In the morning we
found ourselves in chopping little sea-way for which the “Nina” was
particularly unsuited, laden as she was with provisions and produce. Eyes and
glasses anxiously straining seawards for any trace of the blockading vessels.
Every sail scrutinized, but no “stars and stripes” visible.
Our captain — a
good specimen of one of the inland-water navigators, shrewd, intelligent, and
active, — told me a good deal about the country. He laughed at the fears of the
whites as regards the climate. “Why, here am I,” said he, “going up the river,
and down the river all times of the year, and at times of day and night when
they reckon the air is most deadly, and I've done so for years without any bad
effects. The planters whose houses I pass all run away in May, and go off to
Europe, or to the piney wood, or to the springs, or they think they'd all die.
There's Captain Buck, who lives above here, — he comes from the State of Maine.
He had only a thousand dollars to begin with, but he sets to work and gets land
on the Maccamaw River at twenty cents an acre. It was death to go nigh it, but
it was first-rate rice land, and Captain Buck is now worth a million of dollars.
He lives on his estate all the year round, and is as healthy a man as ever you
seen.”
To such
historiettes my planting friends turn a deaf ear. “I tell you what,” said
Pringle, “just to show you what kind our climate is. I had an excellent
overseer once, who would insist on staying near the river, and wouldn't go
away. He fought against it for more than five-and-twenty years, but he went
down with fever at last.” As the overseer was more than thirty years of age
when he came to the estate, he had not been cut off so very suddenly. I thought
of the quack's advertisement of the “bad leg of sixty years' standing.” The
captain says the negroes on the river plantations are very well off. He can buy
enough of pork from the slaves on one plantation to last his ship's crew for
the whole winter. The money goes to them, as the hogs are their own. One of the
stewards on board had bought himself and his family out of bondage with his
earnings. The State in general, however, does not approve of such practices.
At three o'clock, P.
M., ran into Charleston harbor, ant landed soon afterwards.
I saw General
Beauregard in the evening: he was very lively and in good spirits, though he
admitted he was rather surprised by the spirit displayed in the North. “A good
deal of it is got up, however,” he said, “and belongs to that washy sort of
enthusiasm which is promoted by their lecturing and spouting.” Beauregard is
very proud of his personal strength, which for his slight frame is said to be
very extraordinary, and he seemed to insist on it that the Southern men had
more physical strength, owing to their mode of life and their education, than
their Northern “brethren.” In the evening held a sort of tabaks consilium in
the hotel, where a number of officers — Manning,
Lucas, Chestnut, Calhoun, &c, — discoursed of the affairs of the nation.
All my friends, except Trescot, I think were elated at the prospect of
hostilities with the North, and overjoyed that a South Carolina regiment had
already set out for the frontiers of Virginia.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 135-6
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