On Sunday, I rode to a place called Frederica to call on a Mrs. A——, who came to see me some time ago. I rode straight through the island by the main road that leads to the little church.
How can I describe to you the exquisite spring beauty that is now adorning these woods, the variety of the fresh new-born foliage, the fragrance of the sweet wild perfumes that fill the air? Honeysuckles twine round every tree; the ground is covered with a low white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged jewels, dart from the boughs,—and—and—a huge ground snake slid like a dark ribbon, across the path while I was stopping to enjoy all this deliciousness, and so I became less enthusiastic, and cantered on past the little deserted churchyard, with the new-made grave beneath its grove of noble oaks, and a little farther on reached Mrs. A——'s cottage, half hidden in the midst of ruins and roses.
This Frederica is a very strange place; it was once a town, the town, the metropolis of the island. The English, when they landed on the coast of Georgia in the war, destroyed this tiny place, and it has never been built up again. Mrs. A——'s, and one other house, are the only dwellings that remain in this curious wilderness of dismantled crumbling grey walls compassionately cloaked with a thousand profuse and graceful creepers. These are the only ruins properly so called, except those of Fort Putnam, that I have ever seen in this land of contemptuous youth. I hailed these picturesque groups and masses with the feelings of a European, to whom ruins are like a sort of relations. In my country, ruins are like a minor chord in music, here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of time, but the results of violence; they recall no valuable memories of a remote past, and are mere encumbrances to the busy present. Evidently they are out of place in America, except on St. Simon's Island, between this savage selvage of civilisation and the great Atlantic deep. These heaps of rubbish and roses would have made the fortune of a sketcher; but I imagine the snakes have it all to themselves here, and are undisturbed by camp stools, white umbrellas, and ejaculatory young ladies.
I sat for a long time with Mrs. A——, and a friend of hers staying with her, a Mrs. A——, lately from Florida. The latter seemed to me a remarkable woman; her conversation was extremely interesting. She had been stopping at Brunswick, at the hotel where Dr. H—— murdered young W——, and said that the mingled ferocity and blackguardism of the men who frequented the house had induced her to cut short her stay there, and come on to her friend Mrs. A——'s. We spoke of that terrible crime which had occurred only the day after she left Brunswick, and both ladies agreed that there was not the slightest chance of Dr. H——'s being punished in any way for the murder he had committed; that shooting down a man who had offended you was part of the morals and manners of the southern gentry, and that the circumstance was one of quite too frequent occurrence to cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one of the principal members of the society. If the accounts given by these ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the people among whom they live.
We had a long discussion on the subject of slavery, and they took as usual the old ground of justifying the system, where it was administered with kindness and indulgence. It is not surprising that women should regard the question from this point of view; they are very seldom just, and are generally treated with more indulgence than justice by men. They were very patient of my strong expressions of reprobation of the whole system, and Mrs. A——, bidding me good-bye, said that, for aught she could tell, I might be right, and might have been led down here by Providence to be the means of some great change in the condition of the poor coloured people.
I rode home pondering on the strange fate that has brought me to this place so far from where I was born, this existence so different in all its elements from that of my early years and former associations. If I believed Mrs. A——'s parting words, I might perhaps verify them; perhaps I may yet verify although I do not believe them. On my return home, I found a most enchanting bundle of flowers, sent to me by Mrs. G——; pomegranate blossoms, roses, honeysuckle, everything that blooms two months later with us in Pennsylvania.
I told you I had a great desire to visit Little St. Simon's, and the day before yesterday I determined to make an exploring expedition thither. I took M—— and the children, little imagining what manner of day's work was before me. Six men rowed us in the 'Lily,' and Israel brought the wood wagon after us in a flat. Our navigation was a very intricate one, all through sea swamps and marshes, mud-banks and sand-banks, with great white shells and bleaching bones stuck upon sticks to mark the channel. We landed on this forest in the sea by Quash's house, the only human residence on the island. It was larger and better, and more substantial than the negro huts in general, and he seemed proud and pleased to do the honours to us. Thence we set off, by my desire, in the wagon through the woods to the beach; road there was none, save the rough clearing that the men cut with their axes before us as we went slowly on. Presently, we came to a deep dry ditch, over which there was no visible means of proceeding. Israel told me if we would sit still he would undertake to drive the wagon into and out of it; and so, indeed, he did, but how he did it is more than I can explain to you now, or could explain to myself then. A less powerful creature than Montreal could never have dragged us through; and when we presently came to a second rather worse edition of the same, I insisted upon getting out and crossing it on foot. I walked half a mile while the wagon was dragged up and down the deep gulley, and lifted bodily over some huge trunks of fallen trees. The wood through which we now drove was all on fire, smoking, flaming, crackling, and burning round us. The sun glared upon us from the cloudless sky, and the air was one cloud of sand-flies and mosquitoes. I covered both my children's faces with veils and handkerchiefs, and repented not a little in my own breast of the rashness of my undertaking. The back of Israel's coat was covered so thick with mosquitoes that one could hardly see the cloth; and I felt as if we should be stifled, if our way lay much longer through this terrible wood. Presently we came to another impassable place, and again got out of the wagon, leaving Israel to manage it as best he could. I walked with the baby in my arms a quarter of a mile, and then was so overcome with the heat that I sat down in the burning wood, on the floor of ashes, till the wagon came up again. I put the children and M—— into it, and continued to walk till we came to a ditch in a tract of salt marsh, over which Israel drove triumphantly, and I partly jumped and was partly hauled over, having declined the entreaties of several of the men to let them lie down and make a bridge with their bodies for me to walk over. At length we reached the skirt of that tremendous wood, to my unspeakable relief, and came upon the white sand hillocks of the beach. The trees were all strained crooked, from the constant influence of the sea-blast. The coast was a fearful-looking stretch of dismal, trackless sand, and the ocean lay boundless and awful beyond the wild and desolate beach, from which we were now only divided by a patch of low coarse-looking bush, growing as thick and tangled as heather, and so stiff and compact that it was hardly possible to drive through it. Yet in spite of this several lads who had joined our train rushed off into it in search of rabbits, though Israel called repeatedly to them, warning them of the danger of rattlesnakes. We drove at last down to the smooth sea sand; and here, outstripping our guides, was barred farther progress by a deep gully, down which it was impossible to take the wagon. Israel, not knowing the beach well, was afraid to drive round the mouth of it; and so it was determined that from this point we should walk home under his guidance. I sat in the wagon while he constructed a rough foot-bridge of bits of wood and broken planks for us, over the narrow chasm, and he then took Montreal out of the wagon and tied him behind it, leaving him for the other men to take charge of when they should arrive at this point. And so, having mightily desired to see the coast of Little St. Simon's Island, I did see it thoroughly; for I walked a mile and a half round it, over beds of sharp shells, through swamps half knee deep, poor little S—— stumping along with dogged heroism, and Israel carrying the baby, except at one deep mal passo, when I took the baby and he carried S——; and so, through the wood round Quash's house, where we arrived almost fainting with fatigue and heat, and where we rested but a short time; for we had to start almost immediately to save the tide home.
I called at Mr. C——'s on my way back, to return him his son's manuscript, which I had in the boat for that purpose. I sent Jack, who had come to meet me with the horses, home, being too tired to attempt riding; and, covered with mud literally up to my knees I was obliged to lie down ignominiously all the afternoon to rest. And now I will give you a curious illustration of the utter subserviency of slaves. It seems that by taking the tide in proper season, and going by boat, all that horrible wood journey might have been avoided, and we could have reached the beach, with perfect ease in half the time; but because, being of course absolutely ignorant of this, I had expressed a desire to go through the wood, not a syllable of remonstrance was uttered by any one; and the men not only underwent the labour of cutting a path for the wagon and dragging it through and over all the impediments we encountered, but allowed me and the children to traverse that burning wood, rather than tell me that by waiting and taking another way I could get to the sea. When I expressed my astonishment at their not having remonstrated against my order, and explained how I could best achieve the purpose I had in view, the sole answer I got even from Israel was, 'Missis say so, so me do; missis say me go through the wood, me no tell missis go another way.' You see, my dear E——, one had need bethink oneself what orders one gives, when one has the misfortune to be despotic.
How sorry I am that I have been obliged to return that narrative of Mr. C——'s without asking permission to copy it, which I did not do because I should not have been able to find the time to do it! We go away the day after to-morrow. All the main incidents of the disaster the newspapers have made you familiar with—the sudden and appalling loss of that fine vessel laden with the very flower of the south. There seems hardly to be a family in Georgia and South Carolina that had not some of its members on board that ill-fated ship. You know it was a sort of party of pleasure more than anything else; the usual annual trip to the north for change of air and scene, for the gaieties of Newport and Saratoga, that all the wealthy southern people invariably take every summer.
The weather had been calm and lovely; and dancing, talking, and laughing, as if they were in their own drawing-rooms, they had passed the time away till they all separated for the night. At the first sound of the exploding boiler, Mr. C—— jumped up, and in his shirt and trousers ran on deck. The scene was one of horrible confusion; women screaming, men swearing, the deck strewn with broken fragments of all descriptions, the vessel leaning frightfully to one side, and everybody running hither and thither in the darkness in horror and dismay. He had left Georgia with Mrs. F—— and Mrs. N——, the two children, and one of the female servants of these ladies under his charge. He went immediately to the door of the ladies' cabin and called Mrs. F——; they were all there half-dressed; he bade them dress as quickly as possible and be ready to follow and obey him. He returned almost instantly, and led them to the side of the vessel, where, into the boats, that had already been lowered, desperate men and women were beginning to swarm, throwing themselves out of the sinking ship. He bade Mrs. F—— jump down into one of these boats which was only in the possession of two sailors; she instantly obeyed him, and he threw her little boy to the men after her. He then ordered Mrs. N——, with the negro woman, to throw themselves off the vessel into the boat, and, with Mrs. N——'s baby in his arms, sprang after them. His foot touched the gunwale of the boat, and he fell into the water; but recovering himself instantly, he clambered into the boat, which he then peremptorily ordered the men to set adrift, in spite of the shrieks, and cries, and commands, and entreaties of the frantic crowds who were endeavouring to get into it. The men obeyed him, and rowing while he steered, they presently fell astern of the ship, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror. Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating, and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they gradually pulled further and further out of the horrible chaos of despair, and, with the other boat still consorting with them, rowed on. They watched from a distance the piteous sight of the ill-fated steamer settling down, the gay girdle of light that marked the line of her beautiful saloons and cabins gradually sinking nearer and nearer to the blackness, in which they were presently extinguished; and the ship, with all its precious human freight engulfed—all but the handful left in those two open boats, to brave the dangers of that terrible coast!