MARCH 20.

A stage-coach conveyed the railroad passengers from the hotel to the station, which was a mile or two out of town. As we were entering the coach the driver observed with a Mephistophelean smile that we “needn’t calk’late we were gwine to ride very fur,” and, as soon as we had got into the country he stopped and asked all the men to get out and walk, for, he condescended to explain, “it was as much as his hosses could do to draw the ladies and the baggage.” It was quite true; the horses were often obliged to stop, even with the diminished load, and as there was a contract between myself and the proprietors by which, for a stipulated sum of money by me to them in hand duly paid, they had undertaken to convey me over this ground, I thought it would have been no more than honest if they had looked out beforehand to have either a stronger team, or a better road, provided. As is the custom of our country, however, we allowed ourselves to be thus robbed with great good-nature, and waded along ankle-deep in the mud, joking with the driver and ready to put our shoulders to the wheels if it should be necessary. Two portmanteaus were jerked off in heavy lurches of the coach; the owners picked them up and carried them on their shoulders till the horses stopped to breathe again. The train of course had waited for us, and it continued to wait until another coach arrived, when it started twenty minutes behind time.

After some forty miles of rail, nine of us were stowed away in another stage coach. The road was bad, the weather foul. We proceeded slowly, were often in imminent danger of being upset, and once were all obliged to get out and help the horses drag the coach out of a slough; but with smoking, and the occasional circulation of a small black bottle, and a general disposition to be as comfortable as circumstances would allow, four hours of coaching proved less fatiguing than one of the ill-ventilated rail-cars.

Among the passengers was a “Judge,” resident in the vicinity, portly, dignified, and well-informed; and a young man, who was a personal friend of the member of Congress from the district, and who, as he informed me, had, through the influence of this friend, a promise from the President of honourable and lucrative employment under Government. He was known to all the other passengers, and hailed by every one on the road-side, by the title of Colonel. The Judge was ready to converse about the country through which we were passing, and while perfectly aware, as no one else seemed to be, that it bore anything but an appearance of prosperity or attractiveness to a stranger, he assured me that it was really improving in all respects quite rapidly. There were few large plantations, but many small planters or rather farmers, for cotton, though the principal source of cash income, was much less exclusively an object of attention than in the more southern parts of the State. A larger space was occupied by the maize and grain crops. There were not a few small fields of wheat. In the afternoon, when only the Colonel and myself were with him, the Judge talked about slavery in a candid and liberal spirit. At present prices, he said, nobody could afford to own slaves, unless he could engage them almost exclusively in cotton-growing. It was undoubtedly a great injury to a region like this, which was not altogether well adapted to cotton, to be in the midst of a slaveholding country, for it prevented efficient free labour. A good deal of cotton was nevertheless grown hereabouts by white labour—by poor men who planted an acre or two, and worked it themselves, getting the planters to gin and press it for them. It was not at all uncommon for men to begin in this way and soon purchase negroes on credit, and eventually become rich men. Most of the plantations in this vicinity, indeed, belonged to men who had come into the country with nothing within twenty years. Once a man got a good start with negroes, unless the luck was much against him, nothing but his own folly could prevent his becoming rich. The increase of his negro property by births, if he took good care of it, must, in a few years, make him independent. The worst thing, and the most difficult to remedy, was the deplorable ignorance which prevailed. Latterly, however, people were taking more pride in the education of their children. Some excellent schools had been established, the teachers generally from the North, and a great many children were sent to board in the villages—county-seats—to attend them. This was especially true of girls, who liked to live in the villages rather than on the plantations. There was more difficulty in making boys attend school, until, at least, they were too old to get much good from it.

The “Colonel” was a rough, merry, good-hearted, simple-minded man, and kept all the would-be sober-sides of our coach body in irrepressible laughter with queer observations on passing occurrences, anecdotes and comic songs. It must be confessed that there is no charge which the enemies of the theatre bring against the stage, that was not duly illustrated, and that with a broadness which the taste of a metropolitan audience would scarcely permit. Had Doctor —— and Doctor —— been with me they would thereafter for ever have denied themselves, and discountenanced in others, the use of such a means of travel. The Colonel, notwithstanding, was of a most obliging disposition, and having ascertained in what direction I was going, enumerated at least a dozen families on the road, within some hundred miles, whom he invited me to visit, assuring me that I should find pretty girls in all of them, and a warm welcome, if I mentioned his name.

He told the Judge that his bar-bill on the boat, coming up from New Orleans, was forty dollars—seventeen dollars the first night. But he had made money—had won forty dollars of one gentleman. He confessed, however, that he had lost fifteen by another, “but he saw how he did it. He did not want to accuse him publicly, but he saw it and he meant to write to him and tell him of it. He did not want to insult the gentleman, only he did not want to have him think that he was so green as not to know how he did it.”

While stopping for dinner at a village inn, a young man came into the room where we all were, and asked the coachman what was to be paid for a trunk which had been brought for him. The coachman said the charge would be a dollar, which the young man thought excessive. The coachman denied that it was so, said that it was what he had often been paid; he should not take less. The young man finally agreed to wait for the decision of the proprietor of the line. There was a woman in the room; I noticed no loud words or angry tones, and had not supposed that there was the slightest excitement. I observed, however, that there was a profound silence for a minute afterwards, which was interrupted by a jocose remark of the coachman about the delay of our dinner. Soon after we re-entered the coach, the Colonel referred to the trunk owner in a contemptuous manner. The Judge replied in a similar tone. “If I had been in the driver’s place, I should have killed him sure,” said the Colonel. With great surprise, I ventured to ask for what reason. “Did not you see the fellow put his hand to his breast when the driver denied that he had ever taken less than a dollar for bringing a trunk from Memphis?”

“No, I did not; but what of it?”