To me it was very painful to hear a sweet ringing silvery voice, issuing from a very pretty mouth, “I’m so delighted to hear that the Yankees in Fortress Monroe have got typhus fever. I hope it may kill them all.” This was said by one of the most charming young persons possible, and uttered with unmistakeable sincerity, just as if she had said, “I hear all the snakes in Virginia are dying of poison.” I fear the young lady did not think very highly of me for refusing to sympathise with her wishes in that particular form. But all the ladies in Mobile belong to “The Yankee Emancipation Society.” They spend their days sewing cartridges, carding lint, preparing bandages, and I’m not quite sure that they don’t fill shells and fuses as well. Their zeal and energy will go far to sustain the South in the forthcoming struggle, and nowhere is the influence of women greater than in America.
As to Dr. Nott, his studies have induced him to take a purely materialist view of the question of slavery, and, according to him, questions of morals and ethics, pertaining to its consideration, ought to be referred to the cubic capacity of the human cranium—the head that can take the largest charge of snipe shot will eventually dominate in some form or other over the head of inferior capacity. Dr. Nott detests slavery, but he does not see what is to be done with the slaves, and how the four millions of negroes are to be prevented from becoming six, eight, or ten millions, if their growth is stimulated by high prices for Southern produce.
There is a good deal of force in the observation which I have heard more than once down here, that Great Britain could not have emancipated her negroes had they been dwelling within her border, say in Lancashire or Yorkshire. No inconvenience was experienced by the English people per se in consequence of the emancipation, which for the time destroyed industry and shook society to pieces in Jamaica. Whilst the States were colonies, Great Britain viewed the introduction of slaves to such remote dependencies with satisfaction, and when the United States had established their sovereignty they found the institution of slavery established within their own borders, and an important, if not essential, stratum in their social system. The work of emancipation would have then been comparatively easy, it now is a stupendous problem which no human being has offered to solve.
May 19th.—The heat out of doors was so great that I felt little tempted to stir out, but at 2 o’clock Mr. Magee drove me to a pretty place, called Spring Hill, where Mr. Stein, a German merchant of the city, has his country residence. The houses of Mobile merchants are scattered around the rising ground in that vicinity; they look like marble at a distance, but a nearer approach resolves them into painted wood. Stone is almost unknown on all this seaboard region. The worthy German was very hospitable, and I enjoyed a cool walk before dinner under the shade of his grapes, which formed pleasant walks in his garden. The Scuppernung grape, which grew in profusion—a native of North Carolina—has a remarkable appearance. The stalk, which is smooth, and covered with a close grained grey bark, has not the character of a vine, but grows straight and stiff like the branch of a tree, and is crowded with delicious grapes. Cherokee plum and rose-trees, and magnificent magnolias, clustered round his house, and beneath their shadow I listened to the worthy German comparing the Fatherland to his adopted country, and now and then letting out the secret love of his heart for the old place. He, like all of the better classes in the South, has the utmost dread of universal suffrage, and would restrict the franchise largely to-morrow if he could.
May 20.—I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New Orleans this morning at eight o’clock. She was crowded with passengers, in uniform. In my cabin was a notice of the rules and regulations of the steamer. No. 6 was as follows: “All slave servants must be cleared at the Custom House. Passengers having slaves will please report as soon as they come on board.”
A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right, entered one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole of the coast, called “Grant’s Pass.” An ingenious person has rendered it navigable by an artificial cut; but as he was not an universal philanthropist, and possibly may have come from north of the Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers, which can only be cleared by means of a little pepper-castor iron lighthouse; and he charges toll on all passing vessels. A small island at the pass, just above water-level, about twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long, was being fortified. Some of our military friends landed here; and it required a good deal of patriotism to look cheerfully at the prospect of remaining cooped up among the mosquitos in a box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell would suffice to blow into atoms.
Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind of internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on the left by a chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with sand, and exceedingly narrow, so that the surf of the ocean rollers at the other side could be seen through the foliage of the pine trees which line them. On our right the endless pines closed up the land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced by creeks without number, called bayous; and it was curious to watch the white sails of the little schooners gliding in and out among the trees along the green meadows that seemed to stretch as an impassable barrier to their exit. Immense troops of pelicans flapped over the sea, dropping incessantly on the fish which abounded in the inner water; and long rows of the same birds stood digesting their plentiful meals on the white beach by the ocean foam.
There was some anxiety in the passengers’ minds, as it was reported that the United States’ cruisers had been seen inside, and that they had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We saw nothing of a character more formidable than coasting craft and a return steamer from New Orleans till we approached the entrance to Pontchartrain, when a large schooner, which sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, attracted our attention. Through the glass I could make out two guns on her deck, and quite reason enough for any well-filled merchantman sailing under the Stars and Stripes to avoid her close companionship.
The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets and scattered towns along the sea-shore, hid in the piney woods, which offer a retreat to the merchants and their families from the fervid heat of the unwholesome city in summer time. As seen from the sea, these sanitary settlements have a picturesque effect, and an air of charming freshness and lightness. There are detached villas of every variety of architecture in which timber can be constructed, painted in the brightest hues—greens, and blues, and rose tints—each embowered in magnolias and rhododendrons. From every garden a very long and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box, stretches into the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these houses, with the light domes and spires of churches rising above the lines of white railings set in the dark green of the pines, is light and novel. To each of these cities there is a jetty, at two of which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or discharged a few bales of goods, and were off again.
Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were blacks—the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and armed. A nearer approach did not induce me to think that any agencies less powerful than epidemics and summer-heats could render Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi City, and the rest of these settlements very eligible residences for people of an active turn of mind.