The building of the Independent Presbyterian Church, on Bull Street, is one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country, inside and out. It reminds one of the old churches in Charleston, and it is gratifying to know that though the old church which stood on this site (dedicated in 1819) burned in 1889, the congregation did not seize the opportunity to replace it with a hideosity in lemon-yellow brick, but had the rare good sense to duplicate the old church exactly, with the result that, though a new building, it has all the dignity and simple beauty of an old one.
Broughton Street, the shopping street, crosses Bull Street in the downtown section, and looks ashamed of itself as it does so, for it is about as commonplace a looking street as one may see. There is simply nothing about it of distinction save its rather handsome name.
Elsewhere, however, there are several skyscrapers, most of them good looking buildings. It seemed to me also that I had never seen so many banks as in Savannah, and I am told that it is, indeed, a great banking city, and that the record of the Savannah banks for weathering financial storms is very fine. On a good many corners where there are not banks there are clubs, and some of these clubs are delightful and thoroughly metropolitan in character. I know of no city in the North, having a population corresponding to that of Charleston or of Savannah, which has clubs comparable with the best clubs of these cities, or of New Orleans. When it is considered that of the population of these southern cities approximately one half, representing negroes, must be deducted in considering the population from which eligibles must be drawn, the excellence of southern clubs becomes remarkable in the extreme. Savannah, by the way, holds one national record in the matter of clubs. It had the first golf club founded in America. Exactly when the club was founded I cannot say, but Mr. H. H. Bruen, of Savannah, has in his possession an invitation to a golf club ball held in the old City Hall in the year 1811.
The commercial ascendancy of Savannah over Charleston is due largely to natural causes. The port of Savannah drains exports from a larger and richer territory than is tapped by Charleston, though new railroads are greatly improving Charleston's situation in this respect. Savannah is a shipping port for cotton from a vast part of the lower and central South, and is also a great port for lumber, and the greatest port in the world for "naval stores." I did not know what naval stores were when I went to Savannah. The term conjured up in my mind pictures of piles of rope, pulleys and anchors. But those are not naval stores. Naval stores are gum products, such as resin and turpentine, which are obtained from the long-leafed pines of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The traveler through these States cannot have failed to notice gashes on the tree-trunks along the way. From these the resinous sap exudes and is caught in cups, after which it is boiled, there in the woods, and thus separated into turpentine, resin and pitch. Vast quantities of these materials are stored on the great modern docks of Savannah. It is said that owing to wasteful methods, the long-leafed pine forests are being rapidly destroyed, and that this industry will die out before very long because the eager grabbers of to-day's dollars, having no thought for the future, fail to practise scientific forestry.
All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see. The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit. In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes. The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which "regulars" at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a "back to the farm" movement. The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere. White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another. The food and accommodations for both is the same. The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed. The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed. Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome. The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.
All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.
On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character. There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them. In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered. I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to "hant" these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.
In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying "Blood is thicker than water," but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula. The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire. Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his rôle of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.
Most of the old houses of the plantations on the river have long since been destroyed. That at Whitehall was burned by the negroes when Sherman's army came by, but the old trees and gardens still endure, including a tall hedge of holly which is remarkable even in this florescent region. The old plantation house at the Hermitage, approached by a handsome avenue of live-oaks, is, I believe, the only one of those ancient mansions which still stands, and it does not stand very strongly, for, beautiful though it is in its abandonment and decay, it is like some noble old gentleman dying alone in an attic, of age, poverty and starvation—dying proudly as poor Charles Gayarré did in New Orleans.