I nearly slept round the clock after yesterday's exertions.
Mr Douglas and I crossed the father of rivers and landed on the Mississippi
bank at 9 A.M.
Natchez is a pretty little town, and ought to contain about
6000 inhabitants. It is built on the top of a high bluff overlooking the
Mississippi river, which is about three quarters of a mile broad at this point.
When I reached Natchez I hired a carriage, and, with a
letter of introduction which I had brought from San Antonio, I drove to the
house of Mr Haller Nutt, distant from the town about two miles.
The scenery about Natchez is extremely pretty, and the
ground is hilly, with plenty of fine trees. Mr Nutt's place reminded me very
much of an English gentleman's country seat, except that the house itself is
rather like a pagoda, but it is beautifully furnished.
Mr Nutt was extremely civil, and was most anxious that I
should remain at Natchez for a few days; but now that I was thoroughly wound up
for travelling, I determined to push on to Vicksburg, as all the late news
seemed to show that some great operations must take place there before long.
I had fondly imagined that after reaching Natchez my
difficulties would have been over; but I very soon discovered that this was a
delusive hope. I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours.
Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi,
more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed
whether I should be able to get into Vicksburg at all.
However, as I found some other people as determined to
proceed as myself, we hired a carriage for $100 to drive to Brookhaven, which
is the nearest point on the railroad, and is distant from Natchez 66 miles.
My companions were a fat Government contractor from Texas,
the wounded Missourian Mr Douglas, and an ugly woman, wife to a soldier in
Vicksburg.
We left Natchez at 12 noon, and were driven by a negro named
Nelson; the carriage and the three horses belong to him, and he drives it for
his own profit; but he is, nevertheless, a slave, and pays his owner $4| a-week
to be allowed to work on his own account. He was quite as vain as and even more
amusing than Tucker. He said he “didn't want to see no Yanks, nor to be no
freer than he is;” and he thought the war had already lasted four or five
years.
Every traveller we met on the road was eagerly asked the
questions, “Are the Yanks in Brookhaven? Is the railroad open?” At first we
received satisfactory replies; but at 6 P.M. we met an officer driving towards
Natchez at a great pace ; he gave us the alarming intelligence that Jackson was
going to be evacuated. Now, as Jackson is the capital city of this state, a
great railroad junction, and on the highroad to every civilised place from
this, our feelings may be imagined, but we did not believe it possible. On the
other hand we were told that General Joseph Johnston had arrived and assumed
the command in Mississippi. He appears to be an officer in whom every one
places unbounded confidence.
We slept at a farmhouse. All the males were absent at the
war, and it is impossible to exaggerate the unfortunate condition of the women
left behind in these farmhouses; they have scarcely any clothes, and nothing
but the coarsest bacon to eat, and are in miserable uncertainty as to the fate
of their relations, whom they can hardly ever communicate with. Their slaves,
however, generally remain true to them.
Our hostess, though she was reduced to the greatest
distress, was well-mannered, and exceedingly well educated; very far superior
to a woman of her station in England.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863, p. 98-100
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