Trinity Bottom.—On landing on the west side of the Trinity, we entered a rich bottom, even in winter, of an almost tropical aspect. The road had been cut through a cane-brake, itself a sort of Brobdignag grass. Immense trees, of a great variety of kinds, interlaced their branches and reeled with their own rank growth. Many vines, especially huge grape-vines, ran hanging from tree to tree, adding to the luxuriant confusion. Spanish moss clung thick everywhere, supplying the shadows of a winter foliage.
These bottom lands bordering the Trinity are among the richest of rich Texas. They are not considered equal, in degree of fatness, to some parts of the Brazos, Colorado, and Guadaloupe bottoms, but are thought to have compensation in reliability for steady cropping.
We made our camp on the edge of the bottom, and for safety against our dirty persecutors, the hogs, pitched our tent within a large hog-yard, putting up the bars to exclude them. The trees within had been sparingly cut, and we easily found tent-poles and fuel at hand.
The plantation on which we were thus intruding had just been sold, we learned, at two dollars per acre. There were seven hundred acres, and the buildings, with a new gin-house, worth nearly one thousand dollars, were included in the price. With the land were sold eight prime field-hands. A quarter of the land was probably subject to overflow, and the limits extended over some unproductive upland.
When field-hands are sold in this way with the land, the family servants, who have usually been selected from the field-hands, must be detached to follow the fortunes of the seller. When, on the other hand, the land is sold simply, the whole body of slaves move away, leaving frequently wives and children on neighbouring plantations. Such a cause of separation must be exceedingly common among the restless, almost nomadic, small proprietors of the South.
But the very word “sale,” applied to a slave, implies this cruelty, leaving, of course, the creature’s whole happiness to his owner’s discretion and humanity.
As if to give the lie to our reflections, however, the rascals here appeared to be particularly jolly, perhaps adopting Mark Tapley’s good principles. They were astir half the night, talking, joking, and singing loud and merrily.
This plantation had made this year seven bales to the hand. The water for the house, we noticed, was brought upon heads a quarter of a mile, from a rain-pool, in which an old negress was washing.