The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-15 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN STATES OF AMERICA.

NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI, JUNE 14.
(Continued from the Times of July 12.)
As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage
drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white
people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of
the parish, where they had been attending a ser-
vice for the repose of the soul of a lady much be-
loved in the neighbourhood. The black people are
supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as ut-
terly lost as Mr. Shandy's homuncule was under
certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that
any such services are ever considered necessary in
their case, although they may have been very good
—or where it would be most desirable—very bad
Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable,
accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow
weighing down his young life that softened him to
almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these
things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone
by—of Paris and poetry, of England and London
hotels, of the great Carew, and of poor Alexis
Soyer, of pictures, of politics—de omne acibili. The
storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in tor-
rents—the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by—not a
boat on its broad surface. The road passed by
plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen
belonging to small planters, with only some 10 or
12 slaves, all told. The houses were poor and
ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning's
place, and drove to the overseer's—a large heavy-
eyed old man, who asked us into his house from
out of the rain till the boat was ready—and the
river did not look inviting—full of drift trees,
swirls, and mighty eddies. In the plain room
in which we sat there was a volume of " Spur-
geon's Sermons" and of Baxter's works. "This
rain will do good to the corn," said the overseer.
" The niggers had had sceerce nothin' to do
leetly, as they 'eve clearied out the fields, pretty
well." We drove down to a poor shed on the levee
called the Ferry-house, attended by one stout young
slave who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed
skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under
the shed and pulled out a piece of wood like a large
spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole
a little longer, " What are those ? quoth I, " Dem's
oars, Massa," was my sable ferryman's brisk reply.
" I'm very sure they are not ; if they were spliced
they might make an oar between them." " Golly,
and dat's the trute, Massa." " There, go and get oars,
will you ?" While he was hunting about we entered
the shed for shelter from the rain. We found " a
solitary woman sitting" smoking a pipe by the ashes
on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed, and morose

—young as she was. She never said a word nor
moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked
through her gummy eyes at chickens about the size
of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which
ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four
years of age, not overdressed—indeed, half-naked,
"not to put too fine a point upon it," crawled out from
under the bed, where she had hid on our approach.
As she seemed incapable of appreciating the uses of a
small piece of silver presented to her—having no pre-
cise ideas on coinage or toffy—her parent took the
obolus in charge with unmistakeable decision ; but
still she would not stir a step to aid our Charon,
who now insisted on the " key ov de oar-house."
The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from
the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit
the company of the silent woman in black. Charon
pushed his skiff into the water—there was a good
deal of rain in it—in shape a snuffer-dish some 10
feet long and a foot deep. I got in and the
conscious waters immediately began vigorously
spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith
the craft was caulked. Had we gone out into the
stream we should have had a swim for it, and they
do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous
river for that healthful exercise in the known world.
" Why! deuce take yon" (I said, at least that, in my
wrath), " don't you see the boat is leaky ?" " See it
now for true, Mama. Nobody able to tell dat till
Massa get in tho'." Another skiff proved to be
stanch. I bade good bye to my friend, and sat down
in my boat, which was soon forced up along the
stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start
across to the other side. The view, from my lonely
position, was curious,but not at all picturesque. The
landscape had disappeared at once. The world was
bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was con-
stituted by a broad river—just as if one were sail-
ing down an open sewer of enormous length and
breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the tops
of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A
row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee
on the other side. I ascended the bank, and directly
in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage
gateway and wickets of wood painted white in a
line of park palings of the same material, which ex-
tended up and down the road as far as the eye could
follow, and guarded widespread fields of maize and
sugar-cane. An avenue of trees with branches close
set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with
red brick led to the house, the porch of which was
just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clus-
tering flowers, rose, jessamine, and creepers cling-
ing to the pillars supporting the verandah. The
proprietor, who had espied my approach issued
forth with a section of sable attendants in his
rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house was
larger and better than the residences even of the
richest planters, though it was in need of some little
repair, and had been built perhaps 50 years ago,
but it had belonged to a wealthy family who lived
in the good old Irish fashion, and who built well,
ate well, drank well, and—finally, paid very well.
The view from the Belvedere was one of the most
striking of its kind in the world. If an English
agriculturist could see 6,000 acres of the finest
land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary,
and covered with the most magnificent crops of
tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as
level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his
senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six
thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch
in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which
can be cultivated for a hundred years to come with-
out requiring manure, of depth practically un-
limited, and yielding an average profit on what is
sold off it of at least £2O an acre at the old prices
and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst,
of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cot-
tages and the plantation offices and sugar-houses,
which look like large public edifices in the distance.
And who is the lord of all this fair domain ? The
proprietor of Houmas and Orange-grove is a man,
a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on the
bright side of half a century, after 25 years of suc-
cessful business.
When my
eyes " uncurtained the early morning"
I might have imagined myself in the magic garden
of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and multi-
farious were the carols of the birds, which were the
only happy coloured people I saw in my Southern
tour, notwithstanding the assurances of the many
ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to
prove to me that the palm of terrestrial felicity
must be awarded to their negroes. As I stepped
through my window upon the verandah a sharp
chirp called my attention to a mucking-bird perched
upon a rose bush beneath, whom my presence
seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated
behind my curtain, whence I observed her flight to
a nest cunningly hid in a creeping rose trailed
around a neighbouring column of the house, where
she imparted a breakfast of spiders and grasshop-
pers to her gaping and clamorous offspring. While
I was admiring the motherly grace of this melodious
flycatcher a servant brought coffee, and announced