Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1886-05-11

the very centre of that
IDEAL NEGRO SOCIETY,".
Here the colored people own the land
and hold the elective Offices. They have
schools while the whites have none. They
have all the churches art could wish,
and at least three preachers to the square
mile. They have perfect social equality,
II there be such thing, tor they have all
the society there is. The whites are so
isolated that they have none. In short,
the negroes have the land, a climate to
suit them, the Offices, the stores, the
schools, the churches. perfect immunity
from white oppression, ard free cOurse.to
run and be gOrihed. And with all this,
what progressl Well, you have to
set stakes and take sight to see that
they are mo- ing at all. James island
presents them at their best on the coast;
JOHNS is noticeably worse than James:
W ardmalan is worse than Johns and
each successive island from here to Sa-
yannah, so the whites tell me, is worse
imam the last, although I find this hard TO
Oelleye. The exact progress since the
war l, or course, cannot measure, as |
was not here then to take a point OF de-
parture; but this l insist upon, that the
poorer class could not have lived worse
than now and lived at all. The gain has
been by those who got land, and the poor
est renter in Indiana lives far better than
the best OF them on Johns and Wardma-
ian. And now, with all this evidence,
lots OF people are prophesying as conf
IDENTITY as ever all sorts of good and evil
Tor the Negroes future. Instead Of follow
ing this rash example, will present the
facts OF my trip to this point-the reader
may do his own prOphesving.
Yesterday morning | LETT the hospitable
home of the welI-to-do black brother,
George Brown,and Travelled straight south
to Legare point. All the fields were dot
ted with black laboTers, a few pOws were
running, but nearly all the work was
done with hoes as large as an average
spade, in the hands OF brawny men and
women. For many hundred yards at a
time the cabins lined the wayside thick
enough for an ordinary village, but all
were empty-the whole family was back
in the fields. The women handled these
heavy hoes quite as deity as the men,
and ridging for cotton was in rapid prog
ress. In a last years cotton patch,
where the ridges were nearly two
feet above the burrows, the boys
and girls went first with heavy baskets of
''swamp trash"-half-rotted leaves and
grass raked up at low tide-and scattered
it in the burrows; the women came next
with hoes and dug down the grass aud
loose stuff from the ridges, with earth
enough to cover it and the "trash," and
then the men with plow and hoe put
enough fresh earth on it to make the mid
die ridge as high as the old one. In this
the cotton is planted, and the first blowing
throws what is left of last years ridge to
the growing plants. sit takes
THE NIGER AND THE HOE
to make the Sea island cotton" is the
proyerb of the whites. Many OF them
bava tried machinery n do this vvopl, ht1t
have discarded it. They say none is
made suitable for it. Everything Is
raised in ridges on the islands-even
those vegetables we plant on fat in the
North.
In the abandoned cabin during Orking
hours you will find no one, if the weather
is mild; If 1t is cold you will see there
from three to ten children, with one girl
big enough to be trusted with a fire-if
there is any. Very often there is none;
ana the little darkeys crouch on the sunny
side Of the cabin, their blue-gray-brown
toes showing, like gOOse-feet, the effects
of chilling winds. There is generally a
water bucket with gourd, cooking pot
or pan, perhaps a dozen dishes OF various
kinds, rude table or a box, and in per-
haps half the cabins a rude bedstead.
Such luxuries as mirrors, window
curtains, stoves or pictures you
Will Ah0 aAhOnS bAC low
well-to-do, and a carpet l have yet
to see IN a negro cabin. All their habits
show that they expect to live and take
their pleasure in the open air; the house
is merely place to retreat to in rainy or
extremely cold weather. Southwark the
island gets lower till it terminates in
bOggy fiat; but one ridge runs out to
within a half mile OF the Stone, and the
black boy who cabins on the end of the
n ,Tor. n,
row creek. This boy can talk English
that is, such English as can understand;
but his father and mother might as well
talk Hebrew as far as my knowledge of
their speech goes. The Stone river (they
call all these passes rivers or creeKs) is
more than mile wide and navigable for
large vessels, and on the opposite shore is
BUNsCOMBE LANDING
and the headquarters of the great Sea-
brook plantation. The fine mansion was
burned during the war, and near its ruins
stands a small frame house, now occupied
by the family.
Sharks are beginning to come up the
rivers, and month from now alligatOrs
will appear along the creeks. There is
also a troublesome plenty OF foxes, and
wildcats on this island, for Johns has
three or four times as much timber as
James; and much Of the woodland is
dense jungle, In these woods one may
walk or rest with impunity now; two
mouths later the white man is always in
danger there, and night IN them is, TO
stranger, almost equal to sentence Of
death, so deadly is the malaria. My host
of the past night tells me, be has known
man to die from the effects of one nights
exposure; and even the residents on the
highest and dryest lands near the swamps
do not escape. Many Of the oldest
white natives habitually take grain Of
quinine before each meal from May 20
November. The disease caused by these
iungles is called slow country fever" or
"twenty-One days fever" as many in
stances are known Of its continuing
tWenty-one days without break; at the
end of that time comes collapse, syncope
and death. AS one goes toward the main
land the disease changes its nature lit
tie; but all along the road from Charles
ton to Savannah the white man is never
safe except in pine forest on one Of those
sandy ridges which occasionally put out
to the shore. Even then he must have
quite a stretch of pine to the windward,
between MIN and the next swamp.
johns Island Is in shape much like
horseshoe, and Wardmalan Island Is the
"frogv coming in from the west; between
them is Church creek, so narrow that 1t is
bridged near the points OF the horseshoe.
Despite It's large area, therefore, Johns is
nowhere more than seven miles wide from
tide tn tide. hut il contains 40 white peO-