June 3rd. At five o’clock this morning, having been awakened an hour earlier by a wonderful chorus of riotous mocking-birds, my old negro attendant brought in my bath of Mississippi water, which, Nile like, casts down a strong deposit, and becomes as clear, if not so sweet, after standing. “Le seigneur vous attend;” and already I saw, outside my window, the Governor mounted on a stout cob, and a nice chestnut horse waiting, led by a slave. Early as it was, the sun felt excessively hot, and I envied the Governor his slouched hat as we rode through the fields, crisp with dew. In a few minutes our horses were traversing narrow alleys between the tall fields of maize, which rose far above our heads. This corn, as it is called, is the principal food of the negroes; and every planter lays down a sufficient quantity to afford him, on an average, a supply all the year round. Outside this spread vast fields, hedgeless, wall-less, and unfenced, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind–a lake of bright green sugar-sprouts, along the margin of which, in the distance, rose an unbroken boundary of forest, two miles in depth, up to the swampy morass, all to be cleared and turned into arable land in process of time. From the river front to this forest, the fields of rich loam, unfathomable, and yielding from one to one and a half hogsheads of sugar per acre under cultivation, extend for a mile and a half in depth. In the midst of this expanse white dots were visible like Sowars seen on the early march, in Indian fields, many a time and oft. Those are the gangs of hands at work–we will see what they are at presently. This little reminiscence of Indian life was further heightened by the negroes who ran beside us to whisk flies from the horses, and to open the gates in the plantation boundary. When the Indian corn is not good, peas are sowed, alternately, between the stalks, and are considered to be of much benefit; and when the cane is bad, corn is sowed with it, for the same object. Before we came up to the gangs we passed a cart on the road containing a large cask, a bucket full of molasses, a pail of hominy, or boiled Indian corn, and a quantity of tin pannikins. The cask contained water for the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their breakfast; in addition to which, they generally have each a dried fish. The food was ample, and looked wholesome; such as any laboring man would be well content with. Passing along through maize on one side, and cane at another, we arrived at last at a patch of ground where thirty-six men and women were hoeing.
Three gangs of negroes were at work: one gang of men, with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds and clearing away the grass, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hands on the plantation. The overseer, a sharp-looking creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintended their labors, and, after a salutation to the Governor, to whom he made some remarks on the condition of the crops, rode off to another part of the farm. With the exception of crying to their mules, the negroes kept silence at their work.
Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn. The third gang, of thirty-six women, were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate; their shoes, ponderous and ill-made, had worn away the feet of their thick stockings, which hung in fringes over the upper leathers. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to, prevailed, among these gangs also–not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavythonged whip over his shoulder. If “AlcÃbÃade” or “Pompée” were called out, he came with outstretched hand to ask “How do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping chapeaux de paille at their visitors.
Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for anything else, and “suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home, at appointed periods in the day, to give the infants the breast. The overseers have power to give ten lashes; but heavier punishment ought to be reported to the Governor; however, it is not likely a good overseer would be checked, in any way, by his master. The anxieties attending the cultivation of sugar are great, and so much depends upon the judicious employment of labor, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of experience in directing it, and of power to insist on its application. When the frost comes, the cane is rendered worthless– one touch destroys the sugar. But if frost is the enemy of the white planter, the sun is scarcely the friend of the black man. The sun condemns him to slavery, because it is the heat which is the barrier to the white man’s labor. The Governor told me that, in August, when the crops are close, thick set, and high, and the vertical sun beats down on the laborers, nothing but a black skin and head covered with wool can enable a man to walk out in the open and live.
We returned to the house in time for breakfast, for which our early cup of coffee and biscuit and the ride had been good preparation. Here was old France again. One might imagine a lord of the seventeenth century in his hall, but for the black faces of the servitors and the strange dishes of tropical origin. There was the old French abundance, the numerous dishes and efflorescence of napkins, and the long-necked bottles of Bordeaux, with a steady current of pleasant small talk I saw some numbers of a paper called La Misachibée, which was the primitive Indian name of the grand river, not improved by the addition of sibilant Anglo-Saxon syllables.
The Americans, not unmindful of the aid to which, at the end of the War of Independence, their efforts were merely auxiliary, delight, even in the North, to exalt France above her ancient rival; but, as if to show the innate dissimilarity of the two races, the French creoles exhibit towards the New Englanders and the North an animosity, mingled with contempt, which argues badly for a future amalgamation or reunion. As the South Carolinians declare, they would rather return to their allegiance under the English monarchy, so the Louisianans, although they have no sentiment in common with the people of republican and imperial France, assert they would far sooner seek a connection with the old country than submit to the yoke of the Yankees.
After breakfast, the Governor drove out by the ever-silent levee for some miles, passing estate after estate, where grove nodded to grove, each alley saw its brother. One could form no idea, from the small limited frontage of these plantations, that the proprietors were men of many thousands a year, because the estates extend on an average for three or four miles back to the forest. The absence of human beings on the road was a feature which impressed one more and more. But for the tall chimneys of the factories and the sugar-houses, one might believe that these villas had been erected by some pleasure-loving people who had all fled from the river banks for fear of pestilence. The gangs of negroes at work were hidden in the deep corn, and their quarters were silent and deserted. We met but one planter, in his gig, until we arrived at the estate of Monsieur Potier, the Governor’s brother-in-law. The proprietor was at home, and received us very kindly, though suffering from the effects of a recent domestic calamity. He is a grave, earnest man, with a face like Jerome Bonaparte, and a most devout Catholic; and any man more unfit to live in any sort of community with New England Puritans one cannot well conceive; for equal intensity of purpose and sincerity of conviction on their part could only lead them to mortal strife. His house was like a French chateau erected under tropical influences, and he led us through a handsome garden laid out with hothouses, conservatories, orange-trees, and date-palms, and ponds full of the magnificent Victoria Regia in flower. We visited his refining factories and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for the all-but-naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boilers, vat, and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much money at present, for sugar has been rapidly falling in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profits, which on an average may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses for the planter. With a most perfect faith in States Rights, he seemed to combine either indifference or ignorance in respect to the power and determination of the North to resist secession to the last. All the planters hereabouts have sown an unusual quantity of Indian corn, to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare.
At night, there are regular patrols and watchmen, who look after the levee and the negroes. A number of dogs are also loosed, but I am assured that the creatures do not tear the negroes; they are taught “merely” to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a well-broken retriever uses a wounded wild duck.