But supposing that it will be taken up by some other cultivation,
that in any case must be a work of time, and in this case a very long
time for unacclimated men. It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose that
this whole capital will, for purposes of taxation, be withdrawn from
Louisiana. From whence, then, is to come the revenue for the support
of our State government, for the payment of the interest on our debt, and
the eventual redemption of the principal? Perhaps repudiation may be
recommended; but you and I, my dear sir, are too old-fashioned to rob in
that manner, or in any other. The only resort, then, is double taxation
on the cotton planter, which will drive him, without much difficulty, to
Texas, to Arkansas, and Mississippi.”
Washington.—The inn, here, when we arrived, was well
filled with guests, and my friend and I were told that we
must sleep together. In the room containing our bed there
were three other beds; and although the outside of the house
was pierced with windows, nowhere more than four feet apart,
not one of them opened out of our room. A door opened
into the hall, another into the dining-room, and at the side of
our bed was a window into the dining-room, through which,
betimes in the morning, we could, with our heads on our
pillows, see the girls setting the breakfast-tables. Both the
doors were provided with glass windows, without curtains.
Hither, about eleven o’clock, we “retired.” Soon afterwards,
hearing something moving under the bed, I asked, “Who’s
there?” and was answered by a girl, who was burrowing for
eggs; part of the stores of the establishment being kept in
boxes, in this convenient locality. Later, I was awakened by
a stranger attempting to enter my bed. I expostulated, and
he replied that it was his bed, and nobody else had a right to
his place in it. Who was I, he asked, angrily, and where
was his partner? “Here I am,” answered a voice from
another bed; and without another word, he left us. I slept
but little, and woke feverish, and with a headache, caused by
the want of ventilation.
While at the dinner-table, a man asked, as one might at
the North, if the steamer had arrived, if there had been “any
fights to-day?” After dinner, while we were sitting on the
gallery, loud cursing, and threatening voices were heard in
the direction of the bar-room, which, as at Nachitoches, was
detached, and at a little distance from the hotel. The company,
except myself and the other New-Yorker, immediately ran
towards it. After ten minutes, one returned, and said—
“I don’t believe there’ll be any fight; they are both
cowards.”
“Are they preparing for a fight?”
“O, yes; they are loading pistols in the coffee-room, and
there’s a man outside, in the street, who has a revolver and a
knife, and who is challenging another to come out. He
swears he’ll wait there till he does come out; but in my
opinion he’ll think better of it, when he finds that the other
feller’s got pistols, too.”
“What’s the occasion of the quarrel?”
“Why, the man in the street says the other one insulted
him this morning, and that he had his hand on his knife, at
the very moment he did so, so he couldn’t reply. And now
he says he’s ready to talk with him, and he wants to have
him come out, and as many of his friends as are a mind to,
may come with him; he’s got enough for all of ’em, he says.
He’s got two revolvers, I believe.”
We did not hear how it ended; but, about an hour afterwards,
I saw three men, with pistols in their hands, coming
from the bar-room.
The next day, I saw, in the streets of the same town, two
boys running from another, who was pursuing them with a
large, open dirk-knife in his hand, and every appearance of
ungovernable rage in his face.
The boat, for which I was waiting, not arriving, I asked
the landlady—who appeared to be a German Jewess—if I
could not have a better sleeping-room. She showed me one,
which she said I might use for a single night; but, if I
remained another, I must not refuse to give it up. It had
been occupied by another gentleman, and she thought he
might return the next day, and would want it again; and, if
I remained in it, he would be very angry that they had not
reserved it for him, although they were under no obligation
to him. “He is a dangerous man,” she observed, “and my
husband, he’s a quick-tempered man, and, if they get to
quarrelling about it, ther’ll be knives about, sure. It always
frightens me to see knives drawn.”
A Texas drover, who stayed over night at the hotel, being
asked, as he was about to leave in the morning, if he was not
going to have his horse shod, replied:
“No sir! it’ll be a damn’d long spell ’fore I pay for having
a horse shod. I reckon, if God Almighty had thought it right
hosses should have iron on thar feet, he’d a put it thar
himself. I don’t pretend to be a pious man myself; but I
a’nt a-goin’ to run agin the will of God Almighty, though
thar’s some, that calls themselves ministers of Christ, that
does it.”