My attention was also called to a curious kind of snake-killing hawk, or falcon, which makes an extraordinary noise by putting its wings point upwards, close together, above its back, so as to offer no resistance to the air, and then, beginning to descend from a great height, with fast-increasing rapidity, makes, by its rushing through the air, a strange loud hum, till it is near the ground, when the bird stops its downward swoop and flies in a curve over the meadow. This I saw two of these birds doing repeatedly to-night.
After dinner, at which Mr. Heyward expressed some alarm lest Secession would deprive the Southern States of “ice,” we continued our journey towards the river. There is still a remarkable absence of population or life along the road, and even the houses are either hidden or lie too far off to be seen. The trees are much admired by the people, though they would not be thought much of in England.
At length, towards sundown, having taken to a track by a forest, part of which was burning, we came to a broad muddy river, with steep clay banks. A canoe was lying in a little harbour formed by a slope in the bank, and four stout negroes, who were seated round a burning log, engaged in smoking and eating oysters, rose as we approached, and helped the party into the “dug-out,” or canoe, a narrow, long, and heavy boat, with wall sides and a flat floor. A row of one hour, the latter part of it in darkness, took us to the verge of Mr. Trescot’s estate, Barnwell Island; and the oarsmen, as they bent to their task, beguiled the way by singing in unison a real negro melody, which was as unlike the works of the Ethiopian Serenaders as anything in song could be unlike another. It was a barbaric sort of madrigal, in which one singer beginning was followed by the others in unison, repeating the refrain in chorus, and full of quaint expression and melancholy:—
“Oh, your soul! oh, my soul! I’m going to the churchyard to lay
this body down;
Oh, my soul! oh, your soul! we’re going to the churchyard to lay
this nigger down.”
And then some appeal to the difficulty of passing “the Jawdam,” constituted the whole of the song, which continued with unabated energy through the whole of the little voyage. To me it was a strange scene. The stream, dark as Lethe, flowing between the silent, houseless, rugged banks, lighted up near the landing by the fire in the woods, which reddened the sky—the wild strain, and the unearthly adjurations to the singers’ souls, as though they were palpable, put me in mind of the fancied voyage across the Styx.
“Here we are at last.” All I could see was a dark shadow of trees and the tops of rushes by the river side. “Mind where you step, and follow me close.” And so, groping along through a thick shrubbery for a short space, I came out on a garden and enclosure, in the midst of which the white outlines of a house were visible. Lights in the drawing-room—a lady to receive and welcome us—a snug library—tea, and to bed: but not without more talk about the Southern Confederacy, in which Mrs. Trescot explained how easily she could feed an army, from her experience in feeding her negroes.