All this, as I had subsequent occasion to learn from numerous sources, was but a moderate statement of the facts. His old slaves had unlimited faith in him; his plantations had all the labor they needed; and the work on them was as well advanced as on any along the river.
At last our boat reached Natchez, having consumed over forty-eight hours in traveling the two-hundred and seventy-five miles from New Orleans. High bluffs rose above us, and perched upon them could be seen the roofs and steeples of an important little inland town. Between the river and bluff was crowded the most miserable, straggling, shabby-looking village imaginable. This was what is left of Natchez-under-the-hill. Once fine rows of brick warehouses lined the banks; but the steady encroachments of the river undermined their foundations, and one after another disappeared. Thirty or forty feet from the water’s edge a large deserted building still stood, with one corner of the wall washed away by the “last high water,” and the rest of it tottering, to fall with the next. Negroes filled the nasty little shops, where tobacco, whisky, sardines, calicoes, and head-handkerchiefs were displayed. The street was full of dirty idlers, and the whole appearance of the place was unprepossessing in the extreme. Up the river a saw-mill and lumber-yard shut in the view.
Altogether, it was about the most unlikely place imaginable in which to look for any display of art or appreciation of natural beauties. But, the day after my arrival, a citizen, to whom I had brought letters of introduction, taught me how to find a rare gem in this shabbiest of settings. Driving past the saw-mill, we approached the residence of the sawyer, nestled close, as it seemed, under the bluff, which, a few yards further up, jutted out against the river. Passing from the lumber-yard and the whisky shops, we entered, as my enthusiastic companion said, “the garden of Eden.” Hedges of the most beautiful flowering shrubs led up to the airy, many-galleried house. Graveled walks led off on either hand to pleasant summer-houses, covered with vines, and bordered with the rarest exotics. Great mounds, covered with shrubs and flowers, stood sentry on either side the gate. The air was heavy with perfumes, and vocal with the music of the full-throated little songsters that flitted about among the branches. Citizens of Natchez boast that the sawyer’s garden is the finest in the South. They might enlarge their boast, by a little modification, and safely pronounce it the most surprising one on the continent.
Natchez-on-the-hill, (to which passengers from the boats ascend by a long carriage-way, cut out of the perpendicular face of the bluff,) would be called, at the North, a flourishing county-town; dusty, and by no means specially attractive. But it is the aristocratic center of the lower Mississippi Valley cotton-planting interests. Before the war, it was regarded as a most desirable residence, and wealthy Southerners sought plantations within a range of thirty or forty miles up or down the river, in order to be able to fix their own residences at Natchez. Few resided on their plantations; many owned several—in some cases as high as eight or nine—the smallest rarely, if ever, falling below a thousand acres in extent. These lands were all of the richest alluvial soil; and, before the war, were worth, after being cleared, from sixty to a hundred dollars per acre. Recent sales had been made at about forty dollars, but the leases were all disproportionately high. I heard of cases in which thirty thousand dollars had been paid in cash, and in advance, for one year’s lease of fourteen hundred acres. This, however, was probably the highest lease paid along the river. Fifteen thousand dollars seemed a common rent for a thousand acres of good land, with the use of agricultural implements, gin, and saw and grist-mills. It was always, however, an important consideration that the former slaves should all be on the plantation. Here, as elsewhere, labor was the great desideratum. That secured, speculators were ready to pay almost any price for the use of the land.
Around Natchez is a beautiful rolling country, abounding in park-like scenery. Showy, and, in some cases, elegant residences crown the little knolls; and the country, for several miles back into Mississippi, wears an air of wealth and comfort. On the opposite side of the river are “the swamps.” But the swamps are the gold mines; it is only those who draw their support from the rich, low lands of the neighboring parishes of Louisiana who can afford the display that crowns the hills about Natchez.
Buildings in Natchez, which the Government had seized, were being restored to their former owners. Business had revived. Northern men had established themselves as commission merchants and dealers in plantation supplies, and were infusing new energy into the town. They said they had all the business they could do, made no complaints of hostility from the people, and said they believed it would be better for all parties if the troops were removed. So far as they were themselves concerned, at any rate, they professed that they would not have the slightest apprehension.
Many of the small planters in the interior (hill country) of Mississippi, who used Natchez as their base of supplies, were anxious for assistance from capital, from whatever source it might come. Some had supplies enough to carry them through till their cotton should be half made. Then they wanted to borrow money enough to last till they could begin to receive returns from their crops, and were willing to pay such extravagant rates as two and even two and a half per cent. per month for it.
“Cotton square” was crowded with ox-teams from these hill plantations. Each brought in two or three bales of cotton, and returned with pork, meal, and molasses to support the negroes. The planters themselves, rough, hairy, wild-looking men, wearing homespun, bargained in the shops, where they sold their cotton, for Calhoun plows, harness, drills, and denims for the “niggers,” and an occasional article for themselves. The whole scene was primitive, and rude in the extreme; yet these tobacco-chewing, muddy-footed men from the hills were among the best customers the Natchez merchants had. They were nearly all small planters, working from six to thirty, or even forty hands, raising from fifty to three hundred bales of cotton, and handling more money in a year than half-a-dozen Northern farmers, each of whom would have his daily newspaper, a piano in the house, daughters at the nearest “Female Seminary,” and sons at college.