of our fellow travellers go to sleep, others yawn over a book which they have not energy enough to read, some get out the cards and play poker or écarté, according as the spirit of gambling moves them; we hear murmured complaints, “There is nothing to see,” and “What a horribly monotonous journey.”
But to us it is not monotonous; there is life and beauty in the ever-changing lights and shadows of the forest, sometimes most Rembrandt-like in their depth and dim obscurity; in the dainty colouring of the leaves, and the many strange formations of these ancient kings of the forest, standing in deep rank and file, sentinels and guardians of the silent land, their green heads lifted to the skies, their gnarled and knotted feet firmly planted on the earth below. We wonder are they quite dumb and speechless? Deaf to the low whispering of the wind, stirred only to a gentle rustle by its balmy breath? Who knows? What to us is the mere soughing of the wind may be to them a living language coming straight down from the Great Unknown, with a message cheering them in their solitude here with a promise of a hereafter, when they shall bloom in paradise, and angels walk and talk beneath their leafy shade. They seem so lonely here; they have never heard the sound of a human voice; no foot has ever strayed among their fallen leaves, no lovers’ voices made sweet music in the night, no childish babble echoed through their bended boughs.
We are still lost in contemplation, with our thoughts wandering through the soft luxuriant beauty of this forest land, when we slowly emerge from its density into the open country. The landscape changes, widens—Charleston is in sight! In a few minutes the cling-clanging of the engine bell tells us we are nearing the station—another moment, and we are there.
It is evening now, the lamps are lighted, and but a few scattered groups are making their way homeward through the quiet streets, for they keep early hours in Charleston, and by ten o’clock all decent folk are at home in their beds.
The gloomy grandeur of the “Charleston House”—and it is really a handsome stone building—attracts us not; we stop at the “Pavilion,” a pretty homelike hotel with a verandahed front, and balcony filled with evergreens and flowers, on the opposite corner of Meeting Street. Our room has the usual regulation furniture, without any pretensions to luxury—clean, comfortable beds, chilly-looking marble-topped tables, and the inevitable rocking chairs, without which the humblest home would be incomplete. We go to bed and sleep soundly after our twenty-four hours’ run.
Within all was bright and pleasant enough, but without the prospect was anything but cheering. Our windows opened upon a dingy courtyard, surrounded on three sides by dilapidated buildings two stories high; the rickety doors hung loosely on their rusty hinges, the windows were broken or patched with paper or old rags, and the venetian blinds swung outside in a miserably crippled condition—all awry and crooked, every lath splintered or broken, the paint was worn off in rain-stained patches everywhere, and the woodwork was worm-eaten, and rotten. The place had altogether a miserable appearance, as though the ghost of the old dead days was haunting and brooding over it in the poverty of the present. It seemed to be deserted too, for as we looked out upon it in the light of the early morning, we heard no sound, nor saw a human creature anywhere.
We learned afterwards that these had been the original slave quarters, and are still occupied by the same inhabitants—the freedmen of to-day, the slaves of yesterday, in many cases still serving their old masters in the old way. The servants of the hotel, waiters, chambermaids, etc, are all coloured, or rather coal-black; for as we go farther South the mixed breeds are more rarely to be met with; it is only here and there we come across the mulatto or others of mixed blood, which is rather a surprise to us, for we expected the half breeds greatly to outnumber the original race.
In Charleston two thirds of the population are black, and almost without exception in all Southern cities they largely preponderate over the whites, whose superiority they tacitly acknowledge, and work under their direction with amiable contentment.
Their inherent respect for the white race is exemplified in many ways, especially in the small matters of everyday life. In many of the coloured churches they have white preachers, and these are always the most popular. One old “mammy,” who had nursed a friend of mine forty years ago, and who still occupies her old position in the same family, is accustomed to walk three miles to and from church, though she is over seventy years of age. On her mistress inquiring why she went so far, when one of her own people held service close by, “I’se no sit under no nigger preacher!” said the old woman, shaking her head contemptuously.
This kind of feeling penetrates even into the nursery. The dark nurse will be most devoted to the white baby, while she utterly neglects her own—hence the great mortality among the dusky brood, which, comparatively, more than doubles that of the whites. An attempt to secure the services of a young coloured girl for an infant of her own race (whose mother was nursing a white child) was met with the scornful answer, “I’se no tend no nigger babies,” the girl herself being black as coal!
It is the same in the schools, for though both white and coloured pass exactly the same examinations, they will not send their children to be taught by their own people. The rank and file of teachers may be coloured, but they must be led, and in all their duties superintended, by the whites! Woe be to the coloured teacher who dares to put a naughty Topsy in the corner! The maternal virago swoops down upon her with direst outcries, and lays her case before the authorities with as much solemnity as could be used in the court-martial of a refractory colonel.
The master mechanics, builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., are generally white, while the journeymen and labourers are coloured; it is the same with the shopkeepers and small traders, their employés being of the opposite race.
The great drawback in the labour market throughout the Southern States is the uncertainty of the labour supply. The blacks as a rule are excellent mechanics, but they will not work well unless under strict supervision, and they will only work while necessity demands they should. They have no sense of the responsibility which rests upon their employer, and cannot see that their idle self-indulgence must result in his ruin and ultimately in their own. So soon as they have earned a few dollars they enjoy a spell of idleness till they have eaten them up, and then go to work for more; but this peculiarity is not confined to the dark race. They are a good-natured and simple, but shiftless and utterly irresponsible, people; to-day is all; they apply the scriptural text literally, and “take no thought of to-morrow.” Gay, thoughtless, fond of pleasure and every kind of self-indulgence, and having led for generations past a life of dependence on the will and direction of others, they can exercise no discretion of their own; they are mere machines to be set in motion by the master hand. Generations must pass before they can learn the lesson of self-government, and be led to feel that their own prosperity must be the outcome of their co-operation with the prosperity of others. I speak of the general character of the people; of course there are exceptions to this rule, and many of them. Education is doing its work slowly but surely; there are schools everywhere, where they receive exactly the same training as the whites, and consequently the coloured population of to-day is a great advance on the enslaved race of twenty years ago.
We spend our first day in Charleston in a rambling promenade through the city, so gathering a general view of the whole before we take the special points of interest.
It is a bright sunny day, with a cool fresh breeze blowing, not at all the sort of weather we ought to have considering the season; instead of the hot sun blazing and burning in vindication of its Southern character, compelling us to creep along every inch of shade, and melting us even then, it simply looks down upon us with a kind, genial eye, occasionally winking and playing bo-peep with the woolly white clouds which come sailing across the azure sky, and the balmy breath of the wind is sufficiently cool to render our wraps not only comfortable but absolutely necessary.
Before we have gone many steps on our way we come upon a pleasant party of some half dozen negroes, sitting on a fence like a gathering of black crows, each one whittling a stick and chewing tobacco in solemn silence—not the silence of thought, but the silence of emptiness, their great shining eyes staring at nothing, thinking of nothing, like lazy cattle basking in the sunshine in supreme idleness.
On returning some hours later, we find them in exactly