Chapter XVIII: Part II: Economy (3)

After dinner, we proceeded on our travels, first visiting Cape Ann, the extreme north end of Massachusetts Bay. We had the bay before us, and the great Atlantic on our left. We ought to have seen Boston; but the fog had not quite cleared away in the distance. Thatcher's Island was near, with its two lighthouses, and a bright, green sea playing about it. Then we turned and drove northward along the shore, with busy and most picturesque quarries to our left. There were tall poles in the quarries, with stretched ropes, the pulleys by which the blocks of stone were raised: there were ox-teams and sleds: there were groups of workmen in the recesses of the rocks, and beside the teams, and about the little bays and creeks, where graceful sloops were riding under the lee of tiny breakwaters, where the embarkation of the stone for foreign parts goes on. Blocks of granite lay by the road-side, marked, either in reference to its quality, if for sale; or to its proportion among the materials which are being prepared to order for some great building in New York, or Mobile, or New Orleans. Some may wonder how granite should be exposed for sale in such a district; and who would be likely to buy it. I saw, this afternoon, gate-posts, corner-posts, and foundations of common houses, of undressed granite; and, also, an entire house, the abode of the blacksmith. The friend who sat beside me told me that he hoped to see many more such mechanics' dwellings before he dies. Stone becomes cheaper, and wood dearer, continually; and there is no question which is the more desirable material for those who can afford it. With regard to beauty merely, I know of no building material to equal granite; dressed in the city; undressed in the country. We went into a quarry, and saw an untold wealth of fissured stone. The workmen contrive to pursue their business even in the winter. When the snow is on the ground, and the process of drilling is stopped, they remove ordinary pieces out of the way, and make all clear for their spring labours. They "turn out" 250,000 dollars'-worth a-year; and the demand is perpetually on the increase.

Along the north side of the peninsula the road was very pretty. The grey, distant coast of New Hampshire bounded the sea view. Groups of children were playing on the sands of a deep cove; and the farmers were collecting or spreading their manure of sea-weed and fish-heads. Squam river, which forms the peninsula, flowed out into the sea, and the village of Annisquam spread along its bank. We crossed the bridge, close by the only tide mill I ever saw. It works for six hours, and stops for six, while the flow of the tide fills the pond above. The gates are then shut, and a water-power is obtained till the tide again flows.

We saw what we could of Gloucester, on our return to that little town, before sunset. There are some very good houses, newly-built; and the place has the air of prosperity that gladdens the eye wherever it turns, in New England. We ran down to the shore. It is overlooked by a windmill, from whose grassy platform we beheld the scene in the singular light which here succeeds an autumn sunset. The sky and sea were, without exaggeration, of a deep scarlet: Ten Pound Island sat black upon the waters, with its yellow beacon just lighted. Fishing vessels lay still, every rope being reflected in the red mirror; and a boat, in which a boy was sculling across the harbour, was the only moving object.

After tea, a clergyman and his wife called; and then a long succession of the hospitable inhabitants of Gloucester came to bid us welcome: from which it appeared that small articles of intelligence circulate as rapidly here as in other country-places. In another respect, Gloucester resembled all the villages and small towns I passed through: in the pretty attention of presenting flowers. In some of the larger cities, bouquets of rich and rare flowers were sent to me, however severe might have been the frost, or however dreary the season. In the smallest villages, I had offerings, quite as welcome, in bunches of flowers from the woods and meadows. Many of these last were new to me, and as gladly received as the luscious hyacinths which greeted me every morning at Charleston. At Lenox, in Massachusetts, where I spent one night, my table was covered with meadow-flowers, and with fine specimens of Jack-in-the-pulpit, and the moccassin-flower, or lady's slipper: and at Gloucester, when I returned from my early visit to the beach, where I had been to see the fishermen go out, I found a gorgeous bouquet of autumn flowers; dahlias more various and rich than could have been supposed to grow in such a region.

On our return to Salem, we diverged a little from our road, near Manchester, to see a farm, whose situation would make an envious person miserable. The house lies under the shelter of a wooded hill, and enjoys a glorious view of Massachusetts Bay. The property lies between two bays, and has a fine fishing-station off the point. The fields look fertile, and a wide range of pasturage skirts the bay. A woman and children were busy in the orchard, with a cart and barrels, taking in a fine crop of apples; and we could only hope that they were sensible of their privilege in living in such a place. These are the region, teeming with the virtues of the Pilgrims, and as yet uninfected by the mercenary and political cowardice of the cities, where the most gladdening aspects of human life are to be seen.

The newly-settled districts of the southern States are as unlike as possible to all this. They are extreme opposite cases. If human life presents its fairest aspects in the retired townships of New England,--some of its very worst, perhaps, are seen in the raw settlements of Alabama and Mississippi.

When we drew near to Columbus, Georgia, we were struck with amazement at the stories that were told, and the anecdotes that were dropped, in the stage, about recent attempts on human life in the neighbourhood; and at the number of incidents of the same kind which were the news of the day along the road. Our driver from Macon had been shot at, in attempting to carry off a young lady. A gentleman, boarding in the hotel at Columbus, was shot in the back, in the street, and laid by for months. No inquiry was made, or nothing came of it. The then present governor of the State of Mississippi had recently stood over two combatants, pistol in hand, to see fair play. This _was_ stated as a remarkable fact. The landlord of the house where we stopped to breakfast on the day we were to reach Columbus, April 9th, 1835, was, besides keeping a house of entertainment, a captain of militia, and a member of the legislature of Georgia. He was talking over with his guests a late case of homicide in a feud between the Myers and Macklimore families. He declared that he would have laws like those of the Medes and Persians against homicide; and, in the same breath, said that if he were a Myers, he would shoot Mr. Macklimore and all his sons.

We arrived at Columbus before sunset, and determined to stay a day to see how the place had got on since Captain Hall saw it cut out of the woods, ten years before. During the evening, I could do nothing but watch the Indians from my window. The place swarmed with them; a few Choctaws, and the rest Creeks. A sad havoc has taken place among them since; and this neighbourhood has been made the scene of a short but fierce war. But all looked fair and friendly when we were there. Groups of Indians were crouching about the entries of the stores, or looking in at the windows. The squaws went by, walking one behind another, with their hair, growing low on the forehead, loose, or tied at the back of the head, forming a fine contrast with the young lady who had presided at our breakfast-table at five that morning, with her long hair braided and adorned with brilliant combs, while her fingers shone in pearl and gold rings. These squaws carried large Indian baskets on their backs, and shuffled along, bare-footed, while their lords paced before them, well mounted; or, if walking, gay with blue and red clothing and embroidered leggings, with tufts of hair at the knees, while pouches and white fringes dangled about them. They looked like grave merry-andrews; or, more still, like solemn fanatical harvest men going out for largess. By eight o'clock they had all disappeared; but the streets were full of them again the next morning.

Our hostess was civil, and made no difficulty about giving us a late breakfast by ourselves, in consideration of our fatigues. Before one o'clock we dined, in company with seventy-five persons, at one long table. The provisions were good, but ill-cooked; and the knives so blunt that it was a mystery to me how the rest of the company obtained so quick a succession of mouthfuls as they did.

The Chattahoochee, on whose banks Columbus stands, is unlike any river I saw in the United States, unless it be some parts of the Susquehanna. Its rapids, overhung by beech and pine woods, keep up a perpetual melody, grateful alike to the ear of the white and the red man. It is broad and full, whirling over and around the rocks with which it is studded, and under the frail wooden foot-bridge which spans a portion of its width, between the shore and a pile of rocks in the middle of the channel. On this foot-bridge I stood, and saw a fish caught in a net laid among the eddies. A dark fisherman stood on each little promontory; and a group was assembled about some canoes in a creek on the opposite Alabama shore, where the steepness of the hills seemed scarcely to allow a foothold between the rushing water and the ascent. The river is spanned by a long covered bridge, which we crossed the same night on our way into Alabama.

There are three principal streets in Columbus, with many smaller, branching out into the forest. Some pretty bits of greensward are left, here and there, with a church, or a detached house upon each--village-like. There are some good houses, five hotels, and a population of above 2,000,--as nearly as I could make out among the different accounts of the accession of inhabitants since the census. The stores looked creditably stocked; and a great many gentlemanly men were to be seen in the streets. It bears the appearance of being a thriving, spacious, handsome village, well worth stopping to see.

We left it, at seven in the evening, by the long bridge, at the other end of which we stopped for the driver to hold a parley, about a parcel, with a woman, who spoke almost altogether in oaths. A gentleman in the stage remarked, that we must have got quite to the end of the world. The roads were as bad as roads could be; and we rolled from side to side so incessantly, as to obviate all chance of sleeping. The passengers were very patient during the hours of darkness; but, after daylight, they seemed to think they had been long enough employed in shifting their weight to keep the coach on its four wheels. "I say, driver," cried one, "you won't upset us, now daylight is come?" "Driver," shouted another, "keep this side up." "Gentlemen," replied the driver, "I shall mind nothing you say till the ladies begin to complain." A reply equally politic and gallant.

At half past five, we stopped to breakfast at a log dwelling, composed of two rooms, with an open passage between. We asked for water and towel. There was neither basin nor towel; but a shallow tin dish of water was served up in the open passage where all our fellow-travellers were standing. We asked leave to carry our dish into the right-hand room. The family were not all dressed. Into the left-hand room. A lady lodged there!

We travelled till sunset through the Creek Territory, the roads continuing to be extremely bad. The woods were superb in their spring beauty. The thickets were in full leaf; and the ground was gay with violets, may-apple, buck-eye, blue lupin, iris, and crow-poison. The last is like the white lily, growing close to the ground. Its root, boiled, mixed with corn, and thrown out into the fields, poisons crows. If eaten by cattle, it injures but does not destroy them. The sour-wood is a beautiful shrub. To-day it looked like a splendid white fuchsia, with tassels of black butterflies hanging from the extremities of the twigs. But the grandest flower of all, perhaps the most exquisite I ever beheld, is the honeysuckle of the southern woods. It bears little resemblance to the ragged flower which has the same name elsewhere. It is a globe of blossoms, larger than my hand, growing firmly at the end of an upright stalk, with the richest and most harmonious colouring, the most delicate long anthers, and the flowers exquisitely grouped among the leaves. It is the queen of flowers. I generally contrived, in my journeys through the southern States, to have a bunch of honeysuckles in the stage before my eyes; and they seemed to be visible wherever I turned, springing from the roots of the forest trees, or dangling from their topmost boughs, or mixing in with the various greens of the thickets.

We saw to-day, the common sight of companies of slaves travelling westwards; and the very uncommon one of a party returning into South Carolina. When we overtook such a company proceeding westwards, and asked where they were going, the answer commonly given by the slaves was, "Into Yellibama."--Sometimes these poor creatures were encamped under the care of the slave-trader, on the banks of a clear stream, to spend a day in washing their clothes. Sometimes they were loitering along the road; the old folks and infants mounted on the top of a wagon-load of luggage; the able-bodied, on foot, perhaps silent, perhaps laughing; the prettier of the girls, perhaps with a flower in the hair, and a lover's arm around her shoulder. There were wide differences in the air and gait of these people. It is usual to call the most depressed of them brutish in appearance. In some sense they are so; but I never saw in any brute an expression of countenance so low, so lost, as in the most degraded class of negroes. There is some life and intelligence in the countenance of every animal; even in that of "the silly sheep," nothing so dead as the vacant, unheeding look of the depressed slave is to be seen. To-day, there was a spectacle by the roadside which showed that this has nothing to do with negro nature; though no such proof is needed by those who have seen negroes in favourable circumstances, and know how pleasant an aspect those grotesque features may wear. To-day we passed, in the Creek Territory, an establishment of Indians who held slaves. Negroes are anxious to be sold to Indians, who give them moderate work, and accommodations as good as their own. Those seen to-day among the Indians, were sleek, intelligent, and cheerful-looking, like the most favoured house-slaves, or free servants of colour, where the prejudice is least strong.

We were on the look-out for Indians, all the way through this Creek Territory. Some on horseback gave us a grave glance as we passed. Some individuals were to be seen in the shadow of the forest, leaning against a tree or a fence. One lay asleep by the roadside, overcome with "whiskey too much," as they style intoxication. They are so intent on having their full bargain of whiskey, that they turn their bottle upside down, when it has been filled to the cork, to have the hollow at the bottom filled. The piazza at the post-office was full of solemn Indians. Miserable-looking squaws were about the dwellings, with their naked children, who were gobbling up their supper of hominy from a wooden bowl.

We left the Creek Territory just as the full moon rose, and hoped to reach Montgomery by two hours before midnight. We presently began to ascend a long hill; and the gentlemen passengers got out, according to custom, to walk up the rising ground. In two minutes, the driver stopped, and came to tell us ladies that he was sorry to trouble us to get out; but that an emigrant's wagon had blocked up the ford of a creek which we had to cross; and he feared we might be wetted if we remained in the stage while he took it through a deeper part. A gentleman was waiting, he said, to hand us over the log which was to be our bridge. This gentleman, I believe, was the emigrant himself. I made for what seemed to me the end of the log; but was deceived by the treacherous moonlight, which made wood, ground, and water, look all one colour. I plunged up to the waist into the creek; and, when I was out again, could hardly keep upon the log for laughing. There was time, before we overtook the rest of the party, to provide against my taking cold; and there remained only the ridiculous image of my deliberate walk into the water.

It must not be supposed a common circumstance that an emigrant's wagon was left in a creek. The "camping out" is usually done in a sheltered, dry spot in the woods, not far from some little stream, where the kettle may be filled, and where the dusty children may be washed. Sleepy as I might be, in our night journeys, I was ever awake to this picture, and never tired of contemplating it. A dun haze would first appear through the darkness; and then gleams of light across the road. Then the whole scene opened. If earlier than ten at night, the fire would be blazing, the pot boiling, the shadowy horses behind, at rest, the groups fixed in their attitudes to gaze at us, whether they were stretching their sailcloth on poles to windward, or drawing up the carts in line, or gathering sticks, or cooking. While watching us, they little thought what a picture they themselves made. If after midnight, the huge fire was flickering and smouldering; figures were seen crouching under the sailcloth, or a head or two was lifted up in the wagon. A solitary figure was seen in relief against the fire; the watch, standing to keep himself awake; or, if greeted by our driver, thrusting a pine slip into the fire, and approaching with his blazing torch to ask or to give information. In the morning, the places where such encampments have been cannot be mistaken. There is a clear, trodden space, strewed with chips and refuse food, with the bare poles which had supported the sailcloth, standing in the midst, and a scorched spot where the fire had been kindled. Others, besides emigrants, camp out in the woods. Farmers, on their way to a distant market, find it cheaper to bring food, and trust otherwise to the hospitality of dame Nature, than to put up at hotels. Between the one and the other, we were amply treated with the untiring spectacle.

We had bespoken accommodations for the night at the hotel at Montgomery, by a friend who had preceded us. On our arrival at past eleven o'clock, we found we were expected; but no one would have guessed it. In my chamber, there was neither water, nor sheets, nor anything that afforded a prospect of my getting to rest, wet as my clothes were. We were hungry, and tired, and cold; and there was no one to help us but a slave, who set about her work as slaves do. We ate some biscuits that we had with us, and gave orders, and made requests with so much success as to have the room in tolerable order by an hour after midnight. When I awoke in the morning, the first thing I saw was, that two mice were running after one another round my trunk, and that the floor of the room seemed to contain the dust of a twelvemonth. The breakfast was to atone for all. The hostess and another lady, three children, and an array of slaves, placed themselves so as to see us eat our breakfast; but it seemed to me that the contents of the table were more wonderful to look at than ourselves. Besides the tea and coffee, there were corn bread, buns, buck-wheat cakes, broiled chicken, bacon, eggs, rice, hominy, fish, fresh and pickled, and beef-steak. The hostess strove to make us feel at home, and recommended her plentiful meal by her hearty welcome to it. She was anxious to explain that her house was soon to be in better order. Her husband was going to Mobile to buy furniture; and, just now, all was in confusion, from her head slave having swallowed a fish bone, and being unable to look after the affairs of the house. When our friends came to carry us to their plantation, she sent in refreshments, and made herself one of the party, in all heartiness.

It was Sunday, and we went to the Methodist church, hoping to hear the regular pastor, who is a highly-esteemed preacher. But a stranger was in the pulpit, who gave us an extraordinary piece of doctrine, propounded with all possible vehemence. His text was the passage about the tower of Siloam; and his doctrine was that great sinners would somehow die a violent death. Perhaps this might be thought a useful proposition in a town where life is held so cheap as in Montgomery; but we could not exactly understand how it was derived from the text. The place was intensely light and hot, there being no blinds to the windows, on each side of the pulpit: and the quietness of the children was not to be boasted of.

On the way to our friends' plantation, we passed a party of negroes, enjoying their Sunday drive. They never appear better than on such occasions, as they all ride and drive well, and are very gallant to their ladies. We passed a small prairie, the first we had seen; and very serene and pretty it looked, after the forest. It was green and undulating, with a fringe of trees.

Our friends, now residing seven miles from Montgomery, were from South Carolina; and the lady, at least, does not relish living in Alabama. It was delightful to me to be a guest in such an abode as theirs. They were about to build a good house: meantime, they were in one which I liked exceedingly: a log-house, with the usual open passage in the middle. Roses and honeysuckles, to which humming-birds resort, grew before the door. Abundance of books, and handsome furniture and plate, were within the house, while daylight was to be seen through its walls. In my well furnished chamber, I could see the stars through the chinks between the logs. During the summer, I should be sorry to change this primitive kind of abode for a better.

It is not difficult to procure the necessaries and comforts of life. Most articles of food are provided on the plantation. Wine and groceries are obtained from Mobile or New Orleans; and clothing and furniture from the north. Tea is twenty shillings English per lb.; brown sugar, threepence-halfpenny; white sugar, sixpence-halfpenny. A gentleman's family, where there are children to be educated, cannot live for less than from seven hundred pounds to one thousand pounds per annum. The sons take land and buy slaves very early; and the daughters marry almost in childhood; so that education is less thought of, and sooner ended, than in almost any part of the world. The pioneers of civilisation, as the settlers in these new districts may be regarded, care for other things more than for education; or they would not come. They are, from whatever motive, money-getters; and few but money-getting qualifications are to be looked for in them. It was partly amusing, and partly sad, to observe the young people of these regions; some, fit for a better mode of life, discontented; some youths pedantic, some maidens romantic, to a degree which makes the stranger almost doubt the reality of the scenes and personages before his eyes. The few better educated who come to get money, see the absurdity, and feel the wearisomeness of this kind of literary cultivation; but the being in such society is the tax they must pay for making haste to be rich.

I heard in Montgomery of a wealthy old planter in the neighbourhood, who has amassed millions of dollars, while his children can scarcely write their names. Becoming aware of their deficiencies, as the place began to be peopled from the eastward, he sent a son of sixteen to school, and a younger one to college; but they proved "such gawks," that they were unable to learn, or even to remain in the society of others who were learning; and their old father has bought land in Missouri, whither he was about to take his children, to remove them from the contempt of their neighbours. They are doomed to the lowest office of social beings; to be the mechanical, unintelligent pioneers of man in the wilderness. Surely such a warning as this should strike awe into the whole region, lest they should also perish to all the best purposes of life, by getting to consider money, not as a means, but an end.

I suppose there must be such pioneers; but the result is a society which it is a punishment to its best members to live in. There is pedantry in those who read; prejudice in those who do not; coxcombry among the young gentlemen; bad manners among the young ladies; and an absence of all reference to the higher, the real objects of life. When to all this is added that tremendous curse, the possession of irresponsible power, (over slaves,) it is easy to see how character must become, in such regions, what it was described to me on the spot, "composed of the chivalric elements, badly combined:" and the wise will feel that, though a man _may_ save his soul anywhere, it is better to live on bread and water where existence is most idealized, than to grow suddenly rich in the gorgeous regions where mind is corrupted or starved amidst the luxuriance of nature. The hard-working settler of the north-west, who hews his way into independence with his own hands, is, or may be, exempt from the curse of this mental corruption or starvation; but it falls inevitably and heavily upon those who fatten upon the bounty of Nature, in the society of money-getters like themselves, and through the labours of degraded fellow-men, whom they hold in their injurious power.

We saw several plantations while we were in this neighbourhood. Nothing can be richer than the soil of one to which we went, to take a lesson in cotton-growing. It will never want more than to have the cotton seed returned to it. We saw the plough, which is very shallow. Two throw up a ridge, which is wrought by hand into little mounds. After these are drilled, the seed is put in by hand. This plantation consists of nine hundred and fifty acres, and is flourishing in every way. The air is healthy, as the situation is high prairie land. The water is generally good; but, after rain, so impregnated with lime, as to be disagreeable to the smell and taste. Another grievance is, a weed which grows on the prairie, which the cows like in summer, but which makes the milk so disagreeable, that cream, half-an-inch thick, is thrown to the pigs. They only can estimate this evil who know what the refreshment of milk is in hot climates. Another grievance is, that no trees can be allowed to grow near the house, for fear of the mosquitoes. Everything else is done for coolness; there are wide piazzas on both sides of the house; the rooms are lofty, and amply provided with green blinds; but all this does not compensate to the eye for the want of the shade of trees. The bareness of the villages of the south is very striking to the eye of a stranger, as he approaches them. They lie scorching and glaring on the rising grounds, or on the plain, hazy with the heat, while the forest, with its myriads of trees, its depth of shade, is on the horizon. But the plague of mosquitoes is a sufficient warrant for any sacrifice of the pleasures of the eye; for they allow but little enjoyment of anything in their presence.

On this, and many other estates that we saw, the ladies make it their business to cut out all the clothes for the negroes. Many a fair pair of hands have I seen dyed with blue, and bearing the marks of the large scissars. The slave women cannot be taught, it is said, to cut out even their scanty and unshapely garments economically. Nothing can be more hideous than their working costume. There would be nothing to lose on the score of beauty, and probably much gained, if they could be permitted to clothe themselves. But it is universally said that they cannot learn. A few ladies keep a woman for this purpose, very naturally disliking the coarse employment.

We visited the negro quarter; a part of the estate which filled me with disgust, wherever I went. It is something between a haunt of monkeys and a dwelling-place of human beings. The natural good taste, so remarkable in free negroes, is here extinguished. Their small, dingy, untidy houses, their cribs, the children crouching round the fire, the animal deportment of the grown-up, the brutish chagrins and enjoyments of the old, were all loathsome. There was some relief in seeing the children playing in the sun, and sometimes fowls clucking and strutting round the houses; but otherwise, a walk through a lunatic asylum is far less painful than a visit to the slave quarter of an estate. The children are left, during working hours, in the charge of a woman; and they are bright, and brisk, and merry enough, for the season, however slow and stupid they may be destined to become.

My next visit was to a school--the Franklin Institute, in Montgomery, established by a gentleman who has bestowed unwearied pains on its organization, and to whose care it does great credit. On our approach, we saw five horses walking about the enclosure, and five saddles hung over the fence: a true sign that some of the pupils came from a distance. The school was hung with prints; there was a collection of shells; many books and maps; and some philosophical apparatus. The boys, and a few girls, were steadily employed over their books and mapping; and nothing could exceed the order and neatness of the place. If the event corresponds with the appearance, the proprietor must be one of the most useful citizens the place has yet been honoured with.

I spent some days at a plantation a few miles from Montgomery, and heard there of an old lady who treats her slaves in a way very unusual, but quite safe, as far as appears. She gives them knowledge, which is against the law; but the law leaves her in peace and quiet. She also commits to them the entire management of the estate, requiring only that they should make her comfortable, and letting them take the rest. There is an obligation by law to keep an overseer; to obviate insurrection. How she manages about this, I omitted to inquire: but all goes on well; the cultivation of the estate is creditable, and all parties are contented. This is only a temporary ease and contentment. The old lady must die; and her slaves will either be sold to a new owner, whose temper will be an accident; or, if freed, must leave the State: but the story is satisfactory in as far as it gives evidence of the trust-worthiness of the negroes.

Our drives about the plantation and neighbouring country were delicious. The inundations from the rivers are remarkable; a perfect Eden appears when they subside. At the landing place of this plantation, I saw a board nailed near the top of a lofty tree, and asked what it could be for. It was the high-water mark. The river, the Alabama, was now upwards of twenty feet higher than usual; and logs, corn-stalks, and green boughs were being carried down its rapid current, as often as we went to the shore. There were evidences of its having laid even houses under water; but, on its subsiding, it would be found to have left a deposit of two inches and a half of fine new soil on the fields on either side of its channel. I never stood on the banks of the southern rivers without being reminded of Daniell's Views in India and Ceylon: the water level, shadowy and still, and the thickets actually springing out of it, with dark-green recesses, with the relief of a slender white stem, or dangling creeper here and there. Some creepers rise like a ladder, straight from the water to a bough one hundred and twenty feet high. As for the softness of the evening light on the water, it is indescribable. It is as if the atmosphere were purified from all mortal breathings, it is so bright, and yet not dazzling; there is such a profusion of verdure.

There were black women ploughing in the field, with their ugly, scanty, dingy dresses, their walloping gait, and vacant countenance. There were scarlet and blue birds flitting over the dark fallows. There was persimon sprouting in the woods, and the young corn-plants in the field, with a handful of cotton-seed laid round each sprout. There was a view from a bluff which fully equalled all my expectations of what the scenery of the southern States would be; yet, tropical as it was in many respects, it reminded me strongly of the view from Richmond Hill. We were standing on the verge of a precipice, of a height which I dare not specify. A deep fissure to our right was spanned by a log which it made one shudder to think of crossing. Behind us lay a cotton-field of 7,000 acres within one fence. All this, and the young aloes, and wild vines, were little enough like Richmond; and so was the faint blue line of hills on the horizon; but it was the intervening plain, through which the river ran, and on which an infinite variety of noble trees grew, as it appeared, to an interminable distance. Here their tops seemed woven into compactness; there they were so sprinkled as to display the majesty and grace of their forms. I looked upon this as a glorification of the Richmond view.

It was now the middle of April. In the kitchen garden the peas were ripening, and the strawberries turning red, though the spring of 1835 was very backward. We had salads, young asparagus, and radishes.

The following may be considered a pretty fair account of the provision for a planter's table, at this season; and, except with regard to vegetables, I believe it does not vary much throughout the year. Breakfast at seven; hot wheat bread, generally sour; corn bread, biscuits, waffles, hominy, dozens of eggs, broiled ham, beef-steak or broiled fowl, tea and coffee. Lunch at eleven; cake and wine, or liqueur. Dinner at two; now and then soup (not good,) always roast turkey and ham; a boiled fowl here, a tongue there; a small piece of nondescript meat, which generally turns out to be pork disguised; hominy, rice, hot corn-bread, sweet potatoes; potatoes mashed with spice, very hot; salad and radishes, and an extraordinary variety of pickles. Of these, you are asked to eat everything with everything else. If you have turkey and ham on your plate, you are requested to add tongue, pork, hominy, and pickles. Then succeed pies of apple, squash, and pumpkin; custard, and a variety of preserves as extraordinary as the preceding pickles: pine-apple, peach, limes, ginger, guava jelly, cocoa-nut, and every sort of plums. These are almost all from the West-Indies. Dispersed about the table are shell almonds, raisins, hickory, and other nuts; and, to crown the whole, large blocks of ice-cream. Champagne is abundant, and cider frequent. Ale and porter may now and then be seen; but claret is the most common drink. During dinner a slave stands at a corner of the table, keeping off the flies by waving a large bunch of peacock's feathers fastened into a handle,--an ampler fan than those of our grandmothers.

Supper takes place at six, or seven. Sometimes the family sits round the table; but more commonly the tray is handed round, with plates which must be held in the lap. Then follow tea and coffee, waffles, biscuits, sliced ham or hung-beef, and sweet cake. Last of all, is the offer of cake and wine at nine or ten.

The profits of cotton-growing, when I was in Alabama, were thirty-five per cent. One planter whom I knew had bought fifteen thousand dollars' worth of land within two years, which he could then have sold for sixty-five thousand dollars. He expected to make, that season, fifty or sixty thousand dollars of his growing crop. It is certainly the place to become rich in; but the state of society is fearful. One of my hosts, a man of great good-nature, as he shows in the treatment of his slaves, and in his family relations, had been stabbed in the back in the reading-room of the town, two years before, and no prosecution was instituted. Another of my hosts carried loaded pistols for a fortnight, just before I arrived, knowing that he was lain in wait for by persons against whose illegal practices he had given information to a magistrate, whose carriage was therefore broken in pieces, and thrown into the river. A lawyer with whom we were in company one afternoon, was sent for to take the deposition of a dying man who had been sitting with his family in the shade, when he received three balls in the back from three men who took aim at him from behind trees. The tales of jail-breaking and rescue were numberless; and a lady of Montgomery told me that she had lived there four years, during which time no day, she believed, had passed without some one's life having been attempted, either by duelling or assassination. It will be understood that I describe this region as presenting an extreme case of the material advantages and moral evils of a new settlement, under the institution of slavery. The most prominent relief is the hospitality,--that virtue of young society. It is so remarkable, and to the stranger so grateful, that there is danger of its blinding him to the real state of affairs. In the drawing-room, the piazza, the barouche, all is so gay and friendly, there is such a prevailing hilarity and kindness, that it seems positively ungrateful and unjust to pronounce, even in one's own heart, that all this way of life is full of wrong and peril. Yet it is impossible to sit down to reflect, with every order of human beings filling an equal space before one's mental eye, without being struck to the soul with the conviction that the state of society, and no less of individual families, is false and hollow, whether their members are aware of it or not; that they forget that they must be just before they can be generous. The severity of this truth is much softened to sympathetic persons on the spot; but it returns with awful force when they look back upon it from afar.

In the slave quarter of a plantation hereabouts I saw a poor wretch who had run away three times, and been re-captured. The last time he was found in the woods, with both legs frost-bitten above the knees, so as to render amputation necessary. I passed by when he was sitting on the door-step of his hut, and longed to see him breathe his last. But he is a young man, likely to drag out his helpless and hopeless existence for many a dreary year. I dread to tell the rest; but such things must be told sometimes, to show to what a pass of fiendish cruelty the human spirit may be brought by merely witnessing the exercise of irresponsible power over the defenceless. I give the very words of the speaker, premising that she is not American by birth or education, nor yet English.

The master and mistress of this poor slave, with their children, had always treated him and his fellow-slaves very kindly. He made no complaint of them. It was not from their cruelty that he attempted to escape. His running away was therefore a mystery to the person to whom I have alluded. She recapitulated all the clothes that had been given to him; and all the indulgences, and forgivenesses for his ingratitude in running away from such a master, with which he had been blessed. She told me that she had advised his master and mistress to refuse him clothes, when he had torn his old ones with trying to make his way through the woods; but his master had been too kind, and had again covered his nakedness. She turned round upon me, and asked what could make the ungrateful wretch run away a third time from such a master?

"He wanted to be free."

"Free! from such a master!"

"From any master."

"The villain! I went to him when he had had his legs cut off, and I said to him, it serves you right...."

"What! when you knew he could not run away any more?"

"Yes, that I did; I said to him, you wretch! but for your master's sake I am glad it has happened to you. You deserve it, that you do. If I were your master I would let you die; I'd give you no help nor nursing. It serves you right; it is just what you deserve. It's fit that it should happen to you ...!"

"You did not--you dared not so insult the miserable creature!" I cried.

"Oh, who knows," replied she, "but that the Lord may bless a word of grace in season!"

Some readers may conceive this to be a freak of idiotcy. It was not so. This person is shrewd and sensible in matters where rights and duties are not in question. Of these she is, as it appears, profoundly ignorant; in a state of superinduced darkness; but her character is that of a clever, and, with some, a profoundly religious woman. Happily, she has no slaves of her own: at least, no black ones.

I saw this day, driving a wagon, a man who is a schoolmaster, lawyer, almanack-maker, speculator in old iron, and dealer in eggs, in addition to a few other occupations. His must be a very active existence.

This little history of a portion of my southern journey may give an idea of what life is in the wilder districts of the south. I will offer but one more sketch, and that will exemplify life in the wilder districts of the north. The picture of my travels in and around Michigan will convey the real state of things there, at present.

Our travelling party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. L., the before-mentioned Charley, his father and mother, and myself. We were prepared to see everything to advantage; for there was strong friendship among us all; and a very unusual agreement of opinion on subjects which education, temperament, or the circumstances of the time, made most interesting to us. The great ornament of the party--our prince of Denmark--was Charley; a boy of uncommon beauty and promise, and fully worthy of the character given him by one of our drivers, with whom the boy had ingratiated himself by his chatter on the box;--"An eternal smart boy, and the greatest hand at talk I ever came across."

We landed at Detroit, from Lake Erie, at seven o'clock in the morning of the 13th of June, 1836. We reached the American just in time for breakfast. At that long table, I had the pleasure of seeing the healthiest set of faces that I had beheld since I left England. The breakfast was excellent, and we were served with much consideration; but the place was so full, and the accommodations of Detroit are so insufficient for the influx of people who are betaking themselves thither, that strangers must patiently put up with much delay and inconvenience till new houses of entertainment are opened. We had to wait till near one o'clock before any of us could have a room in which to dress; but I had many letters to write, and could wait; and before I had done, Charley came with his shining face and clean collar, to show me that accommodation had been provided. In the afternoon, we saw what we could of the place, and walked by the side of the full and tranquil river St. Clair. The streets of the town are wide and airy; but the houses, churches, and stores, are poor for the capital city of a Territory or State. This is a defect which is presently cured, in the stirring northern regions of the United States. Wooden planks, laid on the grass, form the pavement, in all the outskirts of the place. The deficiency is of stone, not of labour. Thousands of settlers are pouring in every year; and of these, many are Irish, Germans, or Dutch, working their way into the back country, and glad to be employed for a while at Detroit, to earn money to carry them further. Paving-stones will be imported here, I suppose, as I saw them at New Orleans, to the great improvement of the health and comfort of the place. The block-wood pavement, of which trial has been made in a part of Broadway, New York, is thought likely to answer better at Detroit than any other kind, and is going to be tried.

The country round Detroit is as flat as can be imagined; and, indeed, it is said that the highest mountain in the State boasts only sixty feet of elevation. A lady of Detroit once declared, that if she were to build a house in Michigan, she would build a hill first. The Canada side of the river looks dull enough from the city; but I cannot speak from a near view of it, having been disappointed in my attempts to get over to it. On one occasion, we were too late for the ferry-boat; and we never had time again for the excursion.

A cool wind from the northern lakes blows over the whole face of the country, in the midst of the hottest days of summer; and in the depth of winter, the snow never lies deep, nor long. These circumstances may partly account for the healthiness of the row of faces at the table of the American.

The society of Detroit is very choice; and, as it has continued so since the old colonial days, through the territorial days, there is every reason to think that it will become, under its new dignities, a more and more desirable place of residence. Some of its interior society is still very youthful; a gentleman, for instance, saying in the reading-room, in the hearing of one of our party, that, though it did not sound well at a distance, Lynching[10] was the only way to treat Abolitionists: but the most enlightened society is, I believe, equal to any which is to be found in the United States. Here we began to see some of the half-breeds, of whom we afterwards met so many at the north. They are the children of white men who have married squaws; and may be known at a glance, not only by the dark complexion, but by the high cheekbones, straight black hair, and an indescribable mischievous expression about the eyes. I never saw such imps and Flibbertigibbets as the half-breed boys that we used to see rowing or diving in the waters, or playing pranks on the shores of Michigan.

We had two great pleasures this day; a drive along the quiet Lake St. Clair, and a charming evening party at General Mason's. After a pilgrimage through the State of New York, a few exciting days at Niagara, and a disagreeable voyage along Lake Erie, we were prepared to enjoy to the utmost the novelty of a good evening party; and we were as merry as children at a ball. It was wholly unexpected to find ourselves in accomplished society on the far side of Lake Erie; and there was something stimulating in the contrast between the high civilisation of the evening, and the primitive scenes that we were to plunge into the next day. Though we had to pack up and write, and be off very early in the morning, we were unable to persuade ourselves to go home till late; and then we talked over Detroit as if we were wholly at leisure.

The scenery of Lake St. Clair was new to me. I had seen nothing in the United States like its level green banks, with trees slanting over the water, festooned with the wild vine; the groups of cattle beneath them; the distant steam-boat, scarcely seeming to disturb the grey surface of the still waters. This was the first of many scenes in Michigan which made me think of Holland; though the day of canals has not yet arrived.

15th. An obliging girl at the American provided us with coffee and biscuits at half-past five, by which time our "exclusive extra" was at the door. Charley had lost his cap. It was impossible that he should go bare-headed through the State; and it was lucky for us that a store was already open where he was furnished in a trice with a willow-hat. The brimming river was bright in the morning sun; and our road was, for a mile or two, thronged with Indians. Some of the inhabitants of Detroit, who knew the most about their dark neighbours, told me that they found it impossible to be romantic about these poor creatures. We, however, could not help feeling the excitement of the spectacle, when we saw them standing in their singularly majestic attitudes by the road-side, or on a rising ground: one, with a bunch of feathers tied at the back of the head; another, with his arms folded in his blanket; and a third, with her infant lashed to a board, and thus carried on her shoulders. Their appearance was dreadfully squalid.

As soon as we had entered the woods, the roads became as bad as, I suppose, roads ever are. Something snapped, and the driver cried out that we were "broke to bits." The team-bolt had given way. Our gentlemen, and those of the mail-stage, which happened to be at hand, helped to mend the coach; and we ladies walked on, gathering abundance of flowers, and picking our way along the swampy corduroy road. In less than an hour, the stage took us up, and no more accidents happened before breakfast. We were abundantly amused while our meal was preparing at Danversville. One of the passengers of the mail-stage took up a violin, and offered to play to us. Books with pictures were lying about. The lady of the house sat by the window, fixing her candle-wicks into the moulds. In the piazza, sat a party of emigrants, who interested us much. The wife had her eight children with her; the youngest, puny twins. She said she had brought them in a wagon four hundred miles; and if they could only live through the one hundred that remained before they reached her husband's lot of land, she hoped they might thrive; but she had been robbed, the day before, of her bundle of baby things. Some one had stolen it from the wagon. After a good meal, we saw the stage-passengers stowed into a lumber wagon; and we presently followed in our more comfortable vehicle.