I could now comprehend why my companion had shown such aversion to accompany me in my excursion.
I could not help smiling at his superstition, though I was not a little chagrined at his not having sooner confided it to me, so that I might have made a more careful exploration of the interesting locality.
When I thought of the gloomy obscurity of its shadows, the deep, dark lagoon, that slept stagnant under its trees, the weird drapery of Spanish moss, that thickly festooned their branches, I did not so much wonder at the superstitious awe with which my sable-skinned companion had been led to regard it. It was just the kind of spot to be "haunted;" but no doubt the abandoned dug-out, and the other reliquiæ I had observed, had I taken time to examine them, would have given a clue to the "debbil," supposed by Jake and his colored acquaintance of the Bradley plantation, to have made it his abiding-place.
CHAPTER X.
THE ISLAND PLANTATION.
On the subject of the Bradley plantation—suggested no doubt by its proximity—my skiffman became communicative; and, during the long pull up-stream made me acquainted with some facts relating to the place, and its proprietor, that were, to say the least, a little curious.
Mr. Bradley's clearing was upon a large island, formed by a "shute" of the river on one side, and by an old channel, which the stream had long since abandoned. There was nothing singular about this. I had become already aware that there are several plantations so situated on the South-western rivers—where the house can only be reached by a ferry-boat, kept to communicate with the mainland.
For hundreds of miles on both banks of the river—more especially on the right—the bottom lands are scarred and seamed by a labyrinthine network of creeks, bayous, and lagoons, all old channels of the river, which the current in its caprice has long since forsaken, leaving them in deep, dark stagnation, or only moving sluggishly to and fro, during the season of floods.
On one of the tracts of land so insulated Mr. Bradley had "located," and there was nothing strange in it. What did seem strange to my informant was that "Mass' Bradley had come dar wif only two or t'ree darky at fuss; an' now he had amoss as many niggas as de old Squire Woodley in Tennessee; an' all dat in less'n no time. He was always a-buyin' new hands from de nigga dealers dat fetch 'em from up de country, tho' he nebba bo't any jess about dar. He bo't de wuss kind o' cusses, 's nobody else ked manage. He manage 'em, he do, dat same bossy Bradley. He nebba 'low'd one o' 'em to go off dat 'ere plantashun, cep'in' when he hab bizness; an' if dey 'teal off to any odder house, which dey sometime do by swimin' crosst de bayou in de night, den dey cotch it. Not offen dey try; dar's no odder place nearer dan Mass' Woodley's, an' dat's ten mile by de ribba, an' most twenty through de bottom! If dey ebba come dar, don't he fotch dem back, an' don't he larrup 'em! Gollys! he do make de darky squrm! He got an obaseeah who flog wuss dan de bery debbil hisself. Whugh!"