As we were now floating nine feet higher than the level of the streets, we could look down upon a sea of flat roofs and low wooden houses, painted white, pierced by the domes and spires of churches and public buildings. Grass was growing in many of these streets. At the other side of the river there is a smaller city of shingle-roofed houses, with a background of low timber.
The steamer stopped continually at various points along the levee, discharging commissariat stores, parcels, and passengers; and after a time glided up into the open country, which spread beneath us for several miles at each side of the banks, with a continuous background of forest. All this part of the river is called the Coast, and the country adjacent is remarkable for its fertility. The sugar plantations are bounded by lines drawn at right angles to the banks of the river, and extending through the forest. The villas of the proprietors are thickly planted in the midst of the green fields, with the usual porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and green blinds; and in the vicinity of each are rows of whitewashed huts, which are the slave quarters. These fields, level as a billiard-table, are of the brightest green with crops of maize and sugar.
But few persons were visible; not a boat was to be seen; and in the course of sixty-two miles we met only two steamers. No shelving banks, no pebbly shoals, no rocky margins mark the course or diversify the outline of the Mississippi. The dead, uniform line of the levee compresses it at each side, and the turbid waters flow without let in a current of uniform breadth between the monotonous banks. The gables and summit of one house resemble those of another; and but for the enormous scale of river and banks, and the black faces of the few negroes visible, a passenger might think he was on board a Dutch “treckshuyt.” In fact, the Mississippi is a huge trench-like canal draining a continent.
At half-past three P.M. the steamer ran alongside the levee at the right bank, and discharged me at “Cahabanooze,” in the Indian tongue, or “The ducks’ sleeping place,” together with an English merchant of New Orleans, M. La Ville Beaufevre, son-in-law of Governor Roman, and his wife. The Governor was waiting to receive us in the levee, and led the way through a gate in the paling which separated his ground from the roadside, towards the house, a substantial, square, two-storied mansion, with a verandah all round it, embosomed amid venerable trees, and surrounded by magnolias. By way of explaining the proximity of his house to the river, M. Roman told me that a considerable portion of the garden in front had a short time ago been carried off by the Mississippi; nor is he at all sure the house itself will not share the same fate; I hope sincerely it may not. My quarters were in a detached house, complete in itself, containing four bedrooms, library, and sitting-room, close to the mansion, and surrounded, like it, by fine trees.
After we had sat for some time in the shade of the finest group, M. Roman, or, as he is called, the Governor—once a captain always a captain—asked me whether I would like to visit the slave quarters. I assented, and the Governor led the way to a high paling at the back of the house, inside which the scraping of fiddles was audible. As we passed the back of the mansion some young women flitted past in snow white dresses, crinolines, pink sashes, and gaudily coloured handkerchiefs on their heads, who were, the Governor told me, the domestic servants going off to a dance at the sugar-house; he lets his slaves dance every Sunday. The American planters who are not Catholics, although they do not make the slaves work on Sunday except there is something to do, rarely grant them the indulgence of a dance, but a few permit them some hours of relaxation on each Saturday afternoon.
We entered, by a wicket gate, a square enclosure, lined with negro huts, built of wood, something like those which came from Malta to the Crimea in the early part of the campaign. They are not furnished with windows—a wooden slide or grating admits all the air a negro desires. There is a partition dividing the hut into two departments, one of which is used as the sleeping-room, and contains a truckle bedstead and a mattrass stuffed with cotton wool, or the hair-like fibres of dried Spanish moss. The wardrobes of the inmates hang from nails or pegs driven into the wall. The other room is furnished with a dresser, on which are arranged a few articles of crockery and kitchen utensils. Sometimes there is a table in addition to the plain wooden chairs, more or less dilapidated, constituting the furniture—a hearth, in connection with a brick chimney outside the cottage, in which, hot as the day may be, some embers are sure to be found burning. The ground round the huts was covered with litter and dust, heaps of old shoes, fragments of clothing and feathers, amidst which pigs and poultry were recreating. Curs of low degree scampered in and out of the shade, or around two huge dogs, chiens de garde, which are let loose at night to guard the precincts; belly deep, in a pool of stagnant water, thirty or forty mules were swinking in the sun and enjoying their day of rest.
The huts of the negroes engaged in the house are separated from those of the slaves devoted to field labour out of doors by a wooden paling. I looked into several of the houses, but somehow or other felt a repugnance, I dare say unjustifiable, to examine the penetralia, although invited—indeed, urged, to do so by the Governor. It was not that I expected to come upon anything dreadful, but I could not divest myself of some regard for the feelings of the poor creatures, slaves though they were, who stood by, shy, curtseying, and silent, as I broke in upon their family circle, felt their beds, and turned over their clothing. What right had I to do so?
Swarms of flies, tin cooking utensils attracting them by remnants of molasses, crockery, broken and old, on the dressers, more or less old clothes on the wall, these varied over and over again, were found in all the huts; not a sign of ornament or decoration was visible; not the most tawdry print, image of Virgin or Saviour; not a prayerbook or printed volume. The slaves are not encouraged, or indeed permitted to read, and some communities of slave-owners punish heavily those attempting to instruct them.
All the slaves seemed respectful to their master; dressed in their best, they curtseyed, and came up to shake hands with him and with me. Among them were some very old men and women, the canker-worms of the estate, who were dozing away into eternity, mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd of little children were listening to the music, together with a few grown-up persons of colour, some of them from the adjoining plantations. The children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean.
It might be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant negro, or child, up to six or seven years of age, is generally a fine red russet, or even gamboge colour, and gradually darkens into dull ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not less happy than free-born children, although much more valuable—for if once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance toward nine or ten years of age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the market is low and money is scarce.