“It seems you were better off when in slavery,” I suggested.
“I don’t say that, mahster. I’d sooner be as I is to-day.” And cheerfully shouldering his bundle, the old African tramped on towards Richmond. What was to become of him there?
I kept on to Manchester, passed the great humming mills by the river-side, and turning to the right, up the Danville railroad, reached Belle Island bridge after a brisk fifteen minutes’ walk. Crossing over, I entered the yard of a nail-factory, where some men were breaking up heavy old iron, cannons, mortars, and car-wheels, by means of a four-hundred pound shot dropped from a derrick forty feet high. Beyond the factory rose the pleasant hill I had viewed from the city. I climbed its southern side, and found myself in the midst of a scene not less fair than I had anticipated. Behind me was a cornfield, covering the summit; below rushed the river among its green and rocky islands; while Richmond rose beyond, picturesquely beautiful on its hills, and rosy in the flush of sunset.
But where had been the prisoners’ camp? I saw no trace of it on that slope. Alas, that slope was never trodden by their feet, and its air they never breathed. At the foot of it is a flat, spreading out into the stream, and almost level with it at high water. Already the night-fog was beginning to creep over it. This flat, which was described to me as a marsh in the rainy season, and covered with snow and slush and ice in winter, was the “Belle Isle” of our prisoners. Yet they were not allowed the range even of that. A trench and embankment enclosing an oblong space of less than six acres formed the dead-line which it was fatal to pass. Within this as many as twelve thousand men were at times crowded, with no shelter but a few tattered tents.
As I was examining the spot, a throng of begrimed laborers crossed the flat, carrying oars, and embarking in boats on the low shore looking towards the city. They were workmen from the nail-factory returning to their homes. One of them, passing alone after his companions, stopped to talk with me at the dead-line, and afterwards offered me a place in his boat. It was a leaky little skiff: I perched myself upon a seat in the bow; and he, standing in the stern, propelled it across with a pole.
“Where were the dead buried?” I asked.
“The dead Yankees? They buried a good many thar in the sand-bar. But they might about as well have flung ’em into the river. A freshet washed out a hundred and twenty bodies at one time.”
“Did you see the prisoners when they were here?”
“I wasn’t on the Island. But from Richmond anybody could see their tents hyer, and see them walking around. I was away most of the time.”
“In the army?”