W'en I meet him in de promis' lan'!
We've a great deal before us during the coming week, for we must give a day to the partridges (never called "quail" in the South), and we have a fox-hunt or two in the mornings, and that old buck to look after whose tracks I showed you in the road; besides the ducks and turkeys which are waiting to be shot, and all the Christmas frolicking, from which the ladies will not excuse us. We will therefore take this quiet Sunday afternoon for a walk among the fields and woods to see what manner of country we are in. Bending our steps first toward the huge old oak which seems to hang upon the very edge of the green hill near the house, we suddenly find ourselves just over a large basin enclosed with an octagonal brick wall, except where the clear water runs out over silvery gravel between curbings of heavy plank. This is the spring, and a queer sort of spring it is. Just under the tree-roots the water is but a few inches deep over a bed of bluish-gray limestone, and in no part of the basin, which is about twelve by twenty feet, does it seem to be more than a half fathom in depth. But just under the ledge of rock a shelving hole slopes back under the hill, the bottom of which no man has ever found. This hole is only about three feet by two, and the narrow outlet to the basin is but four inches deep, and loses itself within fifty yards in an oozy bog. Yet, peering into the depth, you catch a glimpse of the black head and beady white eyes of a mudfish at least two feet long, and presently of the silvery side of a three-pound bass which glides across the opening. Drop a line with the cork set at ten feet, and you will draw out of the very bosom of the earth a mess of fat perch and bream each as large and as thick as your hand, and eels three feet in length are sometimes caught in the basin at night. Two miles away, in the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and into which they retreat when disturbed. Hundreds of perch, bream and young bass sport in the shallow parts, and are easily caught with rod and line, the water being so clear that you can watch the fish gorging the bait, and strike when the entire hook disappears. Now, where do these fish live? where do they breed? and upon what do they feed? But the mystery does not end there. About a mile in the opposite direction as we walk through a little belt of wet pineland, where the woodcock runs across our path or whistles up from the wet leaves, we come suddenly upon a dozen or more little basins, the largest not over six feet by nine, which have no outlet whatever. One hole about two feet in diameter goes sheer down between two pine trees to a depth never yet fathomed: you cannot see it until right on it, and you cannot use a rod, but drop your line about twelve feet deep, and your cork will go down like lead, while you pull up red perch and blue bream until your arm wearies of the sport. I have caught five dozen in a winter's afternoon, for the fish bite best in the coldest weather, the temperature of the water being sixty-two degrees the year round, irrespective of the weather. You must go fifteen miles before reaching another of these springs or fountains, and then ten more to the last of the chain, the famous Eutaw Springs of Revolutionary memory. Here, then, must be a subterranean river or reservoir at least twenty-eight miles long, teeming with the same fish which swim in the surface-streams, yet having no discoverable connection with any of these. We meet with no rocks or stones anywhere, but our walk leads us past many marl-pits from which numerous fossil remains have been obtained. The fertile and superstitious imagination of the negroes has not been idle in such a suggestive field, and they have peopled these fountains with spirits which they call "cymbies," akin to the undine and the kelpie. On Saturday nights you may hear a strange rhythmic, thumping sound from the spring, and looking out you may see by the wild, fitful glare of lightwood torches dark figures moving to and fro. These are the negro women at their laundry-work, knee-deep in the stream, beating the clothes with heavy clubs. They are merry enough when together, but not one of them will go alone for a "piggin" of water, and if you slip up in the shadow of the old oak and throw a stone into the spring, the entire party will rush away at the splash, screaming with fear, convinced that the "cymbie" is after them.
Leaving the spring behind us, we pass up the long lane between two cotton-fields of a hundred acres each, in which the blackened stalks are still standing, as are the dried cornstalks and gray pea-vines in the field beyond. These will remain until the early spring, when they will be cut down and "listed in" with the hoe, for not a foot of this rich and profitable plantation has ever been broken with the plough. Incredible as it may appear, there is not a plough or a work-horse, and but one old mule, upon this highly-cultivated tract of one thousand acres. All the hauling is done by ox-teams, with three sturdy negroes to each cart, and the heavy cotton-hoe does everything else. Where one man and a plough could till three acres, twenty men and women with hoes 'ridge up the ground, scatter manure in the furrows, and draw the ridges down on it again. True, the surface only is scratched, and the soil is soon exhausted, but who cares for that when there is abundance of rich timber-land from which to clear new fields? and as to economizing labor, that is the last thing a planter cares about, for what are the negroes to do? None are ever sold, the "picknies" who swarm around every cabin growing up to stock the plantations bought for each child as he or she "comes of age or is married," and work has to be made for them to do.
"What shall I put the hands at to-day, sir?" asked an overseer of an old planter when the last bale of cotton had been packed.
"Hum! let's see! Well, set them to filling up the old ditches and digging new ones."
For the same reason power-gins and saw-mills found little favor, the single-treadle "foot-gin" and the saw-pit and cross-cut employing ten times as many hands. It was the aim of every large planter to produce and manufacture by hand-power everything needed on the place. Of course, it required a heavy expenditure of labor and land to raise provisions for such an army of unprofitable workers, on which account slave capital was the poorest paying property in the world. The planter was wealthy, but he owned only land and negroes: when the latter were emancipated the former became useless; and this is the reason why the war so utterly ruined the rich land-owners of the South.
ROBERT WILSON.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
'76.
Pass, '75, across the Styx!