One of the leasing agents gave us a letter to a young widow who resided in the city, and owned a large plantation in Louisiana, fifteen miles from Natchez. We lost no time in calling upon the lady.
Other parties had already seen her with a view to leasing her plantation. Though she had promised the lease to one of these visitors, she had no objections to treating with ourselves, provided she could make a more advantageous contract.
In a few days we repeated our visit. Our rival had urged his reasons for consideration, and was evidently in favor. He had claimed to be a Secessionist, and assured her he could obtain a safeguard from the Rebel authorities. The lady finally consented to close a contract with him, and placed us in the position of discarded suitors. We thought of issuing a new edition of "The Rejected Addresses."
CHAPTER XXXII.
A JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE LINES.
Passing the Pickets.--Cold Weather in the South.--Effect of Climate upon the Constitution.--Surrounded and Captured.--Prevarication and Explanation.--Among the Natives.--The Game for the Confederacy.--Courtesy of the Planters.--Condition of the Plantations.--The Return.
Mr. Colburn went to St. Louis, on business in which both were interested, and left me to look out a plantation. I determined to make a tour of exploration in Louisiana, in the region above Vidalia. With two or three gentlemen, who were bound on similar business, I passed our pickets one morning, and struck out into the region which was dominated by neither army. The weather was intensely cold, the ground frozen solid, and a light snow falling.
Cold weather in the South has one peculiarity: it can seem more intense than the same temperature at the North. It is the effect of the Southern climate to unfit the system for any thing but a warm atmosphere. The chill penetrates the whole body with a severity I have never known north of the Ohio River. In a cold day, the "Sunny South" possesses very few attractions in the eyes of a stranger.
In that day's ride, and in the night which followed, I suffered more than ever before from cold. I once passed a night in the open air in the Rocky Mountains, with the thermometer ten degrees below zero. I think it was more endurable than Louisiana, with the mercury ten degrees above zero. On my plantation hunt I was thickly clad, but the cold would penetrate, in spite of every thing. An hour by a fire might bring some warmth, but the first step into the open air would drive it away. Fluid extract of corn failed to have its ordinary effect. The people of the vicinity said the weather was unusually severe on that occasion. For the sake of those who reside there hereafter, I hope their statement was true.