“Young man,” said the captain, “how long have you been on this boat?”
“A week, sir.”
“And how much money have you got?”
“Five dollars, sir.”
“Very well—go to your work.”
In three weeks, Patrick was second mate; in a year, first mate; and, not long after, captain; and now, as we sat talking on the Alabama, he had a wife, children, a plantation, and two or three steamboats.
The Alabama flows through the richest cotton country in the world. It winds about as if it had taken a contract to water as much of the state as possible, and give a good steamboat landing to every plantation. Our general course, from Mobile to Montgomery, was north-east, but we were often steaming for hours south-west, and in every other direction. The distance, as the crow flies, is a hundred and sixty miles: by the river it is little less than four hundred. The banks of the river are low in some places; in others high and precipitous, and everywhere covered with the richest and most luxuriant vegetation. There were a thousand landscapes in which a painter would revel.
The passengers were a curious study for the traveller. Here was a swarthy planter, taking his newly purchased gang of hands up to his newly-bought plantation. He had purchased a thousand acres of wild land for twenty-five thousand dollars—five thousand down. He had bought four or five families of negroes at New Orleans, twenty-five thousand more—half cash. And now he was ready to clear away the forest, and raise cotton; to buy more negroes, to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes, to raise more cotton; and so on, until tired of the monotonous accumulation.
There were Virginians, also, who had been spending the winter in New Orleans, and were now returning before the hot season should commence. They were attended by their body servants; and nicer, better behaved, more intelligent, gentlemanly and lady-like people of colour it would be difficult to find anywhere. If there is such a thing as genius for service or servitude, it is developed in these “hereditary bondsmen,” who care so little to “be free,” that they will not “strike the blow.”
We had politicians and preachers, and three Sisters of Charity from the hospitals of New Orleans, going home to recruit, a thousand miles, to their mother house in Maryland. All over the South these Sisters travel free. Where there is yellow fever they have friends, and no Southerner would touch their money.
At last we are at Montgomery. It is a beautiful little town, of ten thousand inhabitants, built upon more hills than Rome, with deeper valleys between them. It is a city of palaces and gardens; not crowded into a narrow space, but spread out broadly over the hills and valleys, with wide streets, handsome villas, elegant shops, and such gardens as only the south, with its glorious wealth of foliage and flowers, can give. A large and handsome domed state-house crowns one of the finest eminences.
Montgomery impresses the traveller with its beauty and riches. It is the centre of one of the finest cotton regions, in the finest cotton state—a state of sixty thousand square miles—and the plantations, which stretch away on every side, were in the highest state of cultivation. Every negro could make five or six bales of cotton, besides raising his own corn and bacon. A hundred negroes, therefore, besides their own support, made five or six hundred bales of cotton, worth twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars, which represents the clear profit of a well-conducted plantation. The yearly export of the single town of Montgomery was 106,000 bales, amounting to 5,300,000 dollars a-year. Well might it be prosperous and rich. There may have been poor people, but I saw none. In a thousand miles of that country one never sees a hand held out for charity. On every side is abounding wealth. The population of such a city is like nothing in Europe. The middle class is small—the lower class is wanting. There is more wealth, style, and fashion in a town like Montgomery, of ten thousand inhabitants, than in a European town of eighty or a hundred thousand.
When I arrived in Montgomery, the good citizens had a new sensation. Since the abolition of the slave trade, no negroes had ever been imported from Africa, until the owner of the yacht Wanderer took a fancy to buy a small cargo at Dahomey, and distribute them, as an experiment, among the planters of Alabama. They did not sell for much; as there was risk in the purchase, few cared to try them. There was one native African boy at Montgomery; a bright little fellow enough, a pet with his master, of whom he had become very fond, and the little savage was learning the language, manners, and customs very rapidly. There was no need to punish him. It was only necessary to threaten to send him back to Dahomey. He would fall on his knees in great distress, and earnestly beg to be saved from so terrible a misfortune.
Montgomery, like most of the considerable towns in America, has its cemetery laid out like a park or pleasure-ground, and is becoming filled with ambitious marble monuments. A portion of the ground is set apart for negroes, and they, too, have their gravestones, which record their humble virtues. I was struck by the original form of a marble monument which an honest German had raised to an adopted son who had been drowned in the river. The epitaph was so peculiar that I copied it:—
Stop as you pass by my grave. Here I, John Schockler, rest my remains. I was born in New Orleans, the 22nd of Nov., 1841; was brought up by good friends; not taking their advice, was drowned in this city in the Alabama river, the 27th of May, 1855. Now I warn all young and old to beware of the dangers of this river. See how I am fixed in this watery grave; I have got but two friends to mourn.
What Montgomery now is, or may be in the future, I know not, but I shall always remember it as a bright, beautiful, elegant, and hospitable city, and worthy, from its refinement and hospitality, of a prosperous and noble destiny.
