He amused me much with a humorous account of an oyster supper to which he had been invited in town, and his attempts to eat the “nasty things” without appearing disconcerted before the ladies.
An old negro took my horse when I arrived, and half an hour afterward, came to me and asked if I wanted to see him fed. As we walked toward the stables, he told me that he always took care not to forget gentlemen’s hosses, and to treat them well; “then,” he said, bowing and with emphasis, “they looks out and don’t forget to treat me well.”
The same negro was called to serve me as a candlestick at bedtime. He held the candle till I got into bed. As he retired I closed my eyes, but directly afterward, perceiving the light return, I opened them. Uncle Abram was bending over me, holding the candle, grinning with his toothless gums, winking and shaking his head in a most mysterious manner.
“Hush! massa,” he whispered. “You hain’t got something to drink, in dem saddle-bags, has you, sar?”
The farmer told me something about “nigger dogs” they didn’t use foxhounds, but bloodhounds—not pure, he thought, but a cross of the Spanish bloodhound with the common hounds, or curs. There were many men, he said, in the country below here, who made a business of nigger-hunting, and they had their horses trained, as well as the dogs, to go over any common fence, or if they couldn’t leap it, to break it down. Dogs were trained, when pups, to follow a nigger—not allowed to catch one, however, unless they were quite young, so that they couldn’t hurt him much, and they were always taught to hate a negro, never being permitted to see one except to be put in chase of him. He believed that only two of a pack were kept kenneled all the time—these were old, keen ones, who led the rest when they were out; they were always kept coupled together with a chain, except when trailing. He had seen a pack of thirteen who would follow a trail two days and a half old, if rain had not fallen in the mean time. When it rained immediately after a negro got off, they had to scour the country where they supposed he might be, till they scented him.
When hard pushed, a negro always took to a tree; sometimes, however, they would catch him in an open field. When this was the case the hunter called off the dogs as soon as he could, unless the negro fought—“that generally makes ’em mad (the hunters), and they’ll let ’em tear him a spell. The owners don’t mind having them kind o’ niggers tore a good deal; runaways ain’t much account nohow, and it makes the rest more afraid to run away, when they see how they are sarved.” If they caught the runaway within two or three days, they got from $10 to $20; if it took a longer time, they were paid more than that; sometimes $200. They asked their own price; if an owner should think it exorbitant, he supposed, he said in reply to an inquiry, they’d turn the nigger loose, order him to make off, and tell his master to catch his own niggers.
Sunday.—I rode on, during the cool of the morning, about eight miles, and stopped for the day, at a house pleasantly situated by a small stream, among wooded hills. During the forenoon, seven men and three women, with their children, gathered at the house. All of them, I concluded, were non-slaveholders, as was our host himself; though, as one told me, “with his five boys he makes a heap more crop than Mrs. ——, who’s got forty niggers.” “How is that?” “Well, she’s a woman, and she can’t make the niggers work; she won’t have a overseer, and niggers won’t work, you know, unless there’s somebody to drive ’em.”
Our host, when I arrived, had just been pulling weeds out of his potato patch, which he mentioned as an apology for not being a little clean, like the rest.
Beside the company I have mentioned, and the large family of the house, there was another traveller and myself to dinner, and three bountiful tables were spread, one after another.