Retrospect of Western Travel Volume I Part 17

At Mobile I met some relatives, who kindly urged my taking possession of their house at New-Orleans during my stay of ten days. I was thankful for the arrangement, as the weather was becoming hot, and we could secure more leisure and repose in a house of our own than in a boarding-house or as the guests of a family. With the house we were, of course, to have the services of my friend's slaves. He told me something of their history. He had tried all ways to obtain good service, and could not succeed. He had attempted wages, treating his people like free servants, &c., and all in vain. His present plan was promising them freedom and an establishment in a free state after a short term of years in case of good desert. He offered to take care of the money they earned during their leisure hours, and to pay them interest upon it, but they preferred keeping it in their own hands. One of them sewed up 150 dollars in her bed; she fell ill, and the person who nursed her is supposed to have got the money; for, when the poor slave recovered, her earnings were gone.

We left Mobile for New-Orleans on the 24th of April. The portion of forest which we crossed in going down from Mobile to the coast was the most beautiful I had seen. There was fresh gra.s.s under foot, and the woods were splendid with myrtles, magnolias, and many shrubs whose blossoms were new to me and their names unknown. We had plenty of time to look about us; for the hack which carried the four pa.s.sengers whom the stage would not contain broke down every half hour, and the stage company had to stop till it could proceed. We had an excellent dinner in the gallery of a loghouse in the midst of the forest, where we were plentifully supplied with excellent claret. There had been showers all day, with intervals of suns.h.i.+ne, but towards sunset the settled gloom of the sky foreboded a night of storm. I was on the watch for the first sight of the Gulf of Mexico. I traced the line where the forest retires to give place to the marsh, and the whole scene a.s.sumes a sudden air of desolation. At this moment the thunder burst, sheets of lightning glared over the boiling sea, and the rain poured down in floods. Our umbrellas were found to be broken, of course; and we had to run along the pier to the steamboat in such a rain as I was never before exposed to; but it was well worth while getting wet for such a first sight of the Gulf of Mexico. It soon grew dark; and, before morning, we were in Lake Pontchartrain, so that this stormy view of the gulf was the only one we had.

We amused ourselves in the morning with tracing the dim sh.o.r.es of the State of Mississippi to the north, and of Louisiana to the west. About nine o'clock we arrived in sight of the long piers which stretch out from the swamp into the lake, the mudcraft, the canoes, with blacks fis.h.i.+ng for crabs; the baths, and the large Was.h.i.+ngton hotel, with its galleries and green blinds, built for coolness, where gentlemen from New-Orleans go to eat fish and bathe. Next we saw the train of railroad cars waiting for us; and, without the loss of a moment's time, we were whirled away to the city, five miles in a quarter of an hour. I have expressed elsewhere[16] my admiration of the swamp through which our road lay; an admiration which faded as we traversed the lower faubourg, and died away in the Champs Elysees. Before ten o'clock we were breaking the seals of our English letters in the drawing-room of our temporary home.

Footnote 16: "Society in America," vol. ii., p. 179.

When we had satisfied ourselves with home news, unpacked, dressed, and lunched, we took our seats by the window in the intervals of visits from callers. All was very new, very foreign in its aspect. Many of the ladies in the streets wore caps or veils instead of bonnets; the negroes who pa.s.sed shouted their very peculiar kind of French; and everything seemed to tell us that we had plunged into the dogdays. I never knew before how impressions of heat can be conveyed through the eye. The intensity of glare and shadow in the streets, and the many evidences that the fear of heat is the prevailing idea of the place, affect the imagination even more than the scorching power of the sun does the bodily frame.

I was presented with a pamphlet written by a physician, which denies the unhealthiness of New-Orleans as strenuously as some of its inhabitants deny its immorality. To me it appears that everything depends on what is understood by Morals and Health. As to the morals of the city, I have elsewhere stated the princ.i.p.al facts on which my unfavourable judgment is founded.[17] In regard to another department of morals, the honourable fact of the generous charity of New-Orleans to strangers should be stated. Great numbers of sick and dest.i.tute foreigners are perpetually thrown upon the mercy of the inhabitants, and that mercy is unbounded. I have reason to believe that the sick are not merely nursed and cured, but provided with funds before departing. When I visited the hospital, it contained two hundred and fifty patients, not above fifty of whom were Americans. As to the health of the place, I believe the average is good among that portion of the population which can afford to remove northward for the hot months; but very low if the total white population be included. The pamphlet which I read argues that, though the fever is very destructive during a portion of the year, mortality from other diseases is much below the common average; that the variations of temperature are slight, though frequent; and that the average of children and old persons is high. All this may be true; but a place must be called peculiarly unhealthy whose inhabitants are compelled, on pain of death, to remove for three or four months of every year. Instead of arguing against such a fact as this, many citizens are hoping and striving to put an end to the necessity of such a removal.

They hope, by means of draining and paving, to render their city habitable all the year round. Plans of drainage are under consideration, and I saw some importations of paving-stones. The friends of the New-Orleans people can hardly wish them a greater good than the success of such attempts; for the perpetual s.h.i.+fting about which they are subjected to by the dread of the fever is a serious evil to sober families of an industrious, domestic turn. It is very injurious to the minds of children and to the habits of young people, and a great hards.h.i.+p to the aged. I was struck with a remark which fell from a lady about her children's exercise in the open air. She said that she always took them out when the wind blew from over the lake, and kept them at home in warm weather when it blew from any other quarter, as it then only made them "more languid" to go out. This did not tend to confirm the doctrine of the pamphlet; but I was not surprised at the remark when I looked abroad over the neighbouring country from the top of the hospital. Thence I saw the marsh which was given to Lafayette, and which he sold, not long before his death, to a London firm, who sold it again.

On this marsh, most of which was under water, the city of New-Orleans was begun. A strip of buildings was carried to the river bank, where the city spread.

Footnote 17: Ibid, p. 326.

In the midst of the flooded lots of ground stood the gas-works; surrounded by stagnant ponds lay the Catholic cemetery. The very churches of the city seemed to spring up out of the water. The blossomy beauties of the swamp could not be seen at this height, and all looked hideously desolate in the glaring sun. The view from the turret of the Cotton-press is much more advantageous. It commands many windings of the majestic river, and the point where it seems to lose itself in the distant forest; while below appears everything that is dry in all the landscape: the s.h.i.+pping, the Levee, the busy streets of the city, and the shady avenues of the suburbs.

The ladies of New-Orleans walk more than their countrywomen of other cities, from the streets being in such bad order as to make walking the safest means of locomotion. The streets are not very numerous; they are well distinguished, and lie at right angles, and their names are clearly printed up; so that strangers find no difficulty in going about, except when a fall of rain has made the crossings impa.s.sable. The heat is far less oppressive in the streets than in the open country, as there is generally a shady side. We were never kept within doors by the heat, though summer weather had fairly set in before our arrival. We made calls, and went shopping and sight-seeing, much as we do in London; and, moreover, walked to dinner visits, to the theatre, and to church, while the sun was blazing as if he had drawn that part of the world some millions of miles nearer to himself than that in which we had been accustomed to live. It is in vain to attempt describing what the moonlight is like. We walked under the long rows of Pride-of-India trees on the Ramparts, amid the picturesque low dwellings of the Quadroons, and almost felt the glow of the moonlight, so warm, so golden, so soft as I never saw it elsewhere. We were never tired of watching the lightning from our balcony, flas.h.i.+ng through the first shades of twilight, and keeping the whole heaven in night-long conflagration. The moschetoes were a great and perpetual plague, except while we were asleep. We found our moscheto-curtains a sufficient protection at night; but we had to be on the watch against these malicious insects all day, and to wage war against them during the whole evening. Many ladies are accustomed, during the summer months, to get after breakfast into a large sack of muslin tied round the throat, with smaller sacks for the arms, and to sit thus at work or book, fanning themselves to protect their faces. Others sit all the morning on the bed, within their moscheto-curtains. I wore gloves and prunella boots all day long, but hands and feet were stung through all the defences I could devise. After a while the sting of the moscheto ceases to irritate more than the English gnat-sting; but, to strangers, the suffering is serious; to those of feverish habit, sometimes dangerous.

Sunday is the busiest day of the week to the stranger in New-Orleans.

There is first the negro market to be seen at five o'clock. We missed this sight, as the mornings were foggy, and it was accounted unsafe to go out in the early damp. Then there is the Cathedral to be attended, a place which the European gladly visits, as the only one in the United States where all men meet together as brethren. As he goes, the streets are noisy with traffic. Some of those who keep the Sunday sit at their doors or windows reading the newspapers or chatting with their acquaintance. Merchants are seen hastening to the counting-house or the wharf, or busy in the stores. Others are streaming into the church doors. There are groups about the cathedral gates, the blacks and the whites parting company as if they had not been wors.h.i.+pping side by side.

Within the edifice there is no separation. Some few persons may be in pews; but kneeling on the pavement may be seen a mult.i.tude, of every shade of complexion, from the fair Scotchwoman or German to the jet-black pure African. The Spanish eye flashes from beneath the veil; the French Creole countenance, painted high, is surmounted by the neat cap or the showy bonnet; while between them may be thrust a gray-headed mulatto, following with his stupid eyes the evolutions of the priest; or the devout negro woman telling her beads--a string of berries--as if her life depended on her task. During the preaching, the mult.i.tude of anxious faces, thus various in tint and expression, turned up towards the pulpit, afforded one of those few spectacles which are apt to haunt the whole future life of the observer like a dream. Several Protestants spoke to me of the Catholic religion as being a great blessing to the ignorant negro, viewing a ritual religion as a safe resting-place between barbarism and truth. Nothing that I saw disposed me to agree with them. I saw among Catholics of this cla.s.s only the most abject wors.h.i.+p of things without meaning, and no comprehension whatever of symbols. I was persuaded that, if a ritual religion be ever a good, it is so in the case of the most, not the least, enlightened; of those who accept the ritual as symbolical, and not of those who pay it literal wors.h.i.+p. I could not but think that, if the undisguised story of Jesus were presented to these last as it was to the fishermen of Galilee and the peasants on the reedy banks of Jordan, they would embrace a Christianity, in comparison with which their present religion is an unintelligible and effectual mythology. But such a primitive Christianity they, as slaves, never will and never can have, as its whole spirit is destructive of slavery.

Half a year before my visit to New-Orleans, a great commotion had been raised in the city against a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Joel Parker, on account of some expressions which he had been reported to have used, while on a visit in New-England, respecting the morals of New-Orleans, and especially the desecration of the Sunday. Some meddlesome person had called a public meeting, to consider what should be done with the Rev. Joel Parker for having employed his const.i.tutional freedom of speech in declaring what almost everybody knew or believed to be true. Many gentlemen of the city were vexed at this encroachment upon the liberty of the citizen, and at the ridicule which such apparent sensitiveness about reputation would bring upon their society; and they determined to be present at the meeting, and support the pastor's rights. Matters were proceeding fast towards a condemnation of the accused and a sentence of banishment, when these gentlemen demanded that he should be heard in his own defence, a guarantee for his personal safety being first pa.s.sed by the meeting. This was agreed to, and Mr.

Parker appeared on the hustings. Unfortunately, he missed the opportunity--a particularly favourable one--of making a moral impression which would never have been lost. A full declaration of what he had said, the grounds of it, and his right to say it, would have turned the emotions of the a.s.semblage, already softened in his favour, towards himself and the right. As it was, he did nothing wrong, except in as far as that he did nothing very right; but there was a want of judgment and taste in his address which was much to be regretted. He was allowed to go free for the time; but the newspapers reported all the charges against him, suppressed his replies, and lauded the citizens for not having pulled the offender to pieces; and Mr. Parker's congregation were called upon, on the ground of the resolutions pa.s.sed at the public meeting, to banish their pastor. They refused, and appealed to all the citizens to protect them from such oppression as was threatened. No further steps were taken, I believe, against the pastor and his people; his church flourished under this little gust of persecution; and, when I was there, a handsome new edifice was rising up to accommodate the increased number of his congregation. I wished to hear this gentleman, and was glad to find that his flock met, while the building was going on, in the vestry of the new church; a s.p.a.cious crypt, which was crowded when he preached. I had not expected much from his preaching, and was therefore taken by surprise by the exceeding beauty of his discourse; beauty, not of style, but spirit. The lofty and tender earnestness of both his sentiments and manner put the observer off his watch about the composition of the sermon. I was surprised to perceive in conversation afterward tokens that Mr. Parker was not a highly-educated man. I was raised by the lofty tone of his preaching far above all critical vigilance.

I had much opportunity of seeing in the United States what is the operation of persecution on strong and virtuous minds, and I trust the lesson of encouragement will never be lost. As it is certain that the progression of the race must be carried on through persecution of some kind and degree; as it is clear that the superior spirits to whom the race owes its advancement must, by their very act of antic.i.p.ation, get out of the circle of general intelligence and sympathy, and be thus subject to the trials of spiritual solitude and social enmity--since thus it has ever been, and thus, by the laws of human nature, it must ever be--it is heart-cheering and soul-staying to perceive that the effects of persecution may be, and often are, more blessed than those of other kinds of discipline. Many quail under the apprehension of persecution; some are soured by it; but some pa.s.s through the suffering, the bitter suffering of popular hatred, with a strength which intermits less and less, and come out of it with new capacities for enjoyment, with affections which can no longer be checked by want of sympathy, and with an object in life which can never be overthrown. Mr. Parker's case was not one of any high or permanent character; though, as far as his trial went, it seemed to have given calmness and vigour to his mind. (I judge from his manner of speaking of the affair to me.) The abolitionists are the persons I have had, and always shall have, chiefly in view in speaking of the effects of persecution. They often reminded me of the remark, that you may know a philanthropist in the streets by his face. The life, light, and gentleness of their countenances, the cheerful earnestness of their speech, and the gayety of their manners, were enough to a.s.sure the unprejudiced foreign observer of the integrity of their cause and the blessedness of their pilgrim lives.

The afternoon or evening Sunday walk in New Orleans cannot fail to convince the stranger of the truth of the sayings of Mr. Parker, for which he afterward was subjected to so fierce a retribution. Whatever may be thought of the duty or expediency of a strict observance of the Sunday, no one can contend that in this city the observance is strict.

In the market there is traffic in meat and vegetables, and the groups of foreigners make a Babel of the place with their loud talk in many tongues. The men are smoking outside their houses; the girls, with broad coloured ribands streaming from the ends of their long braids of hair, are walking or flirting; while veiled ladies are stealing through the streets, or the graceful Quadroon women are taking their evening airing on the Levee. The river is crowded with s.h.i.+pping, to the hulls of which the walkers look up from a distance, the river being above the level of the neighbouring streets. It rushes along through the busy region, seeming to be touched with mercy, or to disdain its power of mischief.

It might overwhelm in an instant the swarming inhabitants of the boundless level; it looks as if it could scarcely avoid doing so; yet it rolls on within its banks so steadily, that the citizens forget their insecurity. Its breadth is not striking to the eye; yet, when one begins to calculate, the magnitude of the stream becomes apparent. A steamboat carries down six vessels at once, two on each side and two behind; and this cl.u.s.ter of seven vessels looks somewhat in the proportion of a constellation in the sky. From the Levee the Cathedral looks well, fronting the river, standing in the middle of a square, and presenting an appearance of great antiquity, hastened, no doubt, by the moisture of the atmosphere in which it stands.

The Levee continues to be crowded long after the sun has set. The quivering summer lightning plays over the heads of the merry mult.i.tude, who are conversing in all the tongues, and gay in all the costumes of the world.

Another bright scene is on the road to the lake on a fine afternoon.

This road winds for five miles through the swamp, and is bordered by cypress, flowering reeds, fleurs-de-lis of every colour, palmetto, and a hundred aquatic shrubs new to the eye of the stranger. The gray moss common in damp situations floats in streamers from the branches. Snakes abound, and coil about the negroes who are seen pus.h.i.+ng their canoes through the rank vegetation, or towing their rafts laden with wood along the sluggish bayou. There is a small settlement, wholly French in its character, where the ancient dwellings, painted red, and with broad eaves, look highly picturesque in the green landscape. The winding white road is thronged with carriages, driven at a very rapid rate, and full of families of children, or gay parties of young people, or a company of smoking merchants, going to the lake to drink or to bathe. Many go merely as we did, for the sake of the drive, and of breathing the cool air of the lake, while enjoying a gla.s.s of iced lemonade or sangaree.

It was along this road that Madame Lalaurie escaped from the hands of her exasperated countrymen about five years ago. The remembrance or tradition of that day will always be fresh in New-Orleans. In England the story is little, if at all, known. I was requested on the spot not to publish it as exhibiting a fair specimen of slaveholding in New-Orleans, and no one could suppose it to be so; but it is a revelation of what may happen in a slaveholding country, and can happen nowhere else. Even on the mildest supposition that the case admits of, that Madame Lalaurie was insane, there remains the fact that the insanity could have taken such a direction, and perpetrated such deeds nowhere but in a slave country.

There is, as every one knows, a mutual jealousy between the French and American creoles[18] in Louisiana. Till lately, the French creoles have carried everything their own way, from their superior numbers. I believe that even yet no American expects to get a verdict, on any evidence, from a jury of French creoles. Madame Lalaurie enjoyed a long impunity from this circ.u.mstance. She was a French creole, and her third husband, M. Lalaurie, was, I believe, a Frenchman. He was many years younger than his lady, and had nothing to do with the management of her property, so that he has been in no degree mixed up with her affairs and disgraces. It had been long observed that Madame Lalaurie's slaves looked singularly haggard and wretched, except the coachman, whose appearance was sleek and comfortable enough. Two daughters by a former marriage, who lived with her, were also thought to be spiritless and unhappy-looking. But the lady was so graceful and accomplished, so charming in her manners and so hospitable, that no one ventured openly to question her perfect goodness. If a murmur of doubt began among the Americans, the French resented it. If the French had occasional suspicions, they concealed them for the credit of their faction. "She was very pleasant to whites," I was told, and sometimes to blacks, but so broadly so as to excite suspicions of hypocrisy. When she had a dinner-party at home, she would hand the remains of her gla.s.s of wine to the emaciated negro behind her chair, with a smooth audible whisper, "Here, my friend, take this; it will do you good." At length rumours spread which induced a friend of mine, an eminent lawyer, to send her a hint about the law which ordains that slaves who can be proved to have been cruelly treated shall be taken from the owner, and sold in the market for the benefit of the State. My friend, being of the American party, did not appear in the matter himself, but sent a young French creole, who was studying law with him. The young man returned full of indignation against all who could suspect this amiable woman of doing anything wrong. He was confident that she could not harm a fly, or give pain to any human being.

Footnote 18: Creole means _native_. French and American creoles are natives of French and American extraction.

Soon after this a lady, living in a house which joined the premises of Madame Lalaurie, was going up stairs, when she heard a piercing shriek from the next courtyard. She looked out, and saw a little negro girl, apparently about eight years old, flying across the yard towards the house, and Madame Lalaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand. The lady saw the poor child run from story to story, her mistress following, till both came out upon the top of the house. Seeing the child about to spring over, the witness put her hands before her eyes; but she heard the fall, and saw the child taken up, her body bending and limbs hanging as if every bone was broken. The lady watched for many hours, and at night she saw the body brought out, a shallow hole dug by torchlight in the corner of the yard, and the corpse covered over. No secret was made of what had been seen. Inquiry was inst.i.tuted, and illegal cruelty proved in the case of nine slaves, who were forfeited according to law.

It afterward came out that this woman induced some family connexions of her own to purchase these slaves, and sell them again to her, conveying them back to her premises in the night. She must have desired to have them for purposes of torture, for she could not let them be seen in a neighbourhood where they were known.

During all this time she does not appear to have lost caste, though it appears that she beat her daughters as often as they attempted in her absence to convey food to her miserable victims. She always knew of such attempts by means of the sleek coachman, who was her spy. It was necessary to have a spy, to preserve her life from the vengeance of her household; so she pampered this obsequious negro, and at length owed her escape to him.

She kept her cook chained within eight yards of the fireplace, where sumptuous dinners were cooked in the most sultry season. It is a pity that some of the admiring guests whom she a.s.sembled round her hospitable table could not see through the floor, and be made aware at what a cost they were entertained. One morning the cook declared that they had better all be burned together than lead such a life, and she set the house on fire. The alarm spread over the city; the gallant French creoles all ran to the aid of their accomplished friend, and the fire was presently extinguished. Many, whose curiosity had been roused about the domestic proceedings of the lady, seized the opportunity of entering those parts of the premises from which the whole world had been hitherto carefully excluded. They perceived that, as often as they approached a particular outhouse, the lady became excessively uneasy lest some property in an opposite direction should be burned. When the fire was extinguished, they made bold to break open this outhouse. A horrible sight met their eyes. Of the nine slaves, the skeletons of two were afterward found poked into the ground; the other seven could scarcely be recognised as human. Their faces had the wildness of famine, and their bones were coming through the skin. They were chained and tied in constrained postures, some on their knees, some with their hands above their heads. They had iron collars with spikes which kept their heads in one position. The cowhide, stiff with blood, hung against the wall; and there was a stepladder on which this fiend stood while flogging her victims, in order to lay on the lashes with more effect. Every morning, it was her first employment after breakfast to lock herself in with her captives, and flog them till her strength failed.

Amid shouts and groans, the sufferers were brought out into the air and light. Food was given them with too much haste, for two of them died in the course of the day. The rest, maimed and helpless, are pensioners of the city.

The rage of the crowd, especially of the French creoles, was excessive.

The lady shut herself up in the house with her trembling daughters, while the street was filled from end to end with a yelling crowd of gentlemen. She consulted her coachman as to what she had best do. He advised that she should have her coach to the door after dinner, and appear to go forth for her afternoon drive, as usual; escaping or returning, according to the aspect of affairs. It is not told whether she ate her dinner that day, or prevailed on her remaining slaves to wait upon her. The carriage appeared at the door; she was ready, and stepped into it. Her a.s.surance seems to have paralyzed the crowd. The moment the door was shut they appeared to repent having allowed her to enter, and they tried to upset the carriage, to hold the horses, to make a s.n.a.t.c.h at the lady. But the coachman laid about him with his whip, made the horses plunge, and drove off. He took the road to the lake, where he could not be intercepted, as it winds through the swamp. He outstripped the crowd, galloped to the lake, bribed the master of a schooner which was lying there to put off instantly with the lady to Mobile. She escaped to France, and took up her abode in Paris under a feigned name, but not for long. Late one evening a party of gentlemen called on her, and told her she was Madame Lalaurie, and that she had better be off. She fled that night, and is supposed to be now skulking about in some French province under a false name.

The New-Orleans mob met the carriage returning from the lake. What became of the coachman I do not know. The carriage was broken to pieces and thrown into the swamp, and the horses stabbed and left dead upon the road. The house was gutted, the two poor girls having just time to escape from a window. They are now living, in great poverty, in one of the faubourgs. The piano, tables, and chairs were burned before the house. The feather-beds were ripped up, and the feathers emptied into the street, where they afforded a delicate footing for some days. The house stands, and is meant to stand, in its ruined state. It was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls, in the midst of a busy street, which excited my wonder, and was the cause of my being told the story the first time. I gathered other particulars afterward from eyewitnesses.

The crowd at first intended to proceed to the examination of other premises, whose proprietors were under suspicion of cruelty to their slaves; but the shouts of triumph which went up from the whole negro population of the city showed that this would not be safe. Fearing a general rising, the gentlemen organized themselves into a patrol, to watch the city night and day till the commotion should have subsided.

They sent circulars to all proprietors suspected of cruelty, warning them that the eyes of the city were upon them. This is the only benefit the negroes have derived from the exposure. In reply to inquiries, I was told that it was very possible that cruelties like those of Madame Lalaurie might be incessantly in course of perpetration. It may be doubted whether any more such people exist; but if they do, there is nothing to prevent their following her example with impunity as long as they can manage to preserve that secrecy which was put an end to by accident in her case.

I could never get out of the way of the horrors of slavery in this region. Under one form or another, they met me in every house, in every street; everywhere but in the intelligence pages of newspapers, where I might read on in perfect security of exemption from the subject. In the advertising columns there were offers of reward for runaways, restored dead or alive; and notices of the capture of a fugitive with so many brands on his limbs and shoulders, and so many scars on his back. But from the other half of the newspaper, the existence of slavery could be discovered only by inference. What I saw elsewhere was, however, dreadful enough. In one house, the girl who waited on me with singular officiousness was so white, with blue eyes and light hair, that it never occurred to me that she could be a slave. Her mistress told me afterward that this girl of fourteen was such a depraved hussy that she must be sold. I exclaimed involuntarily, but was referred to the long heel in proof of the child's being of negro extraction. She had the long heel, sure enough. Her mistress told me that it is very wrong to plead in behalf of slavery that families are rarely separated; and gave me, as no unfair example of the dealings of masters, this girl's domestic history.

The family had consisted of father, mother, and four children, this girl being the eldest, and the youngest an infant at the breast. The father was first sold separately, and then the rest of the family were purchased in the market by the husband of my friend, the mother being represented to be a good cook and house servant. She proved to be both; but of so violent a temper that it was necessary to keep her own children out of her way when she had a knife in her hand, lest she should murder them. The anxiety of watching such a temper was not to be borne, and the woman was sold with her infant. Here was the second division of this family. The behaviour of the eldest girl was so outrageously profligate, that she was about to be disposed of also. And yet she was only a fair ill.u.s.tration of the results of the education by circ.u.mstance that slaves receive. When detected in some infamous practices, this young creature put on air of prudery, and declared that it gave her great pain to be thought immodest; that, so far from her being what she was thought, she had no wish to have any other lover than her master. Her master was so enraged at this--being a domestic Northern man, and not a planter--that he tied her to the whipping-post and flogged her severely with his own hands. The story of this dispersed and wretched family has nothing singular in it. With slight variations, it may be found repeated in every Southern settlement the traveller visits.

Just about the time that this was happening, a family in the neighbourhood was poisoned by a slave. I think one died, and the others had a narrow escape. The poisoner was sold in the market, as the proprietor could not afford to lose his human property by the law taking its course.

About the same time the cas.h.i.+er of a bank in New-Orleans sent one of his slaves out of the way, in order to be undisturbed in the violence which he meditated against the negro's attached wife. The negro understood the case, but dared not refuse to go where he was bid. He returned unexpectedly soon, however; found his home occupied, and stabbed the defiler of it. The cas.h.i.+er was the stronger man, and, in spite of his wound, he so maltreated the negro that he expired on the barrow on which he was being conveyed to jail. Nothing ensued on account of this affair; though, when the cas.h.i.+er was some time after found to be a defaulter, he absconded.

I would fain know what has become of a mulatto child in whom I became much interested at New-Orleans. Ailsie was eight years old, perfectly beautiful, and one of the most promising children I ever saw. She was quick, obedient, and affectionate to a touching degree. She had a kind master and mistress. Her mistress's health was delicate, and the child would watch her countenance wistfully, in the constant hope of saving her trouble. She would look very grave if the lady went up stairs with a languid step, take hold of her gown, and timidly ask, "What, an't ye well?" I used to observe her helping to dress her mistress's hair, her little hands trembling with eagerness, her eye following every glance of the eye which ever looked tenderly upon her. Her master declared he did not know what to make of the child, she looked so scared, and trembled so if she was spoken to; and she was, indeed, the most sensitive of children. As she stood at the corner of the dinner-table to fan away the flies, she was a picture from which it was difficult to turn away. Her little yellow headdress suited well with her clear brown complexion and large soft black eyes; nothing that she could at all understand of the conversation escaped her, while she never intermitted her waving of the huge brush of peac.o.c.k's feathers. Her face was then composed in its intelligence, for she stood by her mistress's elbow; a station where she seemed to think no harm could befall her. Alas! she has lost her kind mistress. Amid the many sad thoughts which thronged into my mind when I heard of the death of this lady, one of the wisest and best of American women, I own that some of my earliest regrets were for little Ailsie; and when I think of her sensibility, her beauty, and the dreadful circ.u.mstances of her parentage, as told me by her mistress, I am almost in despair about her future lot; for what can her master, with all his goodness, do for the forlorn little creature's protection? None but a virtuous mistress can fully protect a female slave, and that too seldom.

Ailsie was born on an estate in Tennessee. Her father is a white gentleman not belonging to the family, her mother the family cook. The cook's black husband cherished such a deadly hatred against this poor child as to be for ever threatening her life, and she was thought to be in such danger from his axe that she was sent down the river to be taken into the family where I saw her. What a cruel world, what a hard human life must Ailsie find that she is born into!

Such facts, occurring at every step, put the stranger on the watch for every revelation of the feelings of the masters about the relation of the two races. Some minute circ.u.mstances surprised me in this connexion.

At the American Theatre in New-Orleans, one of the characters in the play which my party attended was a slave, one of whose speeches was, "I have no business to think and feel."

At a dinner-party where three negroes were waiting, and where Ailsie stood fanning, a gentleman of very high official rank told a facetious story, at which everybody laughed heartily (being, indeed, quite unable to help it, the manner of the narrator was so droll) except a gentleman next me who had once been a slavetrader. The senator told us of a couple from the Green Island, Pat and Nancy, who had settled on the Mississippi, and, in course of time (to use the language of the region), "acquired six children and nine negroes." Pat had a mind to better his fortunes, and to go unenc.u.mbered higher up the river; and he therefore explained his plans to Nancy, finis.h.i.+ng with, "and so, my darlin', I'll lave you; but I'll do my best by you; I'll lave you the six dear, nate, pretty little childer, and I'll take the nine nasty dirty negroes."

While every other American at the table laughed without control, I saw my neighbour, the former slavetrader, glance up at the negroes who were in attendance, and use a strong effort not to laugh.

The stranger has great difficulty in satisfying himself as to the bounds of the unconsciousness of oppression which he finds urged as the exculpatory plea of the slaveholder, while he mourns over it as the great hinderance in the way of social reformation. It has been seen that an audience at the theatre will quietly receive a hit which would subject the author to punishment if he were an abolitionist. When I listened to the stories told by ladies to each other in their morning calls, showing the cleverness of their slaves, I often saw that they could not but be as fully convinced as I was that their slaves were as altogether human as themselves. I heard so many anecdotes--somewhat of the character of the following--that I began to suspect that one use of slaves is to furnish topics for the amus.e.m.e.nt of their owners.

Sam was sadly apt to get drunk, and had been often reproved by his master on that account. One day his master found him intoxicated, and cried out, "What, drunk again, Sam? I scolded you for being drunk last night, and here you are drunk again." "No, ma.s.sa, same drunk, ma.s.sa; same drunk."

But enough of this dark side of the social picture. I find myself dwelling long upon it, and frequently recurring to it, because all other subjects shrink into insignificance beside it; but these others must not be forgotten.

The gay visiting season at New-Orleans was over before we arrived, but we were in several parties. The division between the American and French factions is visible even in the drawing-room. The French complain that the Americans will not speak French; will not meet their neighbours even half way in accommodation of speech. The Americans ridicule the toilet practices of the French ladies; their liberal use of rouge and pearl powder. If the French ladies do thus beautify themselves, they do it with great art. I could not be quite sure of the fact in any one instance, while I am disposed to believe it from the clumsy imitation of the art which I saw in the countenance of an American rival or two. I beheld with strong disgust the efforts of a young lady from Philadelphia to make herself as French as possible by these disagreeable means. She was under twenty, and would have been rather pretty if she had given herself a fair chance; but her coa.r.s.ely-painted eyebrows, daubed cheeks, and powdered throat inspired a disgust which she must be singularly unwise not to have antic.i.p.ated. If this were a single case it would not be worth mentioning; but I was told by a resident that it is a common practice for young ladies to paint both white and red, under the idea of accommodating themselves to the French manners of the place. They had better do it by practising the French language than by copying the French toilet. New-Orleans is the only place in the United States where I am aware of having seen a particle of rouge.

Large parties are much alike everywhere, and they leave no very distinct impression. Except for the mixture of languages, and the ample provision of ices, fans, and ventilators, the drawing-room a.s.semblages of New-Orleans bear a strong resemblance to the routs and dinner-parties of a country town in England. Our pleasantest days in the great Southern city were those which we spent quietly in the homes of intimate acquaintances. I vividly remember one which I was told was a true Louisiana day. We ladies carried our workbags, and issued forth by eleven o'clock, calling by the way for a friend, Ailsie's mistress. The house we were to visit was a small shaded dwelling, with gla.s.s doors opening into a pretty garden. In a cool parlour we sat at work, talking of things solemn and trivial, of affairs native and foreign, till dinner, which was at two. We were then joined by the gentlemen. We left the dinner-table early, and the gentlemen trundled rocking-chairs and low stools into the garden, where we sat in the shade all the afternoon, the ladies working, the gentlemen singing Irish melodies, telling good native stories, and throwing us all into such a merry mood, that we positively refused the siesta which we were urged to take, and forgot what a retribution we might expect from the moschetoes for sitting so long under the trees. After tea we got to the piano, and were reminded at last by the darkness of the number of hours which this delightful Louisiana visit had consumed. We all walked home together through the quiet streets, the summer lightning quivering through the thick trees in singular contrast with the steady moonlight.

We should have liked to spend every day thus, with friends who always made us forget that we were far from home; but a traveller's duty is to see every variety of society which comes within his reach. I was sought by some, and met accidentally with other persons who were on the eve of departure for Texas. Attempts were made to induce me to go myself, and also to convince me of the eligibility of the country as a place of settlement for British emigrants, in the hope that the arrival of a cargo of settlers from England might afford to the Texans a plea of countenance from the British government. The subject of Texas is now so well understood, that there is no occasion to enlarge upon the state of the question as it was two years and a half ago; and besides, if I were to give a precise account of the conversations between myself and the friends of the Texan aggression, my story would not be believed. The folly and romance of some of the agents employed, and the villany which peeped out of every admission extorted from the advocates of the scheme, would make my readers as astonished as I was myself, that any attempts should be made in the neighbourhood of the scene to gain the sympathy of strangers who were at all above the rank of knaves and fools. Suffice it that one cla.s.s of advocates told me that I should be perfectly safe there, as the inhabitants were chiefly persons who could fight bravely against the Mexicans, from having nothing to lose, and from their having been compelled to leave the United States by their too free use of arms: while the opposite species of agent enlarged, not only on the beauty of the sunsets and the greenness of the savannahs, but on the delightful security of living under the same laws as the people of the United States, and amid a condition of morals kept perfectly pure by Colonel Austin's practice of having every person whom he conceived to have offended whipped at the cart's tail; the fact being carefully concealed that Colonel Austin was at that time, and had been for two years, in jail in the Mexican capital.

Our friends indulged us in what they knew to be our favourite pleasure, in country drives. There can be no great choice of drives in the neighbourhood of a city which stands in a swamp; but such places as were attainable we reached. One was a ropewalk, 1200 feet long, under a roof.

It looked picturesque, like every other ropewalk that I ever saw; but what struck me most about it was the sudden and profound repose we plunged into from the bustle of the city. The cottages of the negroes were imbowered in green, and the whole place had a tropical air, with its thickets of fig and catalpa, and its rows of Pride-of-India trees.

This last tree looks to my eye like a shrub which has received mistaken orders to grow into a tree. Its fragrance is its great charm. The mixture of its lilach flowers with its green leaves impairs the effect of the foliage, as far as colour is concerned; and the foliage is, besides, not ma.s.sy enough. A single sprig of it is beautiful; and, probably, its fragrance propitiates the eyes of those who plant it, for I found it considered a beautiful tree. The dark shades of these thickets are enlivened by a profusion of roses, and the air is fanned by myriads of insects' wings. How the negroes make friends.h.i.+p with the tribes of insects which drive the white man to forego the blessing of natural shade, I could never understand; but the black never looks more contented than when he shrouds himself in rank vegetation, and lives in a concert of insect chirping, droning, and trumpeting.

We were taken to the Battle-ground, the native soil of General Jackson's political growth. Seeing the Battle-ground was all very well; but my delight was in the drive to it, with the Mississippi on the right hand, and on the left gardens of roses which bewildered the imagination. I really believed at the time that I saw more roses that morning than during the whole course of my life before. Gardens are so rare in America, from want of leisure and deficiency of labour, that, when they do occur, they are a precious luxury to the traveller, especially when they are in their spring beauty. In the neighbourhood of Mobile, my relative, who has a true English love of gardening, had introduced the practice; and I there saw villas and cottages surrounded with a luxuriant growth of Cherokee roses, honeysuckles, and myrtles, while groves of orange-trees appeared in the background; but not even these equalled what I saw, this warm 4th of May, on our way to the Battle-ground. One villa, built by an Englishman, was obstinately inappropriate to the scene and climate; red brick, without gallery, or even eaves or porch; the mere sight of it was scorching. All the rest were an entertainment to the eye as they stood, white and cool, amid their flowering magnolias, and their blossoming alleys, hedges, and thickets of roses. In returning, we alighted at one of these delicious retreats, and wandered about, losing each other among the thorns, the ceringas, and the wilderness of shrubs. We met in a grotto, under the summer-house, cool with a greenish light, and veiled at its entrance with a tracery of creepers. There we lingered, amid singing or silent dreaming. There seemed to be too little that was real about the place for ordinary voices to be heard speaking about ordinary things.

The river was rising, as we were told in a tone of congratulation. The eddies would be filled, and our voyage expedited. The canes in the sugar-grounds were showing themselves above the soil; young sprouts that one might almost see grow. A negro was feed to gather flowers for us, and he filled the carriage with magnolia, honeysuckle, and roses, grinning the while at our pleasure, and at his own good luck in falling in with us.