The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1882-05-17
ATYpIcAL SOUTHERN TOWN.


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TYPICAL SOUTHERN TOWN.
Points of Life rs II Exists ia North Carolina.
Washington is quaint, sleepy old town,
on the north bank of the Tar River, in the
heart of the deep, balsamy woods of East
travel to the south pass hundred miles to
the westward and tourists are rarely seen
here; but there are lumber dealers and fish
buyers and the ubiquitous commercial travel
er to convey to the villagers occasional hints
of world outside. To understand the
salient physical features of the village one
must imagine broad river, nearly mile
in width, flowing seward with q current so
slow as to be almost imperceptible. On its
left bank are bluffs and the village; on
the right dense swamp, with struggling
clumps of cypress and pine rising above its
underground.
The village has one main street extend
ing along the river front. On the landward
side are the frame dwellings, of the villagers,
some painted, but the majority not and OF
dreary sameness IN point of architecture.
On the river side are stores, hotel, saw
mills, turpentine distilleries, cotton ware
houses filled with the unginned staple IN
bulk, docks where restless little steamers
arrive and depart, and stagings pendent from
which are long lines of nets drying in the
sun. There are three white y churches
in the town-one quaint, ancient aud ivy
wreathed, and a dingy old courthouse its
wills and passages hacked by knife blades,
redolent of tobacco smoke, aud suggestive
of the scenes enacted within in the days of
the slavery regime. Back of this respecta-
bility there is an underlined region OF low
wooden cabins, garbage heaps, goat prom
enades, and geese ponds, known Us the
snegro quarter Gaunt chimneys rise
from the smoke -blaekened ruins along the
main street-souvenirs of the late war; and
through the waste fields just without the
town runs a line of heavy Notifications. No
southern village can be accounted typical
without them. The line begins at the river
bank on the right, encircles the town. and
strikes the river again on the left. They
were thrown up partly by Confederates and
partly by Federals, and some lively work
was done about their Scared and seamy
sides in the winter of 1862, when Fosters
force pushed into this region after the cap
ture of Roanoke Island and Newbern.
Peaceful cotton and rice plantations come
up TO the base of these ramparts now, and
beyond them are the dense pine forests that
Carolina. The bar is here SPAWNED by
drawbridge built on wooden piles, and con-
meeting on the opposite shore with the turn
pike road to Newborn, some twenty five
miles distant, Beside its piers fishermen are
drawing their nets, and many more are scat
tered up and down the river They catch
striped and black bass, perch, and mullet
The social features of the town, however,
are much more interesting than the physical
One can watch here at his leisure the con.
iict between the old and the new that il
going ON everywhere in the South. Here
are the :" old families" still maintaining
their proud exclnsiveness, and the old con.
servative methods and ideas in lively con-
tlict with the new, which the press and the
few interlopers from the North are daily
spreading. Even the old Bourbon element
admits that society is in transition state,
and that twenty years will work vast
change in the texture of the social fabric.
The old bitterness of the war era seems to be
nearly eliminated During my visit have
mingled freely with all classes, neither con-
cealng nor obtruding my opinions, and
only once have met with an expression of
unkindness toward the north or its people,
A few minutes walk down any one of the
side streets leading out of the main thor.
oughfare brings You into the midst of the
negro quarter, for here the color line is dis
tiuctly drawn, and the negro lives by him.
self, worships by himself, dies and is buried
ON his side of the great gulf that separates
the children of Ham and Japhet. The me-
gro quarter is a heterogeneous mass of wood
en- shanties each with its stone or mud
chimney built into its gable end, and each
containing one ROOM which is both living
and sleeping room, and n loft overhead for
contingencies. Ducks, geese, and pigs
share the yards and streets with the human
occupants,
The churches, of which there are several
in the quarter, are bare, barnIike structures,
and differ from the dwellings only in size,
being larger Under the walls OF the church
es are the cemeteries, dreary places of sep
ulture, unenclosed, bare to the sun, and
their graves marked In many cases only by
pieces of pottery, old boots, hats, or some
other relic of the dead. In this quarter are
huddled thousand houses--about one-half
the population of the village They live
from hand to mouth yet they live Some
are employed along the docks; some draw
the seines on the river but the majority
work on the plantations, aud walk from two
10 three miles each day to their labor. The
negroes fondness for town life is well known
Live in town among his kinsfolk and nc
quaintances, where he can enjoy his meet
ings and weekly half-holidays, he viii, even
though his means of subsistence lie far with.
out. These people seem to be the same
careless, lazy. shiftless beings that they
were in servitude As a class the years of
freedom have changed their characteristics
but little. A great Difference and obseqni-
BUSINESS toward the white race characterized
them now as before the war. Cor. Evening
Post.