XXXV.
Preparation for a deer hunt—A sailor, a planter, and an author—A deer driver—"Stands" for deer—The hunting ground—The hunt—Ellis's cliff—Silver mine—An hypothesis—Alluvial formation of the lower valley of the Mississippi—Geological descriptions of the south-west.
The morning after my arrival at the plantation, which suggested the subject of my last letter, two gentlemen, with their guns and dogs, arrived at the house, to proceed from thence, according to a previous arrangement, on a deer hunt. This noble and attractive game abounds in the "bottoms" and river hills in this region; though the planters, who are in general passionately fond of hunting, are fast thinning their numbers. The branching antlers of a stag, as in the old oaken halls of England, are found fixed, in some conspicuous station, in almost every planter's habitation—trophies of his skill, and testimonials of his attachment to the chase.
Having prepared our hunting apparatus, and assembled the dogs, which, from their impatient movements, evidently needed no intimation of our design, we mounted our horses, and, winding through the cotton fields, entered a forest to the south, and proceeded, in fine spirits, toward the "drive," four or five miles below, as the hunting station is technically termed by deer hunters. There were, exclusive of a servant, four in our party. One of them, my host, formerly an officer in the navy, having, some years since, left the service, and settled himself down as a cotton planter, presented in his person the anomalous union, in Mississippi, of the sailor and farmer: for in this state, which has little intercourse directly with the sea, sailors are rare birds. Till recently a ship could not be seen by a Mississippian without going to New-Orleans, or elsewhere out of the state: but since Natchez became a port of entry, and ships have ascended here, the citizens who flocked in from all the country round, to gaze upon them, are a little more au fait to this branch of nautical knowledge. It would be difficult to say which predominates in this gentleman, the bluff and frank bearing of the sailor, or the easy and independent manner of the planter. In the management of his plantation, the result of his peculiar economy has shown, that the discipline with which he was familiar in the navy, with suitable modifications, has not been applied unsuccessfully to the government of his slaves. What a strange inclination sailors have for farming! Inquire of any New-England sea-captain the ultimatum of his wishes, after leaving the sea—for sailors in general follow the sea as the means of securing them a snug berth on shore—and he will almost invariably reply—"a farm." Another of our party was a planter, a native of Mississippi, and the son of a gentleman whose philosophic researches have greatly contributed to the advancement of science. He was a model of a southern planter—gentlemanly, companionable, and a keen hunter. The government of his plantation, which is one of the finest in the state, is of a parental rather than an imperious character. He rules rather by kindness than severity, and his slaves obey from the principle of a desire to please, rather than from fear. And the result of his discipline has fully overthrown the sweeping assertion, which it is the fashion to repeat and believe, that "the more kindly slaves are treated the worse they are." A favourite theory of philanthropists, in relation to master and slave, is more practically illustrated on the estate of this gentleman, than the most sanguine of its framers could have anticipated. As I have, in a former letter, alluded to that branch of the domestic economy of this plantation, relating to the religious privileges of the slaves, and shall again have occasion to refer to its discipline, I will pursue the subject here no farther.
The third individual of our party was a gentleman originally from New-Jersey; a state which has contributed many valuable citizens to Mississippi. But he had been too long in the south to preserve his identity as a Jersey man. The son of a distinguished barrister, he had been a lawyer himself; but, like all professional men, who have remained here a short time, he had taken his third degree as a cotton planter. He is a gentleman of fine taste and a chastened imagination; and besides some beautiful tales, contributed to the periodicals, he is the author of that delightful story, the "Fawn's leap," published in the Atlantic Souvenir of 1830. The literary world will have reason to feel regret, in which the subject of my remark will, no doubt, be far from sympathising, that fortune has placed him among her protegés. He possesses an independent property, and resides on an estate called "Woodbourne," eight or nine miles from Natchez. With true Mississippi taste, he has placed his handsome villa in the midst of a forest; but the majestic beauty of the lofty trees, as surveyed from the gallery, and the solemn grandeur of the primeval forests which inclose his dwelling on all sides, struck me, at the moment, as far superior to any display of art in ornamental grounds, and nearly unhinged my predilection for artificial scenery. In this charming retirement, and in the quiet enjoyment of private life, he has laid aside the gown of the author to assume the capote of the planter, and become an indefatigable devotee to the lordly pleasures of the chase. Few men, who hunt merely en amateur, and especially, few literary men, can boast that they have killed twenty-seven deer, and been at the death of fifty-two—yet this gentleman can do so with truth: and a row of notches, cut in his hunting-horn, which I found suspended from an antler in the gallery of the house we had just left, recorded the fact. Besides this gentleman, there are but few individuals who are known out of this state as cultivators of literature. Mississippi is yet too young to boast of her authors, although she is not deficient in men of talent and learning. But the members of the learned professions are too much involved in schemes of wealth to have leisure or inclination for the cultivation of general literature.
Half way through the forest into which we entered on leaving the plantation, we came to a rude dwelling, inhabited by a ruder old hunter, who was to officiate as "driver." He accompanied us with his dogs for a while, and then turned aside into the woods to surround the deer in their place of resort and drive them toward the river, between which and them we were to take our "stands," for the purpose of intercepting them, as they dashed by to the water. For if alarmed while feeding upon the high grounds back front the Mississippi, they at once bound off to the shelter of the swamps or bottoms near the river—and the skilful hunter, whose experience teaches him by what paths they will seek to gain the lowlands where the hounds cannot follow them, takes his stand with his rifle behind some tree by which he is tolerably sure the deer will pass, and as the noble and terrified animal bounds past him, he levels the deadly rifle with unerring aim, and buries a bullet in his heart.
Emerging from the forest a mile or two above our hunting ground, we came suddenly upon an amphitheatre of naked hills nearly surrounded by forests of dark pine. Winding through romantic defiles thickly bordered with cedars, we gradually ascended to the summit of the highest of this cluster of treeless hills, when all at once the Mississippi, rolling onward to the sea, burst upon our sight in all its majesty. There is a grand and desolate character in those naked cliffs which hang in huge terraces over the river, to the perpendicular height of three hundred feet. The view from their summits is one of the most sublime and extensive in the south-west. To the north and south the broad river spreads away like a long serpentine lake, its western shore presenting a plain, clothed even to the horizon with a boundless forest, with a plantation here and there breaking the uniformity of its outlines, near the water's edge.
After a farther ride of a mile, over a hilly road through woods alternately exposing and hiding the river, we arrived at the "deer-stand,"—a long ridge nearly parallel with the river, and covered with a very open forest with a low "bottom," between the ridge and the water, and an extensive "drive," or forest frequented by deer, extending two miles inland. Our "driver" with the whole pack, had turned off into the "drive" some time before, and having examined the ground, we took our "stands" about a hundred yards apart, each behind a large tree commanding an opening, or avenue, through which the deer were expected to pass. Several of these "stands," and many more than we could occupy, were on the ridge, all of which should have been occupied to insure a successful issue to our sport. A few moments after we had taken our stands, and while listening for the least token of the "driver's" presence in the depths of the forest—the distant baying of dogs, in that peculiar note with which they open when they have roused their game, fell faintly upon our ears. The chorus of canine voices, however, soon grew louder and more violent—and as they awoke the echoes of the forests, and came down upon us like a storm—my heart leaped and the blood coursed merrily in my veins. All at once the deep voices of the hounds ceased as though they were at fault; but after a few moments' pause, a staunch old hunter opened again far to the right, and again the whole pack were in pursuit in full cry, and the crashing of trees and underbrush directly in front of us about a quarter of a mile in the wood, with the increased roar of the pack, warned us to be ready. The next moment the noise moved away to the right, and all at once, with a crash and a bound, a noble stag, with his head laid back upon his shoulders, crossed our line at the remotest stand, and disappeared in the thick woods along the river. The dogs followed like meteors. Away to the left another crashing was heard, and a beautiful doe leaped across the open space on the ridge, and was lost in the thicket. The sounds of affrighted deer, passing through the forest at a great distance, were occasionally heard, but these soon died away and we only heard the wild clamour of the dogs, which the driver, who was close at their heels, in vain essayed to recall by sounding his horn long and loud, and sending its hoarse notes into the deepest recesses of the wood.