“Why are his teeth filed?”
“Ah, there now! You’d never have guessed it; Bully done that himself, for the greater ease of biting his vittels.”
In fact, the lad, and a good many of the hands, were the results of Captain Maher’s little sail in the Czar.
“We’re obleeged to let ’em in some times to keep up the balance agin the niggers you run into Canaydy.”
From 1848 to 1852 there were no slaves run; but since the migrations to Canada and the personal liberty laws, it has been found profitable to run them. There is a bucolic ferocity about these Southern people which will stand them good stead in the shock of battle. How the Spartans would have fought against any barbarians who came to emancipate their slaves, or the Romans have smitten those who would manumit slave and creditor together!
To-night, on the lower deck, amid wood faggots, and barrels, a dance of negroes was arranged by an enthusiast, who desired to show how “happy they were.” That is the favourite theme of the Southerners; the gallant Captain Maher becomes quite eloquent when he points to Bully’s prominent “yummy,” and descants on the misery of his condition if he had been left to the precarious chances of obtaining such developments in his native land; then turns a quid, and, as if uttering some sacred refrain to the universal hymn of the South, says, “Yes, sir, they’re the happiest people on the face of the airth!”
There was a fiddler, and also a banjo-player, who played uncouth music to the clumsiest of dances, which it would be insulting to compare to the worst Irish jig, and the men with immense gravity and great effusion of sudor, shuffled, and cut, and heeled and buckled to each other with an overwhelming solemnity, till the rum-bottle warmed them up to the lighter graces of the dance, when they became quite overpowering. “Yes, sir, jist look at them how they’re enjoying it; they’re the happiest people on the face of the airth.” When “wooding” and firing up they don’t seem to be in the possession of the same exquisite felicity.
May 11th.—At early dawn the steamer went its way through a broad bay of snags bordered with drift-wood, and with steam-trumpet and calliope announced its arrival at the quay of Mobile, which presented a fringe of tall warehouses, and shops alongside, over which were names indicating Scotch, Irish, English, many Spanish, German, Italian, and French owners, Captain Maher at once set off to his plantation, and we descended the stories of the walled castle to the beach, and walked on towards the “Battle House,” so called from the name of its proprietor, for Mobile has not yet had its fight like New Orleans. The quays which usually, as we were told, are lined with stately hulls and a forest of masts, were deserted; although the port was not actually blockaded, there were squadrons of the United States ships at Pensacola on the east, and at New Orleans on the west.
The hotel, a fine building of the American stamp, was the seat of a Vigilance Committee, and as we put down our names in the book they were minutely inspected by some gentlemen who came out of the parlour. It was fortunate they did not find traces of Lincolnism about us, as it appeared by the papers that they were busy deporting “Abolitionists” after certain preliminary processes supposed to—