Chapter VII: A Hunting Planter

Notwithstanding my reluctance to leave the Tennessean plantation, the event could no longer be delayed. I could bear the thought with greater equanimity that I had hope soon again to see my fair instructress in the statistics of cotton-planting.

"On my journey through the Mississippi State, I must call on her brother Henry. His plantation was not much out of my way. He could give me such sport, hunting bears and deer and panther, shooting swans, egrets and eagles. She herself would be going down soon--perhaps Walter too. Would I not stay till they came?"

Who would have declined such an invitation? Not I. My difficulty was to conceal an eagerness in its acceptance. I promised to pay this visit to the hunting brother; and provided with the proper credentials of introduction, I bade adieu to my Tennesseean acquaintances, and once more set my face for the South.

I had long since left behind me the region of turnpikes, and my route lay over roads where the hoof struck only on the softly-turfed surface of the earth. Now and then it coincided with the old "Natchez trace"--that once much-traveled highway, on which Murrell had committed many of his murders.

In due time--and with only those slight mischances which form rather the charms of travel--I reached the Mississippi plantation, and presented my letters of introduction to the proprietor. I was received with all the warmth of Western hospitality. Indeed, by my new host, Henry Woodley, credentials would scarce have been called for. Sufficient for him to know that I was fond of hunting, to have insured me a warm reception. With the addition of such introduction as I carried, it was only made the warmer; and I was received with as much zeal as if, instead of that pretty epistle from his sister, I had brought one from the old squire containing a check for a thousand dollars.

I was not long upon the plantation of Mr. Henry Woodley, till I could tell that this last would not have been unwelcome. Here every thing was different from the old homestead in Tennessee.

Instead of a handsome "frame house," well filled with furniture that approached the fashionable, I was introduced to a dwelling of a less pretentious kind. It was a large log-cabin, comfortable enough, but with no claim to architectural style. It stood inside of an inclosure of rude rail fence, overshadowed by trees and surrounded by a shrubbery of magnolias, osage orange, and other fair forms of vegetation, just as the forest had furnished them. At the back were the cooking quarters, standing apart; beyond them the stabling, and to one side a group of negro-cabins at some distance from the dwelling. Despite the primitive rudeness of the place, there was that picturesqueness that is pleasing to the eye.

There were, withal, sufficient signs to insure comfort, and a kennel close by containing a score of stag-hounds--some of them showing scars that could only have been made by the claws of bear or panther--promised something more--that sport of which their proprietor was so passionately fond--the grand chase.

It was for this, in truth, that Henry Woodley had selected his new home; for this consented, year after year, to endure the summer heats, and breathe the miasma of the Mississippi swamps--not to make a fortune in the culture of cotton and tobacco. His corn-growing was intended only to feed the horses in his stable, as well as the hogs required for the sustenance of the negro-quarters and the kennel.

Henry Woodley was not the only man I had met who, under the pretense of being a planter, passed three-fourths of his time in the chase--his farming being only a pleasant fiction--a pretext, to escape from the charge--even the self-accusation--of having nothing to do! Hundreds of such characters there are in the Mississippi valley.

Inside, as without, you had evidence of the house being a true hunter's home. In the vast open porch, with its adjoining gallery, you were surrounded by trophies of the chase--horns, skins and claws, suspended alongside a miscellaneous assortment of guns and riding-gear, nets, traps, and fishing-tackle.

Soon after my arrival, my host commenced initiating me into the ways of a Southern sportsman's life; and ere long I was introduced to the different kinds of chase practiced upon the Mississippi.

In less than a month I had collected, on my own account, most of those trophies that fall to the lot of a Mississippi hunter. Among them were skins of the black bear, the red puma or "painter" of the backwoodsmen, the spotted lynx--better known by the name of "wild-cat"--wolves, black and gray, with raccoons, opossums, skunks, swamp rabbits, and other four-footed "varmints." In my collection were the antlers of the Virginia stag, the scaly skin of the alligator, as also the singular gar-fish, or shark of the South-western waters.

Birds, too, figured among my trophies, including a fine specimen of the wild turkey, whose weight, when shot, was thirty pounds in the scale. I had obtained also the tall American crane, the trumpeter swan, the curious snake-bird, the blue heron, the white egret, the scarlet ibis, and many other beautiful birds, obtainable on the banks and bayous of the lower Mississippi.

The king of all, however--the white-headed eagle--was still wanted to complete my museum. Several times I had seen this splendid bird soaring aloft, or winging his way across the river. But, like most of the falcon tribe, the white-headed eagle is shy of the approach of man; and I had never succeeded in getting a shot at one. All the more did I desire to add the eagle to my collection.

My host, eager to gratify me, caused inquiries to be made.

It ended in our hearing of a "roost" upon one of the islands, some twenty miles down the river, where a nest had been observed in the spring, and afterward the brood of birds--a single brace, along with their parents.

In the neighborhood of a nest where they have succeeded in bringing forth their young, the eagles can more easily be approached. Where they have been so long permitted to go undisturbed, their confidence becomes established. Knowing this, I determined on making an excursion to the island.

On this occasion I was to go without my host, accompanied only by one of his negroes, named "Jake." I had made several excursions so attended when the young planter was otherwise occupied--Jake and the skiff being always placed at my disposal.

The darky knew the island in question, though he had never landed upon it; and what I thought strange, did not seem to relish the idea of guiding me to the place! At other times he had shown the greatest eagerness to be my hunting companion, as it afforded him a pleasanter time than any other employment upon the plantation.

It would be a two hours' pull down-stream, and might take us twice that time to return--the river here running with a rapid current, especially in proximity to the island.

Perhaps it was the prospect of so much toil under a hot sun that was rendering Jake so reluctant; and with this explanation to myself, I followed my unwilling conductor to the skiff.