Since our recent return and while on the journey, and at New York, friends whom we have met, and new acquaintances, have almost universally exhibited much interest in the description of the situation of affairs on those islands, before, during and after the storm, and to many the simple details which were to us but household words, brought the first realizing sense of the magnitude of the calamity.
Miss Clara Barton, the president of the American branch of the International Organization of the Red Cross, who has the management of contributions and of the dispensing of aid among the Sea Islands now, and had occupied a similar position at Johnstown, made us her agents to dispense on one of the islands, where weekly we feed over four hundred persons, and I know we are but doing as she would wish, in continuing so to act, during our brief respite from our work.
Therefore I most cheerfully comply with the request, and trust that my efforts to interest and revive interest will not be in vain.
Geography of the Coast.
I will premise with a bit of geography: The coast of South Carolina is bordered for over a hundred and fifty miles by an archipelago consisting of hundreds of islands and islets from a hundred square miles to as many yards in area. These are nearly all well wooded with pine, oak, magnolia and gum trees. Many of them consist largely of arable land, which, before the war of the rebellion, was divided by hedges into great plantations, whereon the rich planters, aided by their hundreds of slaves, cultivated, besides vegetables of all kinds, the famous long staple “Sea Island cotton.” The islands are separated from each other and from the main land by arms of the sea, here called rivers, or creeks, according to their width and depth, some, as Beaufort, Broad and Coosaw rivers, from one to three miles in width and thirty feet in depth, and others, which, at low tide, are but marshes, with a thread of water.
After the War.
After the war the large plantations were subdivided into five, ten and twenty-acre farms, which were by the government distributed among the “heads of families,” generally of the slaves who were left on them, and these negroes, with their descendants, still occupy these farms, living in comfortable cabins, each plantation having its own hamlet or colony. After the first shock of change was over, these negroes developed into orderly, industrious, thriving Christian communities. Each farm was thoroughly cultivated, and there was produced every year good crops of potatoes, sweet and Irish, peas, corn, melons and one or two bales of cotton, which, mortgaged to the local storekeeper, generally a white man, furnished them with groceries. All raised and owned horses, mules, hogs, cattle, turkeys, domestic fowls and ducks. All were owners of one or more buggies, carts, plows and other agricultural implements, and those who lived near the sea owned one or more boats, with outfit of nets and fishing gear, and from spring until winter the sea yielded abundant harvest of good fish, turtles, crabs, shrimps, prawns, clams and oysters, and the marshes furnished terrapin, which sold at very remunerative figures, as I well know, for the storm took from me nearly three hundred of them. Every cabin was comfortable, from their point of view, furnished, and in many were sewing machines, house organs and melodeons, and for every member of the family, however slightly attired on week days, a fine, often gorgeous, suit of Sunday clothes—and they are all church-goers.
The great barn-like structures that they build for churches are presided over by preachers of their own race—“reverence doctor” is the title—and are crowded. They have also smaller places of worship, called “praise houses,” where they assemble once or twice a week in the evening to indulge in “shouting” a mingled prayer, responding, singing, and when “spirit dun come pow’ful,” a wild, waltzing sort of a dance, such as I have seen in Africa. They have schools which troops of well-dressed children attend daily. There are lots of children, and but a very small portion of those under twenty have not quite a fair common school education. Said an old aunty to a lady friend of mine: “Has yer children, honey?” “Yes, aunty, I have three boys and one girl.” “Is dat all?” “Yes, isn’t it enough?” “Dat’s as the Lord wills, honey; to some He sends little litters and to some big ones. I’se got thirteen head and I’se dun loss four head.”