The great Salt Marsh.—A break down.—We reach Savannah.—Fancy sketches.—The forest city.—A Gossip with the Natives.—Cross questions and crooked answers.
On the sweetest of spring mornings, when the sunshine seems to reach down into our hearts, and the soft breeze stirs our pulse and sets our thoughts playing a jubilant melody, while our hearts sing a soft sweet song that the ears hear not, and that our own spirits can but dimly comprehend—we turn our back on the quaint old city of Charleston, and resume our journey South.
Squatting about the platform of the railway station we find groups and whole families of negroes, or, as they are now more respectfully called, “coloured folk,”—from the queer little black ball of a baby, to the withered old grandmother with a face notched and scarred, as though time had kept his calendar and scored the passing years in wrinkles, till they all run one into the other, and the face was made up of nothing else. They are dressed, as is the custom of their kind, in all the colours of the rainbow, and are heavily laden with baskets of fish, fruit, vegetables, and bundles of their personal belongings, with their “piccaninnies” sprawling at their feet and crawling in and out like little black eels. We are struck with an idea, almost a dread, that they are going to ride in our car—not that we object to the colour of “God’s image carved in ebony,” but their neighbourhood is not odorous.
“We has second class on dis line,” said the porter, in answer to our inquiries, “and dey be gwine dere; dey’s no company for white folk—not clean, nor nice in dey’s manners. I’s black myself, but I knows dem folk’s no company for ladies and gen’l’men.”
With much tumbling, and clutching their brood together, they scrambled into their appointed places, in a seedy-looking car adjoining ours, and we are off; the city spires and steeples fade from our view, and our faces are set towards Georgia. We are well beyond the region of the maple trees now; but forests of pine and cypress, dashed here and there with the snow-white blossoms of the dogwood, close on all sides of us, except where our narrow iron path makes its way through them. Soon we come to an open clearing, where the forest trees have been cut down and timber huts built up; this is a wood station, and mountains of logs are piled on each side. Here we stop to feed our engine, while a diversified company of wild hogs—gaunt, lean, hungry-looking creatures, all legs and heads, like swinish tramps who get their living in the woods—gather and grunt in herds almost under our car wheels, and goats with large families of youthful nannies and billies stand staring mildly in the background, now and then playfully butting one another.
We are soon off again; racks of wood are stationed at certain distances all along the line, coal being scarce in these localities, and wood much lighter of digestion. Our hungry engine insists on having four square meals a day, and even then grows weak and feeble, and demands a snack in between; it slackens, and snorts, and grumbles, till the driver, often aided by the passengers (who seem to enjoy the fun), gets down and cuts a few dainty branches just to appease its appetite, and coax it on to the next station.
We pass through the great salt marsh, where the grand old pines, rank on rank, are standing with their roots in pickle, and their half bald heads fringed with green lifted heavenwards. A bush fire has broken out somewhere in the distance, and the flames come leaping along the surface of the marsh, with a blue, lurid-looking light, feeding upon whatever they can find; now they glide in graceful spiral lines, like fiery serpents round the trunk of some grand old tree, and leave it a charred and blackened stump.
As the evening shadows fall we enter the cypress swamps; the dusky forms of the forest giants stand stiff and stark in the gloaming, making up a weird and somewhat romantic scene. Night closes in, the great golden moon climbs slowly into the purple skies, and the balmy evening air has a delicious fragrance as though it came from worlds unknown. But with all its sombre subtle charm, a cypress swamp is not exactly the place one would choose to break down in, and just here our engine, which has been crawling and groaning like a crippled maniac for the last half hour, elects to stop short. She (I believe engine is feminine) stops, and shows no sign of ever intending to move again.
American sang-froid is difficult to disturb, but on this occasion the passengers deign to manifest some interest in the cause of the delay. They bombard the conductor with questions, and skirmish round the engineer, sending their suggestions flying round his devoted head, till a peremptory order is given, and they are driven back into the cars with some loss of patience. As if by magic, a breakdown gang is soon gathered round the engine—heaven knows where they came from, whether they dropped from the skies, or emerged from the bowels of the earth, for human habitation thereabout seemed impossible, unless they had built a nest high up in the dark cypress boughs.
Meanwhile various editions of the cause of our delay are freely circulated. One piece of official information at last reaches us: The mainspring of our engine is broken. One reports that they are making a new one; another that they are mending the old one. “No, they are propping it up with a piece of wood,” says a third. “That’s impossible,” cries another unlicensed authority; “the idea of an engine hobbling on wooden legs!” Then begins a game at speculation, and we all take a hand: “How long shall we be kept there?” “Perhaps all night—perhaps all day!” “Will they send help to us?” “They can’t, there’s only a single line of rail, and no telegraph near.”