Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-05-29
LOUP GAR0U.
A STORY OF THE GULF sWAMPs.
BY MAURICE THOMPSON.
copyright, 1897, by the Author.l
CHAPTER /.

OF the 6OuCn. mystery Is Always IdScl-
mating and never more so than when 1t
is hedged with physical barriers. De
Soto and Ponce de Leon were not the
first men to feel the strange influence
Of those gloomy, vine tangled and moss
matted forests whose trees stand ankle
deep in stagnant water and whose very
sounds are like audible expressions Of
silence The red men had their legends,
from the remotest sources, connecting
the swamps with the most picturesque
creations of their fancy and imagina-
tion. In fact, it is doubtful if any per.
son who has spent much time in the
low country of the south has quite es-
capped very definite impression Of the
weird influence exerted by the gloom,
the solemnity, the silence and the tan.
gled intricacy of those plashy and dis
NAL jungles Of live oak, magnolia, cy-
press, cane and Spanish moss. The ef'
feet on the imagination is not elevating,
nor is it, exactly speaking, depressing.
At first one is repellcd by the fiat,
heavy monotony; then follows recog-
milton of the awful sketch of mystery
outlined in the shadows, the bewllder-
ing tangles and the funereal depths of
those moss hung aisles, and finally ones
imagination begins TO ind the stuff OF
which strange dreams are made, ma
terials as insubstantial and airy as the
blue film on the mountain, but as
gloomy and dismal as the swamps them
selves.
! have found it very interesting to
study with minute care the effect this
swamp influence has had upon persons
who have been born and reared within
the shadows of those jungles There is
amarked difference between the Crack
er of the pine woods and the man of
the swamps The latter shows in his
hollow cheeks, in his sallow, withered
skin and in his pathetically melancholy
eyes the strain of a lifelong fear, the
worry of gloomy anticipation. l am
quite sure, however, that the swamp
denizen is but obscurely conscious, if
conscious at all, in most cases, of this
torture of constantly impending dread,
and yet even the children, playing in
cotton slipped freedom on the "knees"
of the cypress trees, carry unmistakable
traces of the hereditary swamp gloom
in their bloodless faces.
But it was upon the negro slave un-
der the old regime that those scowling
and male6cent swamp junglcs wrought
their most peculiar effects and the so
called creole negroes were the especial
victims of a superstition which, like
some subtle malaria, crept by night out
of those damp and almost ilnpenetrable
meshes of trees, vines, moss, water
weeds and suffocating canebrakes to
hover about the plantation cabins. 1t is
true enough to say that those negroes
were sunny natured and merry hearted,
but it is quite as true to record the pre-
vailing and persistent duskiness and
desolateness, so to speak, of their super
stition. Their songs were light, their
laughter as gay as it was unrestrained,
but song and laughter died on the edge
of the swamp. The quill blower, that
Pan Of the African race, was upon every
low country plantation, and his
"quills," as the cane joints were called,
came from the brakes along the sluggish
swamp rivers. But the crude syrinx was
never able to quite whistle away the
fear of the jungle by night, notwith-
standing the mad love of music, of even
that simple sort, burning in the half
savage breasts of the slaves. This Pan
pipe of the plantation gave peculiar
semiclassical touch to negro life. Itwas,
too, singularly constant element where
every other quantity was variable. The
same melody sketches were futed from
Bayou Teche to the bottoms" Of the
Savannah. But each plantation had its
separate and sacred swamp superstition,
if within the great swamp belt of the
coast, and especially had each creole
plantation its legend Tin patois musical
and picturesque) Of some local prefer
natural phenomenon connected with the
darkest tangles of the nearest swamp,
and, to my mind at least, this patois,
along with the touch of French realism
it always bears, suggests charming de-
parture from the broader and coarser
negro nature. Still, on the other hand,
it is true that the creole low country
negro is in many ways the inferior Of
the up country one He is less civilized,
more savage in his appetites, possessed
of coarser passions, more easily influ-
enced by external things. Perhaps it
was the influence of the swamps that
wrought this difference between the up
country negro and his cousin of the low
country. This must have been the case,
for all the slaves sent into the far south
at last came to the same level, either in
themselves or in their offspring. The
shadows of the swamps got into their
imaginations.
The masters, especially those OF Pro-
vencal origin, were touched with the
tame taint of superstition. Indeed the
slaves may have caught it from their
owners, in a certain degree, or the re-
verse may have been the case, for even
the speech of the negro had begun to
perceptibly affect the purity of that Of
his master before the advent Of free
dom. I mention Provencal planters be-
cause there were few Of them all
around the gulf coast, and especially
was their number noticeable in the