But the people in general were exceedingly polite, though one could now and then detect the sullen air which showed how hard it was to bear the presence of the Yankees. It was evident that they felt conquered, and stood in silent and submissive apprehension, awaiting whatever course the victors might see fit to pursue, and ready to acquiesce, with such grace as they might, in whatever policy the Government should adopt. Surely, now is the golden opportunity for a statesman to shape and mold these Southern institutions as he will. Shall it not be improved?
The little squares at the intersection of the principal streets, with their glimpse of sward, their fountains, live-oaks, magnolias and pride-of-India trees, make up, in part, for the absence of the elegant residences, embowered in luxurious shrubbery, which form so attractive a feature of Charleston. One strolls from square to square, seeing here children and their nurses playing under the trees, and there groups of negroes idly enjoying the shade; and scarcely realizes, till he sets foot again in the unpaved streets, and sinks in the burning sand, that he is in the heart of a “great Southern metropolis,” the chief city of “the Empire State of the South.” A little shopping for some members of our party showed that the old merchants still had certain lines of goods in abundance. Jewelry stores had large remnants of the stocks laid in during the winter of 1860-’61; coarse dry goods were plenty, and so were what, I believe, are technically called “wet groceries.” Execrable soda water gurgled at almost every corner; large and gay-looking drug stores seemed to laugh at our impotent blockade on calomel; and what the native traders could not supply in the way of the fashions for the last four years, a dozen sutlers’ establishments, already in full blast, were ready to furnish. Rebel currency had wholly vanished; and small pieces of gold and silver were gradually making their appearance, particularly in the hands of persons from the interior.
The streets of Savannah present the most striking contrast to those of Charleston. There, scarcely a white inhabitant of the city was to be seen. The merchants, the small shopkeepers, the restaurateurs were all gone, and, where the soldiers had not taken possession, shutters, barred and bolted, closed in their establishments. Here, on the contrary, the town had been taken, inhabitants and all. The difference is about that between having a watch and a watch case. As a smart sailor from the Wayanda said, “this town isn’t dead; it’s wound up and running.” The stores were all open; business of every sort progressed precisely as usual. Save that the schools were filled with negroes, and the rebel newspapers had been succeeded by loyal ones, and guards in blue, instead of gray, stood here and there, it was the rebel Savannah unchanged. The streets were filled with the inhabitants, dressed somewhat antiquely, but giving no signs of suffering; little knots gathered in the public squares, or around the saloons and shops, to discuss the news and their prospects; and curious eyes followed us at every corner, as if to say, “There go some more of the Yankees.” Every house was occupied; the front windows were open as usual; and the ladies seemed to have no particular prejudice against being seen—old clothes and all.
Some of us went to the hotel, nearly opposite the plain, square shaft erected in honor of Pulaski, and, as an experiment, tried their breakfast. As an experiment it was quite successful; as a breakfast, very poor; but we had a dozen rebel officers as neighbors, and passed salt and broke bread with them as indifferently as though they were not yet wearing the very uniform and side arms that proclaimed their treason. The furniture of the hotel had grown shabby with four years’ use; dishes had been broken and forks stolen, and there had been no means of supplying the loss; even napkins were scarce, but negro waiters were abundant, and as polite as ever. The bar was doing a thriving business; swarthy and ringleted cavaliers in gray were pledging each other in bumpers of liquors altogether too strong for the climate, and old acquaintances were producing their hoarded rolls of greenbacks to “treat” the returning braves. “Well, Colonel, you don’t come back victorious, but I’m d——d glad to see you, any way. Your old friends are proud of you. Come and have a drink.” “Sorry about that ugly wound, Captain. A hand is a bad thing to lose, but it wont hurt you among the ladies of Savannah. There are plenty that you can persuade to give you one. What’ll you drink?”
Whoever goes to Savannah must see the city cemetery. There is nothing else to show; so we all made the most of what there was, and drove heroically through the sand to Bunoaventua. From a street of well-built frame houses we plunged square off into the squalid country. Elegant suburbs and fine country residences seem a thing unknown. The shell road was once the pride of Savannah, but its glory, too, was departed; and our carriage wheels powdered us with sand, till, chameleon like, we had taken the hue of our surroundings, and seemed clad in Confederate gray. The few houses to be seen were forlorn-looking shanties, belonging to the poor white trash, with rotten steps and doors awry, and foul passages and oozy back yards. Here and there we met a creaking cart, drawn by an ox or a broken-down horse, laden with rickety pine furniture, and guided by the lank, lantern-jawed, stubby-bearded, long-haired owner. He was “toting” his goods in from some house which Sherman’s “bummers” had burned or plundered. If his “woman” trudged on foot behind him, be sure she assuaged the fatigues of the journey with great quids of tobacco and profuse expectoration; while the ragged, frowzy children were kept busy with the vagaries of the cow. The Yankee soldiers “had taken his corn, and spiled his crop, and he’d heern that the Government was a givin’ out rations in Savannah.”
But our drivers presently left the main road, for one which led through sandy barrens, covered with a stunted undergrowth, and seemed to be better in that the sand was a little firmer. Here and there a brilliant flower enlivened the barren scene; but the expected profusion of glowing colors we had all been led to look for about Savannah was wanting. At last, after a ride, which, in the melting sun and abounding sand, entitled one to a sight of something beautiful, we reached a rustic gate, and decayed lodge by its side; and, passing through, were at once in a scene for the possession of which New York might well offer a large fraction of what she has expended on her Central Park.
The finest live-oak trees I have yet seen in the South, stretched away in long avenues on either hand, intersected by cross avenues, and arched with interlacing branches, till the roof over our heads seemed, in living green, a graining, after the pattern of Gothic arches, in some magnificent old cathedral. It is the finest material in the country for the elaboration of the most beautiful cemetery. But, as in most places in the South, everything has stopped where nature stopped. One of the Tatnalls, probably an ancestor of the Commodore of our navy, of Chinese and Rebel note, long ago selected this site for his residence, builded his house, and laid out the grounds in these stately avenues. The house was burned down during some holiday rejoicings. An idea that the place was unhealthy possessed the owners, and, with a curious taste, what was too dangerous for men to live in was straightway selected for dead men to be buried in. We would hardly choose a malarious bottom, or a Northern tamarack swamp for a burying ground, beautiful as either might be, but what matters it? After life’s fitful fever, the few interred here sleep, doubtless, as sweetly beneath the gigantic oaks in the solemn avenues, as if on breeziest upland of mountain heather.
Even into this secluded gloom have come the traces of our civil wars. The only large monument in the cemetery is that bearing the simple inscription of “Clinch,” and within it lie, I am told, the bones of the father-in-law of “Sumter Anderson,” as in all our history he is henceforth to be known. Some vandal has broken down the marble slab that closed the tomb, and exposed the coffins within.
This very barbarism, with the absence of the rows of carefully-tended graves, and the headstones with affectionate inscriptions that mark all other cemeteries, increases the impressive gloom of the lonely place. The sun struggles in vain to penetrate the Gothic arches overhead. Here and again a stray beam struggles through, only to light up with a ghostly silver radiance, the long, downward-pointing spear point of the Tillandsia or Spanish Moss. The coolness is marvelous; the silence profound—or only broken by the gentle ripplings of the little stream by which the farther side of the cemetery is bounded. Everywhere the arches are hung—draped, perhaps, I should better say—with the deathly festoons of the Spanish Moss, slowly stealing sap and vigor—fit funeral work—from these giant oaks, and fattening on their decay. Drive where you will, the moss still flutters in your face, and waves over your head, and, lit with the accidental ray from above, points its warning, silvery light toward the graves beneath your feet; while still it clings, in the embrace of death, to the sturdy oaks on which it has fastened, and preaches and practices destruction together. Noble and lusty oaks are these; glorious in spreading boughs, and lofty arches, and fluttering foliage, but dying in the soft embrace of the parasite that clings and droops, and makes yet more picturesque and beautiful in decay—dying, even as Georgia was dying in the embrace of another parasite, having a phase not less picturesque, and a poisonous progress not less subtly gentle.