On this day I visited the theatre, a barn; the building originally erected for this purpose being changed into a school of anatomy: so cutting up is still the order of the day; only the practice is no longer confined to the poets, but extended to subjects generally. After arranging with my manager, I took a ride, making a rapid survey of the town and its immediate vicinity.
Vegetation still appears in progress; the orange trees are flourishing, the grass looking green, and only the forest appears clad in the sober brown of winter.
At this season Charleston is dull to a proverb; most of the planters, with their families, being in the country, and the rest preparing to follow; the city is, therefore, nearly abandoned to the cotton-shippers; and so it will remain until the month of February, when the race-meeting draws the whole State together; and, for a period of four or five weeks, few places, as I learn, can be more lively or more sociable. After this date, the country families once more return to their plantations, where they can remain with safety until about the second week in April: after which date the choice between country and city may be summed up in the words of Shakspeare, to "go and live, or stay and die;" since to stay is assuredly to die, after once the malaria is fairly in movement. Formerly, the winter campaign used to be prolonged until the middle of June; but of late years the time has been, from some cause or other, gradually abridged by common consent, until now the 15th of April is considered the last day of security.
The forest rides leading on either hand from the main road to the Cooper and Ashley rivers by which the sandy neck the city occupies is flanked, are, though flat, very delightful. Plants and flowers of rare beauty and in great variety abound here; the wild vine and other climbing plants are drawn from tree to tree; and the live-oak, sycamore, hickory, with the loftiest pines, altogether form avenues down which the eyes of a stranger wander with delight, and in which on these delicious calm days it is a joy to linger. My rides were sometimes solitary; and it was on these occasions I most enjoyed these forest paths, now as healthful as beautiful; yet, let only a few months pass away, and to sleep one night within their shade would be death as certain as though it were spent beneath the boughs of the poisonous Upas.
I could hardly conceive the possibility of such a baneful change, as, on a bright day of December, I sauntered carelessly along, watching the sun dancing in long lines of light over the smooth water, and an atmosphere before me glowing, as though a veil of gold tissue had been drawn above the forest. Yet so it is; the overseers alone remain upon the plantation after sunset, and amongst these the numerous deaths, as well as the cadaverous hue of the survivors, afford unquestionable testimony of the peril incurred by such a residence.
To the negro alone this air appears congenial, as the lively look of the chubby little imps that fill every cabin fully indicates. It is impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the looks of these children of the sun and the degenerate offsets of northern men; I have often observed with feelings of sorrow the sickly aspect of the children of some road-side store-keeper, or publican of the white race, as they sit languidly before their parents' door, with sallow parchment skins and lack-lustre eyes, the very emblems of malaria, possessing neither the strength nor the desire to follow those active sports natural and in fact necessary, at their age: whilst, sporting about or near them, might be observed the offspring of their slaves; the elder ones, with hardly any covering, pursuing each other, shouting and grinning from ear to ear; the youngsters, quite naked perhaps, rolling on the kitchen floor, or creeping about in the dust like so many black beetles, almost as broad as long. Despite their degraded condition, I have at such times been tempted to exclaim, "Surely this must here be the most enviable lot!"
This picture, however, must not be applied to the wealthy portion of the landed proprietors, who either migrate north with each season, or else seek the shelter of the dry sandy soil of the Pine-barrens, and on their heights breathe health and life; whilst below and around, at no great distance, stalk disease and death.
Amongst this class, on the contrary, I have often been surprised to find children whose elastic forms and ruddy complexions would have been noticeable even in the health-giving air of Britain; and indeed, taken as a whole, I should say that the population of Charleston City, the capital of this deadly country, wears as fresh a look, and presents as many hale, hearty old persons, as any of the northern cities of this continent. I was, perchance, the more struck with this fact from having expected the very reverse.
An air of greater antiquity prevails throughout this city than may be discovered in any other I have visited in the States; I should conceive it to be just in the condition the English army left it; I did not see a large house that appeared of newer date; and the churches, guard-house, &c. must be the same.
This population apparently has slept whilst their persevering brethren of the North, to use one of their familiar sayings, have "continually gone ahead" with an energy of purpose admirable as irresistible. This difference can, I fancy, be accounted for in two ways: first, much may be fairly set down to climate, which limits the business months here to about six; next, the revolution found here a sort of aristocratic association of wealthy proprietors, the produce of whose estates furnished them with ample means, but whose business habits were limited to periodical settlements with their factors or brokers. The revolution, and the changes consequent upon it, awoke the spirit and incited the hope of every man to whom the absence of inherited wealth supplied an impetus to labour; and the populated portions of these States became as a hive thronged with an active, money-seeking swarm, by which the idle and the inert were thrust aside before they became awake to their changed condition, or heard a murmur of the tide whose waves were encircling them about on every side.