Bade good-by to Charleston at 9:45 A. M., this day, and
proceeded by railway, in company with Mr. Ward, to visit Mr. Trescot's Sea
Island Plantation. Crossed the river to the terminus in a ferry steamer. No
blockading vessels in sight yet. The water alive with small silvery fish, like
mullet, which sprang up and leaped along the surface incessantly. An old
gentleman, who was fishing on the pier, combined the pursuit of sport with
instruction very ingeniously by means of a fork of bamboo in his rod, just
above the reel, into which he stuck his inevitable newspaper, and read gravely
in his cane-bottomed chair till he had a bite, when the fork was unhitched and
the fish was landed. The negroes are very much addicted to the contemplative
man's recreation, and they were fishing in all directions.
On the move again. Took our places in the Charleston and
Savannah Railway for Pocotaligo, which is the station for Barnwell Island. Our
fellow-passengers were all full of politics — the pretty women being the
fiercest of all — no! the least good-looking were the most bitterly patriotic,
as if they hoped to talk themselves into husbands by the most unfeminine expressions
towards the Yankees.
The country is a dead flat, perforated by rivers and
watercourses, over which the rail is carried on long and lofty trestle-work.
But for the fine trees, the magnolias and live-oak, the landscape would be
unbearably hideous, for there
are none of the quaint, cleanly, delightful villages of Holland to relieve the
monotonous level of rice swamps and wastes of land and water and mud. At the
humble little stations there were invariably groups of horsemen waiting under
the trees, and ladies with their black nurses and servants who had driven over
in the odd-looking old-fashioned vehicles, which were drawn up in the shade.
Those who were going on a long journey, aware of the utter barrenness of the
land, took with them a viaticum and bottles of milk. The nurses and slaves
squatted down by their side in the train, on perfectly well-understood terms.
No one objected to their presence — on the contrary, the passengers treated
them with a certain sort of special consideration, and they were on the
happiest terms with their charges, some of which were in the absorbent
condition of life, and dived their little white faces against the tawny bosom
of their nurses with anything but reluctance.
The train stopped, at 12:20, at Pocotaligo; and there we
found Mr. Trescot and a couple of neighboring planters, famous as fishers for “drum,”
of which more by and by. I had met old Mr. Elliot in Charleston, and his
account of this sport, and of the pursuit of an enormous sea monster called the
devil-fish, which he was one of the first to kill in these waters, excited my
curiosity very much. Mr. Elliot has written a most agreeable account of the
sports of South Carolina, and I had hoped he would have been well enough to
have been my guide, philosopher, and friend in drum-fishing in Port Royal; but
he sent over his son to, say that he was too unwell to come, and had therefore
despatched most excellent representatives in two members of his family. It was
arranged that they should row down from their place and meet us to-morrow
morning at Trescot's Island, which lies above Beaufort, in Port Royal Sound and
River.
Got into Trescot's gig, and plunged into a shady lane with
wood on each side, through which we drove for some distance. The country, on
each side and beyond, perfectly flat — all rice lands — few houses visible —
scarcely a human being on the road — drove six or seven miles without meeting a
soul. After a couple of hours or so, I should think, the gig turned up by an
open gateway on a path or road made through a waste of rich black mud, “glorious
for rice,” and landed us at the door of a planter, Mr. Heyward, who came out
and gave us a most hearty welcome, in the true Southern style. His house is
charming, surrounded with trees, and covered with roses and creepers, through
which birds and butterflies are flying. Mr. Heyward took it as a matter of course
that we stopped to dinner, which we were by no means disinclined to do, as the
day was hot, the road was dusty, and his reception frank and kindly. A fine
specimen of the planter man; and, minus his broad-brimmed straw hat and loose
clothing, not a bad representative of an English squire at home.
Whilst we were sitting in the porch, a strange sort of
booming noise attracted my attention in one of the trees. “It is a rain-crow,”
said Mr. Heyward; “a bird which we believe to foretell rain. I'll shoot it for
you.” And, going into the hall, he took down a double-barrelled fowling-piece,
walked out, and fired into the tree; whence the rain-crow, poor creature, fell
fluttering to the ground and died. It seemed to me a kind of cuckoo — the same
size, but of darker plumage. I could gather no facts to account for the
impression that its call is a token of rain.
My attention was also called to a curious kind of
snake-killing hawk, or falcon, which makes an extraordinary noise by putting
its wings point upwards, close together, above its back, so as to offer no
resistance to the air, and then, beginning to descend from a great height, with
fast-increasing rapidity, makes, by its rushing through the air, a strange loud
hum, till it is near the ground, when the bird stops its downward swoop and
flies in a curve over the meadow. This I saw two of these birds doing
repeatedly to-night.
After dinner, at which Mr. Heyward expressed some alarm lest
Secession would deprive the Southern States of “ice,” we continued our journey
towards the river. There is still a remarkable absence of population or life
along the road, and even the houses are either hidden or lie too far off to be
seen. The trees are much admired by the people, though they would not be
thought much of in England.
At length, towards sundown, having taken to a track by a
forest, part of which was burning, we came to a broad muddy river, with steep
clay banks. A canoe was lying in a little harbor formed by a slope in the bank,
and four stout negroes, who were seated round a burning log, engaged in smoking
and eating oysters, rose as we approached, and helped the party into the “dug-out,”
or canoe, a narrow, long, and heavy boat, with wall sides and a flat floor. A
row of one hour, the latter part of it in darkness, took us to the verge of Mr.
Trescot's estate, Barnwell Island; and the oarsmen, as they bent to their task,
beguiled the way by singing in unison a real negro melody, which was as unlike
the works of the Ethiopian Serenaders as anything in song could be unlike
another. It was a barbaric sort of madrigal, in which one singer beginning was
followed by the others in unison, repeating the refrain in chorus, and full of
quaint expression and melancholy:—
“Oh, your soul! oh,
my soul! I'm going to the churchyard to lay this body down;
Oh, my soul! oh, your
soul! we're going to the churchyard to lay this nigger down.”
And then some appeal to the difficulty of passing “the
Jawdam,” constituted the whole of the song, which continued with unabated
energy through the whole of the little voyage. To me it was a strange scene.
The stream, dark as Lethe, flowing between the silent, houseless, rugged banks,
lighted up near the landing by the fire in the woods, which reddened the sky —
the wild strain, and the unearthly adjurations to the singers' souls, as though
they were palpable, put me in mind of the fancied voyage across the Styx.
“Here we are at last.” All I could see was a dark shadow of
trees and the tops of rushes by the river side. “Mind where you step, and
follow me close.” And so, groping along through a thick shrubbery for a short
space, I came out on a garden and enclosure, in the midst of which the white
outlines of a house were visible. Lights in the drawing-room — a lady to
receive and welcome us — a snug library — tea, and to bed: but not without more
talk about the Southern Confederacy, in which Mrs. Trescot explained how easily
she could feed an army, from her experience in feeding her negroes.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 137-40
