[H] Referring to the common practice of bathing the raw and bleeding backs of the punished slaves with a strong solution of salt and water.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NEGRO HUNTER.
Alighting from the carriage, I entered, with my host, the cabin of the negro-hunter. So far as external appearance went, the shanty was a slight improvement on the "Mills House," described in a previous chapter; but internally, it was hard to say whether it resembled more a pig-sty or a dog-kennel. The floor was of the bare earth, covered in patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with billets of "lightwood," unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee—made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the upper side—a full-grown bloodhound, two younger canines, and nine half-clad juveniles of the flax-head species. Over against the fire-place three low beds afforded sleeping accommodation to nearly a dozen human beings (of assorted sizes, and dove-tailed together with heads and feet alternating), and in the opposite corner a lower couch, whose finer furnishings told plainly it was the peculiar property of the "wee ones" of the family—a mother's tenderness for her youngest thus cropping out even in the midst of filth and degradation—furnished quarters for an unwashed, uncombed, unclothed, saffron-hued little fellow about fifteen months old, and—the dog "Lady." She was of a dark hazel color—a cross between a pointer and a bloodhound—and one of the most beautiful creatures I ever saw. Her neck and breast were bound about with a coarse cotton cloth, saturated with blood, and emitting a strong odor of bad whiskey; and her whole appearance showed the desperate nature of the encounter with the overseer.
The nine young democrats who were lolling about the room in various attitudes, rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather deferential "How-dy'ge," to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were some strange being, dropped from another sphere. The two eldest were of the male gender, as was shown by their clothes—cast-off suits of the inevitable reddish-gray, much too large, and out at the elbows and the knees—but the sex of the others I was at a loss to determine, for they wore only a single robe, reaching, like their mother's, from the neck to the knees. Not one of the occupants of the cabin boasted a pair of stockings, but the father and mother did enjoy the luxury of shoes—coarse, stout brogans, untanned, and of the color of the legs which they encased.
"Well, Sandy, how is 'Lady?'" asked the Colonel, as he stepped to the bed of the wounded dog.
"Reckon she's a goner, Cunnel; the d—— Yankee orter swing fur it."
This intimation that the overseer was a countryman of mine, took me by surprise, nothing I had observed in his speech or manners having indicated it, but I consoled myself with the reflection that Connecticut had reared him—as she makes wooden hams and nutmegs—expressly for the Southern market.
"He shall swing for it, by ——. But are you sure the slut will die?"