It was as beautiful an evening as a lover could ask, the second day of April, 1842, that I bade my friend Dana good-bye, and started in my sulky for a tour over the land of Nullification. I left Charleston in the evening, that the wearisome task of crossing the river might be over, and the earlier start upon my journey be made the following morning. Tarrying at the house of a fine old planter during the night, who amused me until nearly cock-crowing with his long stories of revolutionary days, I arose, after a very slight refreshment from sleep, and was on my way toward Georgetown an hour before sunrise. It was a toilsome way enough, the road running parallel with the sea-shore the whole distance of sixty miles, just far enough inland never to catch a glimpse of the water, and leading you over a dreary pine barren, where neither house, cultivated field, nor flowing streamlet occurred to divert your attention for the whole day. It was pleasant enough at first to feel one's self alone in those boundless forests of pine; and for an hour or two of the early morning I was sufficiently amused by the novel sight of some young alligator splashing into the water from the road-side, as the noise of my wheels awoke him from his siesta, or of a huge moccasin darting away beneath the dense reeds and lily-pads of the swamp, or of the ever-varying, myriad-toned music of the mocking birds who filled the air with their melody. But by degrees, as the sun began to rise above the trees, and the heavens to assume that brazen face which characterizes a southern sky, the never-changing scenery about me grew dull and wearisome, and I found myself looking forward in the hope of finding some place by the roadside where my horse might slake his thirst. No such place, however, appeared; on and onward we jogged over that apparently unending level of creaking sand, without one sign of human industry or human life. As matters began to grow serious, and my weary steed to manifest symptoms of dissatisfaction which could not be mistaken, a kind Providence sent a fellow-being along my path, in the shape of the most hideous, tattered, and wo-begone negro I had ever seen—my first specimen of a plantation servant. The poor fellow's face and garments, however, sadly belied him; for upon my salutation of 'Boy, good morning; can you tell me where I can find water for my horse?' he touched his rimless hat and most civilly replied:
'Oh, yes, Massa! dere is fine water just back ob you!'
'Back of me?' I replied. 'Strange I did not see it!' and turning my horse to retrace the path, the negro discovered my greenness, and laughing, said:
'Why, Massa, you 'ab no bucket to water de horse!'
'Bucket?' I inquired in astonishment! 'Bucket? What do you mean, boy? What do you mean?'
The poor fellow could scarcely contain his gravity, while he replied, pointing to the bottom of the sulky: 'Sure, Massa 'ab no bucket! Massa no bin long in Carolina to tink water he horse widout bucket! Every body hab bucket on he carriage in Carolina!'
Here was indeed a perplexity of which I had never dreamed, and to extricate myself from which more than surpassed my share of even Yankee shrewdness. I could not think of driving fourteen long miles back to my morning resting-place in the heat of that torrid sun, nor of going forward the twelve miles to my first stopping place on the Georgetown road; and yet, from all the information I could gain from the negro, these seemed the only conditions upon which horse or driver were ever again to meet with the proprieties of civilized existence. In utter despair I looked up to my informer, with a respect I had never bestowed upon tattered garments before, and asked: 'Boy, what am I to do?'
'Don' know, Massa! Neber see a carriage wid'out bucket afore! Don' know, Massa!'
Though my informant had hitherto evidently been greatly amused at my perplexity, the despair of my countenance, or his pity for the jaded beast, now awakened his sympathies; and after scratching his head—a manipulation which the negro invariably performs when he is in trouble—he suddenly rolled the whites of his great eyes up to me and said with quickness, 'Me tink now, Massa! Me tink how Massa water he horse!' and plunging into the woods, presently returned with his hat filled with water. It was a capital thought, and the promptitude of its execution would have done honor to a Connecticut pedler. My dilemma was over; the negro's hat of water was a goblet of ambrosia to my steed; and the tattered son of Ham became in my eyes fair as a messenger of the gods.
Between the Ashly and Santee rivers, a distance of more than thirty miles, there are upon the main thoroughfare but three dwelling-houses. Upon the banks of the latter, one begins first to see something of the wealth of the Carolina rice-plantations. For many miles up and down the North and South Santee rivers, which are here separated but a single mile, are cultivated those deep, rich bottoms, annually flowed and inexhaustible in resource, which are the glory of the State. The lordly owners of these manors pass the winter months in superintending the affairs of the homesteads, gathering about them all those luxuries which minister to ease and pleasure, of which none better understand the value, or select with more taste, than do these descendants of king Charles's cavaliers, and entering with a zeal and alacrity into those rural sports which are the zest and glory of a southern country life. Finer horsemen, more skilled marksmen, on the plain or in the forest, hardier frames for pugilistic feats, or a quicker eye and prompter hand for a game at fence, the world cannot produce. They are generally men also of liberal learning and generous dispositions; frank, hospitable, and courteous; and, bating a tithe of that hot-blood chivalry upon which they are too apt to pride themselves, noble and humane in all their impulses.