"Nothing could be more inspiring than the notes of this charming singer, as we listened to them here amid these melancholy swamps exhaling the sickly miasma beneath this blighting sun, with not a breath of air to lift the blood red banners of the trumpet creepers, or to cool the fevered brow. Melancholy waitings are heard from the swamps, and the waves in parting, look like fields of fire. The winds come to us, but with them no refreshing, for they came over mile after mile of suffocating, reeking lagoons, stifling with the hot breath of the miasma.
"Every now and then the Rip Van Winkle machinery breaks down, and for hours we are motionless, listening per force to the terrific cursing and pounding in the Vulcanic realms below. At length the sun, not like the rosy-fingered Aurora, daughter of the dawn, but like a huge red monster intent on devouring the world, shoots at us his blighting, withering lances of scorching heat. We touch once more at Plymouth, which greets us with its usual entertainment of murderous fleas, death-dealing watermelons and chain-lightning whiskey. Our ten minute touch here lengthened into three horrid sweltering hours owing to the fact, that the intelligent contrabands were paid by the hour for 'toting' the cargo; but off we are at last, thank heaven, and at length we enter the great canal leading to the North River of Norfolk.
"With chat and jest we were worrying away the leaden-winged hours, when suddenly thug, splash, and like a huge turtle we were floundering in the mud. 'No moving,' said the captain, 'till the tide comes up;' and so for three mortal hours we lay stuck in the mud at the edge of the great dismal swamp of Virginia. 'Ah,' said the mate, 'there is the scene of many a horror, there the nigger was torn limb from limb by the bloodhounds, there the runaway slave chose to endure starvation and death amid deadly snakes and miasma rather than comfort in bondage; there I myself saw crowds of black men swinging from limb to limb like monkeys over reeking scums to their fever-haunted dens to escape the lash.'
"Thus was the story of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe verified by one of Virginia's own sons. All the fearful word paintings of Dred floated again before our mental vision, and we thanked God that the old horror of slavery is passed, and that the old flag now floats indeed 'o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.'
"But these hours of waiting, like all things earthly, at length had their end, and just as the moon gilded the cypress-trees with golden glory, the wheels began to move and we again worried our tortuous way up the North River. 'Ah,' said the melancholy-looking man who had been long gazing in silence at the sad waves below, 'alas, here I am, friendless and alone in this wretched country, peddling beeswax and eggs for hog and hominy, chills and fever; but I was once a schoolmaster with $1,200 a year, down in Connecticut; wine and women did it. But,' said he, 'I'll be rich yet—I've got it—I've discovered perpetual motion, and the world will honor me yet.'
"'Wish you would apply it to this old tub at once,' said the professor; and the forlorn peddler went his way to cherish visions of coming glory. Just then we were electrified by a cheer from the doctor, as the lights of Norfolk flashed over this splendid harbor, yet to float the commerce of a great city.
"We bade farewell without a single regret to the old tub Astoria, and entered the narrow streets, reeking with the horrors of a thousand and one stenches, stumbling over the prostrate forms of sleeping negroes to the hotel, where we indulged once more in the luxury of a bath, which the nasty water of North Carolina had forbidden for many weary days. Suddenly the city was aroused by the roll of drums and the shouts of hundreds, calling to a mass meeting in Court House Square. Thither we followed the crowd, listening for awhile to the blatant Southern orators roaring about the future greatness of the 'Mother of Presidents,' deploring the reign of carpet-baggers and calling for a white man's government amidst the shouts of the great unwashed; while the sons of Ham looked silently and sullenly on.
"We gladly responded to the steamer's shrill call and sailed away to our home in the great and glorious North."