[Subsection]

THE day before yesterday, the 16th, I left Cincinnati; my kind, excellent host and hostess accompanied me on board the steamer, and overwhelmed me at the last moment with proofs of their good-will, all light and agreeable to bear away with me, because they were bestowed with a warm heart, and they were to accompany me to Sweden, and there remind me of the beautiful Ohio and my Cincinnati home. The good Jothim, Mr. S., presented me with a collection of shells from the Ohio River, some of which are extremely beautiful.

It was a lovely sunny day, that on which I commenced my journey, and Cincinnati, its vine-covered hills, its lovely villas, and the River Ohio were brilliant in the sunshine. There was a sunny warmth in my soul likewise, and the proofs of kindness which I received from many   [p. 172]   friends in the city during the last few days were to me like the soft summer wind; but I was very weary after a violent headache and the excitement of departure. I longed for rest and silence.

The giant steamer Belle Key moved slowly along, thundering down the clear blue river, the lofty shores of which, with their ever-changing scenes, glided past cheerful and lovely. The river became broader, the hills sank lower, the villas disappeared, farm-houses and log-houses recurred at more and more distant intervals, the banks became more wooded and desolate. We approached the Mississippi.

What is going on? Why do the people rush out from the fields? A chase upon the water?

A stag with branching antlers swims across the river from the Kentucky to the Ohio shore. He is not far from the free shore; but two boats are after him from the slave shore. His proud antlers raise themselves high above the water. He swims rapidly; perhaps he may save himself! He is just at the shore. Ah! and now a boat puts out from the free shore toward him. Woe betide the poor fugitive! He turns round. The two boats from Kentucky meet him. Now he is surrounded. I see the oars lifted from all the three boats to give him his death-blow. That beautiful head is still seen above the water. Now fall the oars! I turn my head away. The steamer rounds a point. We have lost sight of the wild chase. The defenseless fugitive is in the power of his pursuers.

I am weary and dejected. The air is pleasant, the water bright and blue; heaven also is bright. Does the deer find no peaceful meadows beyond the river of death, where he may rest after the wild chase?

The steamer Belle Key is of the family of the river giants. I call it Noah's Ark, because it has more than a thousand animals on board, on the deck below us and above us. Immense oxen, really mammoth oxen, so fat   [p. 173]   that they can scarcely walk--cows, calves, horses, mules, sheep, pigs, whole herds of them, send forth the sound of their gruntings from the lower deck, and send up to us between times any thing but agree able odors; and on the deck above us turkeys gobble--geese, ducks, hens, and cocks crow and fight, and little pigs go rushing wildly about, and among the poultry pens.

On the middle deck, where we, the sons and daughters of Adam are bestowed, every thing, in the mean time, is remarkably comfortable. The ladies' saloon is large and handsome, and the passengers few, and of an excellent class. I have my state-room to myself. I am like a princess in a fairy-tale. My cavalier for the journey, Mr. Lerner H., is one of that energetic and warm-hearted class of American men, and add to this a very agreeable fellow also, who in his behavior to "a lady intrusted to his care" has that blending of brotherly cordiality and chivalric politeness which makes the man of the New World the most agreeable companion that a lady can desire. No screaming children disturb the quietness on board; and the grunting of the swine and other animal sounds in our Noah's Ark we do not allow to trouble us. All these animals are destined to the Christmas market of New Orleans.

December 17th. The Mississippi-Missouri flows turbidly and broad with its increasing waters, full of drift-wood, trees, branches, and stumps, which give us sometimes no inconsiderable bumps. The shores are low and swampy, covered with the now leafless woods of a kind of poplar called cotton-wood. It is horribly monotonous. The weather is gray and cold, and every thing looks gray around us. We have now Missouri on our right, and Kentucky on our left. I am sorry not to have had time to see more of Kentucky and Kentucky people. They are peculiar in appearance and in disposition. They are tall, very limber in their joints, and dexterous, generous, freespoken,   [p. 174]   good-natured, cordial, droll people, whom I should have become very fond of. And then "Skyrnir's Glove," the mammoth cave, and the little green river which flows there-- I ought to have seen them! Lerner H. talks about that cave till I almost fancy I have seen it.

I must tell you of a pleasure which he prepared for me one evening on the Ohio. He asked me whether I should like to hear the negroes of the ship sing, and led me for this purpose to the lowest deck, where I beheld a strange scene. The immense engine-fires are all on this deck, eight or nine apertures all in a row; they are like yawning fiery throats, and beside each throat stood a negro naked to his middle, who flung in fire-wood. Pieces of wood were passed onward to these feeders by other negroes, who stood up aloft on a large open place between them and a negro, who, standing on a lofty stack of firewood, threw down with vigorous arms food for the monsters on deck. Lerner H. encouraged the negroes to sing; and the negro up aloft on the pile of fire-wood began immediately an improvised song in stanzas, and at the close of each the negroes down below joined in vigorous chorus. It was a fantastic and grand sight to see these energetic black athletes lit up by the wildly flashing flames from the fiery throats, while they, amid their equally fantastic song, keeping time most exquisitely, hurled one piece of fire-wood after another into the yawning fiery gulf. Every thing went on with so much life, and so methodically, and the whole scene was so accordant and well arranged, that it would have produced a fine effect upon any theatre whatever. The improvisation was brought finally to a close with a hint that the singing would become doubly merry, and would sing twice as well, if they could have a little brandy when they reached Louisville, and that they could buy brandy if they could have a little money, and so on.

Nor did Mr. H. allow them to be mistaken in their anticipations.

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We are still in the grain-district of the Mississippi, but we shall soon reach the region of cotton. We have now Arkansas on our right hand, and Tennessee on our left, slave states rich in natural beauty, but still rude in spiritual and material culture.

December 20th. We are now in the region of cotton. The shores on both sides are low and swampy, covered by forests of cotton-wood-trees, now leafless. Here and there, however, are interspersed cotton plantations, with the white slave villages and the habitations of the planters; and one sees swarthy figures moving about on the gray soil, gathering the cotton-pods that still remain upon the blackening shrubs. I went on shore to-day with Mr. H. at a cotton plantation, and broke off some branches, with tufts of cotton still hanging upon them, from shrubs which grew round a slave-hut. The tufts of cotton are extremely beautiful as they come forth from the opening capsules of the seed-pod. Every seed is imbedded in a pillow of cotton. Cotton is the envelope of the seed. You shall see it when I return.

We have now Arkansas on our right, and the State of Mississippi on our left. Along the river lie the canebrake, thick reed-like canes, which stand up as impenetrable as a wall between the water and the laud.

Thus far came Father Marquette upon his sun-bright Mississippi journey from the North; thus far, also, from the South advanced the first European discoverer, the Spaniard, Ferdinand de Soto.

The discovery of the Mississippi is two poems; the one beautiful and sun-bright as its idyllian islands and its clear waters in the North, the other as melancholy, as tragically gloomy as the tint and the scenery of the river in its southern portion, through which I am now journeying. The hero of the former is the mild, unpretending Father Marquette. The hero of the latter is the proud warrior, Ferdinand de Soto.

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Soto had been the favorite companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru; he had distinguished himself at the storming of Cusco, and was favored by Charles V. in Spain, and rewarded both with honor and wealth, and finally appointed by him Governor of Cuba. But his proud, ambitious mind desired more. Fooled by false prophets, and most of all by his own heart, he desired to fit out an expedition at his own cost, which should advance from Florida into North America, and there conquer for the Spaniards richer treasures and more beautiful lands than those of Mexico and Peru; and his own belief possessed so great a power of influencing the mind of the Spaniards, that vast numbers of young men of noble birth and good fortune enlisted under his command. They sold their vineyards, their houses, and valuables to purchase expensive arms, equipments, and horses. Out of multitudes who offered themselves as volunteers on this new expedition of discovery, he selected six hundred young men, all adventurers, wealthy, and proud as himself.

A more magnificent spectacle was never beheld than that of the landing of these proud cavaliers on the shore of the New World; their banners and standards floating in the air, in the soft air of Florida, full, as it were, of youthful vitality, of the intoxicating elixir of life. Thus galloped they onward in burnished armor, "very gallant, with silk upon silk," along the shore between the sea and the unknown land which they believed to be full of gold and great cities.

Ferdinand de Soto, who wished to prevent all possibility, either for himself or his troop, of retreat, which might be desired by fickleness or by fear, sent back all his vessels to Cuba, and advanced with his warriors into the wildernesses of the New World. They took with them weapons of all kinds, work-tools, as well as chains and bloodhounds for the subjection of the natives.

It was in the month of May, 1539.

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And ever as they advanced onward through the wilderness, mass was punctually performed by priests with all the pomp of Catholic observance, and ever as they advanced onward they practiced cruelty against the natives while in their own camp they occupied themselves with the excitement of desperate gaming.

The wanderings of the first year were westward, thence into Georgia, which was then, like all the rest of the undetermined southeastern continent, called Florida. Their journeyings were difficult, and often dangerous, from the hostility of the Indians. They found abundance of maize, but no gold and no cities, only small Indian villages. Nor could the natives inform them of any land in which gold was to be found. Some of the adventurers now desired that their leader should turn back; but he replied,

"I will not turn back till I have seen the poverty of the country with my own eyes."

And he ordered the Indians to be burned or mutilated, whom he believed had intentionally misled him. Other captive Indians, alarmed at this, assured him that gold might be found further toward the northwest. And De Soto and his men journeyed on still further, plundering and desolating as they went.

The second year brought them into the highlands of Georgia, where they fell in with the peaceful and gentle Cherokee Indians. A number of De Soto's people wished to settle themselves down here in the midst of this beautiful region, to till the soil and enjoy the good things of the earth. But De Soto had promised Spain gold and great cities, and the proud Spaniard would not rest until he had found them. He was an obstinate man, of few words and strong will, and all his attendants yielded themselves to him.

They wandered still further; advanced into Alabama, where there was a large town called Mavilla (afterward Mobile). Here the Indians rose up against him. A battle   [p. 178]   ensued--the Spanish cavalry overcame the enemy: a more bloody Indian battle was never fought on American soil; the town was set on fire; two thousand five hundred Indians are said to have been slain, suffocated, or burned; the Spaniards lost a few of their number, and most of their baggage, which perished in the flames with the Indian town.

Spanish ships had, however, in the mean time, arrived from Cuba at Pensacola Bay, near Mavilla. But De Soto had not yet found either silver or gold; the flames of Mavilla had destroyed the curious collections which he had made, and, too proud to acknowledge his hopes defeated, he resolved to send no news of himself until he had obtained that for which he sought. He turned away from the sea-coast and proceeded northwestward, in the State of Mississippi. His little band was now diminished to five hundred men.

In the northern parts of Mississippi they were surprised by winter, with severe frost and snow. But maize was still standing in the fields, and the Spaniards were able to obtain a supply of food and shelter for the winter also in the deserted huts of the Chickasaw Indians. But they had not yet found gold; neither had the Indians golden ornaments. They were poor, but loved freedom. When spring came, and De Soto demanded from them an escort to carry the baggage of his soldiers, the Indians set fire to his camp, and their fierce war-whoop rang through the night and amid the flames.

The Spaniards lost here the clothing and the stores which had been saved from the fires of Mavilla. They were now as naked as their Indian enemies, and they suffered from cold and hunger; but with his difficulties increased the pride and obstinacy of De Soto. Was it for him, who had promised to conquer the treasures of the world, to return with half-naked men despoiled of their all?

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He ordered the chains to be taken from the limbs of the captives, and new weapons to be forged; he clothed his troops in garments of skins and mats of ivy-leaves, and advanced still further west in search of the land of gold.

For seven days they wandered through a wilderness of forests and morasses. They then reached the Indian settlements on the banks of the Mississippi.

Ferdinand de Soto was the first European who beheld the mighty river.

The lapse of three centuries has not changed its character. It was then described as broad and turbid, flowing on with a powerful current, and with a quantity of trees and timber always floating on its stream.

In May, 1541, the Spaniards crossed the river in large boats which they themselves had built. De Soto proceeded into Arkansas. Here the Spaniards were saluted by the natives as children of the Sun, and the blind were brought to them that they might receive their sight from the children of the Light.

"Pray only to God who dwells in heaven," replied De Soto, "and He will give you what you need."

Following his dark impulse, De Soto advanced still further toward the northwest, and finally reached the highlands of the White River, two hundred miles from the Mississippi. But neither did these mountains yield gold nor precious stones!

De Soto and his people took up their winter quarters in an Indian town on the banks of the White River, Washita, among a peaceful Indian tribe, who were employed in agriculture, and who had fixed towns. The young cavaliers practiced upon the unoffending natives every cruelty which their unbridled caprice suggested. De Soto, it is said, had no pleasure in cruelty; but the lives and rights of the Indians were counted as nothing by him.

In the following spring De Soto determined to descend the Washita to its junction, and to obtain tidings of the   [p. 180]   sea. He bewildered himself among the morasses which border the Red River and its tributaries. In one province, called Guachoya, he inquired from the chief how far it was thence to the sea? The chief could not tell. Were there settlements through the country from that point to the junction of the river? He was told that the whole country there was an uninhabitable swamp. De Soto, unwilling to credit such discouraging intelligence, sent men on horseback to examine the land southward along the Mississippi. In eight days they were not able to advance further than thirty miles, they were so constantly impeded by morasses, by the denseness of the forests, and the impenetrable cane-brakes.

The governor heard their report in gloomy silence. Horses and men were dying around him, and the Indians were becoming more and more dangerous. He attempted to overawe a tribe of Indians near Natchez by saying that he was of supernatural descent, and therefore demanded of them obedience and tribute.

"You say that you are the child of the Sun," replied the chief: "dry up this river, and I will believe you!"

Ferdinand de Soto could no longer overawe or punish. His arrogance and his stubborn pride were now subdued by a gloomy melancholy, and his health began to decline under the conflict with adversity and suffering. He was attacked by a malignant fever, during which he was neither cared for nor visited as his state required. His little company had now melted away to three hundred men.

When he felt his death approach, he called around him the remnant of his faithful followers, who obeyed him to the last, and named his successor.

The following day he died. His soldiers pronounced his eulogy by sorrowing for his loss. The priests chanted over his body the first requiem which was ever heard by the waters of the Mississippi. In order to conceal his   [p. 181]   death, they wrapped his body in a mantle, and in the depth of night bore it out upon the Mississippi, and sank it silently in the middle of the stream.

It was now again May, and the spring burst forth glorious over the Mississippi, but De Soto rose up no more to meet it.

"The discoverer of the Mississippi," adds the historian, to whom I am much indebted for the above, "slept beneath its waters. For four years he had wandered to and fro over a great portion of the continent in search of gold, but had found nothing so remarkable as the place of his burial."

Father Marquette slumbered at the foot of the altar, without sickness and sorrow, after a life of peaceful conquest and uninterrupted success; and Ferdinand de Soto, slowly dying amid morasses and adversities, that proud heart the prey of anxiety and of humiliation--what pictures they present! Has poetry any thing brighter than the former, any thing more gloomy than the latter?

December 21st. The Mississippi flows gray, turbid, and broad; still broader and still more turbid it seems to me under this gray, chilly, wintery sky. Its waters become more and more swollen every day, and the shores become still more flat and swampy, bordered with cotton-wood and cane-brake. Great blocks of timber, trees, and all kind of things float along the Mississippi, all telling of wreck and desolation. This great river seems to me like the waters of the Deluge, and they bear along with them a vast register of sin. Our magnificent Noah's Ark, however, more cosmopolitan than its ancient predecessor, floats upon the great cosmopolitan waters with an easy conscience, and is such a capital place altogether, that, though I sometimes think of the Deluge and the Mississippi register of sin, and of De Soto's fate in these regions, and see the impression of his spirit stamped upon the gloomy landscape, upon the gray earth and sky yet so musing, I   [p. 182]   can not but feel cheerful of mood. I seem to see myself here, like a citizeness of the world, conveyed along by the great citizen of the world; and thus I know that I shall now become acquainted with its geographical history to its very close, and that I shall see that beautiful Cuba and the life of the tropics; and thus I think--many thoughts.

Every thing on board is quiet, and all goes on with order and propriety. I spend the forenoons by myself, read a little American history, and in Buchanan's "Journal of Man," and let my thoughts flow with the stream forth into the ocean. The afternoons and evenings are passed in company with some agreeable passengers on board. At meal-times Mr. H. always stands ready in the saloon to conduct me to table, and in the morning extends to me his hand with a brotherly salutation. He sits beside me at table, mentions the various dishes to me, and tells me what I may eat, and always is right; is charming and agreeable in every way; reminds me often in his manner of our Captain G., and resembles him also, inasmuch as he abuses his own head for being badly furnished, while he is possessed of a very excellent, acute, and sound intellect. How it may be with regard to his acquired knowledge I can not say, but this I know, that these strong practical characters, when they are united to a warm heart and a noble disposition, are to me at the same time especially a repose and a refreshment. A man who, from his own acquired property, purchases and furnishes a house for his father and sister, is one whom I should like to have for a brother; but not for the sake of the house.

The animals, who are both below us and above us, amuse me also, all except the pigs, which I would were all of them drowned together in the Mississippi, because they send such repulsive odors up to our piazza every now and then. The great variety of animal cries are not at all   [p. 183]   unpleasing to hear at a distance, and they all look in such good condition, and are so well off, that I generally once a day make a round of salutation among them. The oxen are so fat that they can hardly get up when they have laid themselves down; and they are obliged to be roused to that every morning by the keen caresses of the whip.

I must now tell you about some new acquaintance whom I have made on board. First, two young sisters from Vermont, real rose-buds in their exterior; and with souls of the purest crystal, genuine daughters of New England even in this, that though they might live in ease in their own home, they prefer as teachers to earn their own bread, and thus obtain an independent life for themselves. You would be as much fascinated with them as I am. The eldest sister is twenty-five, and is now on her way to undertake the management of a ladies' seminary in the State of Mississippi. The younger is only seventeen, and is going as a pupil in the school where her sister is teacher. Both are most charming girls, and both have each their favorite brother, of whom they can not say enough in praise, and whose portraits they have shown me. Their parents are dead. They are here quite alone on the vessel. Sometimes they stand together on the piazza, and sing duets together very sweetly.

The eldest is the loveliest type of the young teacher of the New World, that young woman, who, although delicate and slender in figure, and gifted with every feminine grace, stands more steadfastly upon her ground than the Alps or the pyramids of the earth; who understand Euclid and Algebra as well as any master of arts, and who understands better than any how to manage a school of unmanageable boys.

"I love to rule little boys," said Miss G., with a smile, which had a good deal of conscious power mingled with its amiability. And with this power of goodness and beautiful womanliness, she goes calmly to assume her vocation   [p. 184]   of teacher; but not merely as the teacher, but with the sentiment of being one of the young mothers of humanity.

And I do not know any image more beautiful. Such young women are the true heroines of romance of our day.

When I inquired whence that amiable young girl had derived both her strength and her gentle grace, her lofty view of the nobility of life, and the purpose of man, I was presented with a sweet and gravely beautiful image of her deceased mother.

"I remember," said she, as we sat together one evening in the twilight, "I remember how she used to go out with me in the morning when I was a little girl, and wander over the green hills while the dew was yet on the grass; and how she would show me the little clover-flowers on the field-turf which my foot trod, and let me see their perfect beauty, and taste how sweet they were with their honeyed juice!"

Bright tears shone in the beautiful eyes of the speaker. The little clover-flower has raised its head. It had become human.

I saw once more Hiram Powers' American, but not merely in marble, in living reality.

My other agreeable acquaintance on board is a gentleman between forty and fifty, with one of those pure, handsome countenances which one can not do otherwise than put one's entire trust in, and which remind me of that of our king, Gustavus Adolphus II., from its frankness and manliness, although it has less of the warlike in expression. My new friend is somewhat phlegmatic and contemplative. His conversation gives me especial pleasure. Do not be afraid if I tell you that he has lived long in the Southern States as a planter and a slave owner; you may see immediately, by his beautiful deep blue eyes, that he was the best of masters in the world. Are you afraid that I am in love with him, and in spirit do   [p. 185]   you see me give him my hand, and settle down on a cotton plantation on the Mississippi, in the midst of negro slaves?

Yes, if I were younger, and if my life's purpose were less decided than it now is, I confess that there is here and there one of these American gentlemen, with their energy, their cordiality, and chivalric spirit, who might be dangerous to my heart. But as it now is, I receive every sentiment of cordial liking which is evinced toward me, by man or by woman, with calm gratitude, as a cream on the good food of life, as the sunbeam and the spring-breeze, which makes the day beautiful. I seek not for them, but when they come, I enjoy them as flowers given by the hand of the all-good Father.

But now, as particularly regards this agreeable gentleman, he is already married, and is traveling with his family to Cuba, where, on account of the health of his wife, they will spend the winter, and after that to Europe. His wife is an invalid, but has the same character of seriousness and gentleness as himself. Both husband and wife appear to be sincerely attached to each other. Why should such people be slave-owners? or, rather, why could not all slave-owners be such people?

The planter's wife told me that her husband never was able to enjoy real peace of mind on the plantations, for that the thought of his slaves, and the wish to do them justice, and to treat them well, disturbed him day and night; he was always afraid of not doing enough for them.

We are now near Vicksburg, a city of bad reputation on the Mississippi, but a city also which shows the ability of the North Americans for self-government. A few years since a band of desperate gamblers and adventurers settled themselves down there. They set up a gambling-club, and decoyed young men thither, purposely excited quarrels, and fought with pistols in the streets, and even in houses, and committed every kind of outrage. The   [p. 186]   wise men of the city assembled, and announced to the gamblers that they must either vacate the city within eight days, or that they would be seized and hanged. The gamblers treated the announcement with scorn, and gambled and quarreled, and had their pistol-fights as before. When the eight days of grace were past, the friends of order in the city assembled, seized them, and hanged the one who was the worst of the set, and then, putting the rest in a boat, they turned them adrift on the Mississippi. Such summary treatment is called Lynch-law, and is the self-assumed administration of law, by a sense of justice, where there exists no ordinary executive power able to administer the law according to its usual forms. After this execution, which I believe occurred last year, Vicksburg became a creditable place.

We shall soon leave the region of cotton for that of sugar. But when shall we arrive at the region of summer? It is constantly cold and cheerless.

December 22d. Now we are there! Now we are there! and summer breezes and sunshine surround us! But--but I must tell you consecutively that which has formed a turning-point in my whole state of feeling.

This is the seventh day of my journey down the Mississippi. When I came out on the piazza in the morning, I felt as if I were in an enchanted world. The sweetest summer breezes caressed me; the softest blue heaven lay over the Mississippi, and airy, open, cultivated fields on its banks; snowy masses of summer-cloud were chased by the warm breeze; and upon the verdant meadows which covered the shores shone out lovely habitations, standing in groves of orange-trees, shrubberies of roses, cypresses, and cedars. An indescribably mild and delicious life of beauty breathed in every thing and over every thing. Every thing was changed. We had, below Memphis, entered the region of sugar, or the country in which the sugar-cane is cultivated, as well as cotton and maize. We   [p. 187]   had passed Natchez, where formerly a powerful Indian tribe had worshiped the sun, and maintained a perpetual fire, a place with bloody memories. We had left the city of the bloody memories behind us, we had left behind us the States of Mississippi and Arkansas. We were now in Louisiana, the limits of which embraced both shores of the river. We were speeding into the bosom of the South, and it received us with a warm heart. So I felt it, and my own heart expanded itself to every gentle power of life and of nature. I sat silently aft on the piazza the whole forenoon, in a sort of quiet intoxication of enjoyment, inhaling the delicious atmosphere and the southern landscape, thrilled with the enchanting aspect of heaven and earth, and the indescribable soft mild air which was diffused through the infinite between them.

It was noon. The air became more and more delicious, and more and more animated became the scenes on the river-banks. Caravans of black men and women were seen driving out from the planter's house to the fields. After them came one or two buggies or cabriolets, in which were probably the overseers or the masters themselves. I gazed on the whole scene in that spirit of human love, in which to keep one's self, one believes, in good humor, the best of all men, and in which one endeavors to see every thing and all circumstances on the sunny side.

Two hours later I still sat aft on the piazza, and inhaled the same mild, delicious atmosphere, still beheld the same scene of southern beauty, but gazed upon it with a heart full of bitterness. Yes, for a dark picture had bean unfolded before my gaze--a picture which I never shall forget; which perpetually, like a spectre of the abyss, will step between me and the memory of that enchanting veil which one moment captivated and darkened my vision.

I sat and gazed upon that beautiful scene as one looks at the scene of a theatre. I enjoyed with childish delight the decorations. Then came my new friend, the planter,   [p. 188]   and seated himself in an arm-chair on the piazza. We spoke a few words about the deliciousness of the air, which he enjoyed as much as I did. Then we sat silently contemplating the scenery of the shores. We saw the caravans of slaves and their overseers proceeding over the fields. I said to my neighbor in that spirit of human love which I have mentioned, "There is a great deal more happiness and comfort in this life (the slaves' life) than one commonly imagines."

The planter turned to me his beautiful head with a glance which I shall never forget; there was astonishment, almost reproach in it, and a profound melancholy.

"Oh!" said he, in a low voice, "you know nothing of that which occurs on these shores; if you did, you would not think so. Here is much violence and much suffering! At this season in particular, and from the time when the cotton is ready to pluck, a great deal of cruelty is practiced on the plantations around here. There are plantations here where the whip never rests during all these months. You can have no idea of such flogging."

I will not repeat those scenes which the planter related to me, scenes which he himself had witnessed of violence, cruelty, and suffering during more than fourteen years, abominations which finally drove him thence, which drove him to sell his plantation, and leave the slave states forever. I will merely introduce some of this excellent man's words.^[1*]

"I have known men and women who were actual devils toward their slaves-- whose pleasure it was to torment them.

"People can flog a negro almost to death, and yet not let a drop of blood flow. The strip of cowhide which is

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used in doors can cause the most horrible torture without any mark being left.

"Women are not unfrequently the most horrible tormentors of the house-slaves, and I would rather be one of the field-hands than the house-slave of a passionate woman. The institution of slavery seems to change the very nature of woman.

"Slavery is destructive of the white. I have known young men and women, amiable in all respects, of the most attractive manners and dispositions, but toward their slaves they were unjust and severe.

"There are naturally exceptions. There are good and tender masters and mistresses, but they are few. The rule is, that slavery blinds and hardens the mind of the slave-owner from childhood upward.

"The state of things is considerably improved of late years, and still is improving. Light is beginning to enter this country; people are no longer afraid of speaking. A few years ago, if a person had published a seventh part of what I have now told you, he would have been shot without any further process. The slave-owner now acknowledges that the eye of the public is directed to him. It makes him more careful. Slaves, for the last ten or twelve years, have been better clothed and fed in this part of the country than they used to be; but sadly too much injustice and sadly too much cruelty exists still, and must always exist, so long as this institution lasts. And it is my conviction that it will soon become "the question "--the question of life and death within the American Union.

"Even now a man makes no demur about shooting down a negro whom he suspects of intending to run away, and the law is silent on all such acts of violence. I have seen many slaves severely wounded from having been shot at under such circumstances, but one only killed.

"Passion and insanity in the treatment of slaves are common.

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"The law is no protection to the slave. It is nominally so, but it is not any actual defense. The slave suffers from his master; the lawyers shut their eyes to the affair as long as they can; and the negro can not be a witness in a court of justice.

"They talk of public opinion; but public opinion is here, as yet, for the most part the product of demagogues. And the cotton interest is the only conscience. Many people see all this as very wrong, and deplore it, but they are silent, from the fear of involving themselves in trouble.

"The festivals of the slaves are for the most part a fiction. On some plantations they are allowed to dance at Christmas, if the cotton is picked and the sugar is ground; but when the harvest is late, as it is this year, the festival is put off to eternity, and for the greater number it always remains there. If the harvest has been good and the work is done, then the negroes may sometimes dance.

"Hitherto no religious instruction has been allowed to the slave on the plantations, nor is it even to this hour. But God knows how it has happened, some of these poor creatures have, notwithstanding, got hold of some of the truths of the Gospel, and you can scarcely imagine the eagerness with which they listen to every word. I know two plantations where the slaves have regular Christian instruction, and it is very probable that this may spread and produce a change in the relationship between slave and master.

"The time is perhaps not far distant when public opinion will become a real defense to the slave, and more so than law can ever be.

"People are becoming compelled to more justice and gentleness toward their slaves, for their own safety. I have known times here when there was not a single planter who had a calm night's rest; at that time they never lay down to sleep without a brace of loaded pistols at their side.

  [p. 191]  

"If people would only attempt to treat the slave with justice and with reason, they would be astonished at the results of these methods. The negro is in a high degree susceptible of kindness and justice. He is disposed to subordination under any real superior, and if the whites would avail themselves of such means, they would be able to govern the negro, or, at all events, he would work for him without the whip.

"I never allowed the whip to be used on my plantation to drive them to work; there was no need of it. Justice, regularity, reason, sufficed with them; and they worked well. I only allowed the whip to be used (and one can not, in the present uncultivated condition of the negroes, do without the whip on the plantations) as a punishment for theft and quarrels; but for driving them to their work it is not at all necessary.

"I am convinced that slaves might become free servants, and, as such, would work very well. All those dangers which are predicted in emancipation are, in my opinion, mere dreams. If emancipation were to take place gradually and wisely, it would then proceed without danger or difficulty. The experiments which some persons, and among these Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Henderson, have tried with their slaves has proved this.

"Education, accompanied by a prospect of emancipation, would be the right means.

"But a great many things must be changed here before such a thought as this becomes general. I know men of high religious professions who have been the most cruel of slave-owners.

"And if I were to divulge all that I have seen, and know has taken place, and still takes place in these states, it would be enough to make the hair stand on end on the head of every right-minded person.

"The histories of fugitive slaves, some of which I have read, are not always to be relied upon. I often see that   [p. 192]   they fabulate, and there is no need of fabulation to make the condition of the slave horrible. The reality is worse than any fiction. And if I were a slave, I should--oh, I should certainly--leap into the river, and put an end to my life!"

These words, and the narratives with which they were interspersed of fearful things which have occurred, and are still of daily occurrence on these shores, mingled themselves like a poisoned wind with the summer breezes which still caressed me. I beheld the old slave hunted to death because he dared to visit his wife--beheld him mangled, beaten, recaptured, fling himself into the water of the Black River, over which he was retaken into the power of his hard master. And the law was silent.

I beheld a young woman struck, for a hasty word, upon the temples, so that she dropped down dead! And the law was silent.

I heard the law, through its jury, adjudicate between a white man and a black, and sentence the latter to be flogged when the former only was guilty. And they who were honest among the jurymen in vain opposed the verdict!

I beheld here, on the shore of the Mississippi, only a few months since, a young negro girl fly from the maltreatment of her master, and he a professor of religion, and fling herself into the river.

I saw multitudes of captives, men and women, condemned to labor early and late, deprived of every ray of that light which could give hope to captivity, and prevented from hearing the voice of the Savior, which says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden," debarred from all this by men who call themselves Christians. But forgive me, my Agatha! Why should your eyes be tormented with these gloomy pictures? I would that I could avoid seeing them. But the effect of them will never leave me. There was an end of all my enjoyment   [p. 193]   of the air and the beauty of the South. I seemed to hate my own kind who could perpetrate such cruelties and such injustice. I hated those who could gloss all this over for the interests of trade. I was indignant with myself for having wished to spare myself, to blind myself, to what I must have known would be the inevitable consequences of the institution of slavery. Yes, I ought to have known it; but I thought that it now no longer could be so!

Georgia and Carolina have, however, allowed the introduction of Christianity among the slaves. I had heard in Georgia and Carolina the children of Africa burst forth in songs of praise of their Redeemer!

But here, in the beautiful southern land of the Mississippi Valley, it was worse then heathenism! Mississippi, thou great Noah's flood, now do I know thy history to the end.

But in the midst of its darkest career, I have seen the conscience of the South glance brightly upward in a pure eye, directed toward heaven in a warm and honest heart; and this is my consolation and my hope. The sunshine on the Mississippi is no mere lie. "Darkness was upon the face of the deep, but the Spirit of God moved over the waters."