Afoot and alone; a walk from sea to sea by the southern route

Front matter

Boolc.~P^S?>- GjpyiightN?

COBCRIGifT DSPCSfT

AFOOT AND ALONE;

Chapter II

The Turpentine-Makers — In the Piney-Woods — Meeting with a Freedman — Sherman's Ash-Cakes — Southern Characteristics — A Roadside Cooper — Sam and Jim — Spectral Chimneys — My Cape Fear Ferryman — " I am not a Peddler " — Experiences at Jonesboro' — Graduating in Pine — Winter Scenery — Anecdote — The Cross-Roads Groceryman — A Southern Anthropometer — A Clay-Eater — Street Scenes in Fayetteville — An Old Shingle-Shaver — Hospitality in the Old North State — The Piney-Woods Cabin at Night — Religious Manifestations — The Piney-Woods Man— The Women of the South— My Host's Wife, 34

Chapter III

Among the Rice-Eaters — A High-Toned Southron — An Unskillful Waltz — Over the Little Pedee — Noble Plantations — '" A Prodigious Screeching " — The Planters Home — Carpetless Rooms — Footfalls of Poverty — The Cavalry Sergeant and the Tar-Heels — Looking for Lodgings — " We never Keep Peddlers " — On the Santee — A night with a Planter < — Approach to Charleston — Talk with a " Sand-Hiller " — On the Battery — Reminiscences of Secession Times — Picture of a Planter's Mansion before the War — Another Picture — A Ruined Home — The Widow and Orphans — The Happy Freedmen — In the Overseer's Cabin — The Rice Negroes — The Marion Planters — After the Battle, 49

Chapter IV

Over the Red Hills — A City of Shade and Silence — Farewell to the Atlantic — A Woman's Story — Along the Ogeechee — Cotton Trains — A Black City — A Pumfoozled Freedman — A Night at Captain Truhitt's — An Unkind Cut — By the Planter's Fireside — The Captain's Story — His Experience with Bummers — " Sherman Is Coming " — Ungrateful Slaves — The Little Pickaninny — Return of the Runaways — The Story of Old Shade — The Emblem of Poverty — Georgia in the War, 64

Xll CONTENTS.

Chapter V

Among the Cotton Planters — Across the Chattahoochee — Story of an Alabamian Planter — Harry and his Master — The Valley of the Alabama — In the Suburbs — Montgomery— View of the State House — On the Ferry-Boat at Selma — Description of a Planter's Home — Talks on the Veranda — Women of the Alabama Valley, 77

Chapter VI

With the Yam-Eaters — A Mean Country — March Peepers — At Meridian — Drake's Story — Strange Superstition — Building a Cabin — A Winsome Legend — A Piney-Woods Village — The Meeting-House and Singing School — " Jest Jim " — Across the Pearl — A Mississippi Teuton — A Grotesque Hut and its Occupant — Approach to Vicksburg — Hallowed Ground— The Caves — The National Cemetery — The Hill City — Visit to Tamany Jones — The Primeval Forest — A Piney-Woods Character — The Red and the Blue — Draw-Bead College — The Dogs — Outside the Cabin — Inside — " Waal Now, I Sa-ay " — Story of Captain Jarnley — The Contrary Cannuck — Supper, and Afterwards, 93

Chapter VII

On the Doleful Flats — Sherman's Track to Vicksburg — Across the Mississippi — The Peninsula — Tookey Sraook — A Story of the Siege of Vicksburg — The Bayou Region — Crossing a Bayou — Deserted Villages — Sad Pictures — A Voodoo Priestess — Negro Superstitions — Tookey and the Goose — The Monroe Planters — The Red River — Shreveport— An Editor's Sanctum— The War of Races— The Poor Whites, . . 107

Chapter VIII

In the Land of Oxen — Cotton-Wains and Their Drivers — The Tribes of Joshua — Portrait of a Texan— A Texas Norther — A Texan in Love — The Last Cotton-Field— Hail to the Prairies !— Meeting with a Cattle Hunter— A Norwegian Village — Trinity Forest — Texan Refugees — Waxahatchie — Waiting for the Train — Rangers and Ox-Drivers, 119

Chapter IX

Over the Rolling Prairies— Catechism for Pups— Starting for California — An Unruly Pageant — A River of Horns — Hog- Wallows — Cross Timbers — Bill Snodgrass and the Ichthyosaurians — The Valley of the Brazos — Texan Grocery Stores — View near the Paloxy — Cattle Attacked by Wolves — A Rancho and its Surroundings — Rawhide — An Old Hermit — A Night Stampede — A Scene of Confusion — On the Run — An Awful Storm — In the Camanehe Country — School Attacked by Indians— The Cow-Boys and their Training— On the Brazos Prairie. . . 133

CONTENTS. Xlll

Chapter X

On the Windy Plain — Last Vestige of Civilization — Peg-Horn Gladiators —The Little Concho— The Old Sailor and the Mule— A terrific Nip— Fire in Camp— The Staked Plain— A Last Drink— The Start— Midnight- Restive Herds — Halt for Coffee — The Camanches !-The Doctor's gallant Charge — Approaching Day — Cainanche Tracks — A forced March — Baby Emigrants — A sleepy Train — A Wild Walk — Alone on the Desert—Short of Water— A Pass of Peril— Antelopes— The Third Night — Exhausted — Rescued — Approaching the River — A Run for the Pecos — Appalling Spectacle — Drowning Cattle — A polite Negro Corporal — Spanish Ojos — An Altercation — Mud Forts — Negroes on Guard — The perplexed Sentinel — Magnificent Sunset — A Night Halt, 145

Chapter XI

In Apache Land — A " Cullud Gal " — Sensation in the Negro Camp — Scaling Wash-Bowl Hill — Olympia Canyon — A Government Train — ■ The Giant's Causeway of Texas — A Messenger — Waiting for Rain — Swallows — Fort Davis — Singular Phenomena — The Palmilla — Curious Spectacle — Tom and Fanny — Rain at Last — The Start — A Night Journey — Gorgeous Sunrise — Pushing for the Rio Grande — Encounter with the Apaches — The Soldier's Life on the Plain — Deserters and their Experiences, 157

Chapter XII

First view of Mexico — Chihuahua Mountains — Encamped on the Rio Grande — Our Harlequin — Dave the Ranger — San Antone the Ox-tamer — The Young Emigrant — The Melon-Stealers — Mexican Retribution — Mexican Farmers — Sheep Dogs, and Their Charge — Rancheros and Peons — San Eleazario at Noon — A Drowsy Village — Mexican Beauties — Street Scenes — Fort Bliss — The Pass of the North — Last View of

Chapter XIII

Among the Enameled Hills — A Mysterious Visitor — Indian Yells— The Organ Mountain — Lazoing a Steer — A Ranchero and His Spouse — A funny Sight — Breaking a Mustang — Fort Selby — Frightened by Indians — Dividing Cattle — Picturesque Scene — An Insulted Herdsman — The Chase — Crossing the Rio Grande — A Serenade — Horses Stolen — Mountain Storm — The Picture Galleries of New Mexico — Beautiful Scenery — Attack on Train — Apache Superstition — The Mirage — Nature's Cockloft — A Mexican Fandango — Winking for a Partner — The Playas — An Enchanted Desert — The Belles of the Train — The Mexican of the Border — Shall We Annex Mexico ? 185

XIV CONTENTS.

Chapter XIV

A Family Plot — Gateway to Arizona — Climbing a Mountain — On the Summit — A narrow Escape — Apache Pass — A Night of Terror — Comic Elements — Cudjoe and the German — An Arizonian Apache Fighter — How Indian Affairs are Managed — An Apache Massacre — Wayside Inscriptions — Demoralized Caravan — The Chaparral City — The Fate of Tucson Pioneers — The Papago Indians — Life in Tucson — Gambling Scene — The Soldiers — Funny old Mexican, 201

Chapter XV

Miseries of Emigrant Life — Midnight Start — The Santa Cruz — The Sentinel of the Desert — A Landmark — Surprised by Indians — Successful Strategy — A Disagreeable Captive — Escape — A good Omen and the Sequel — Another Fright — A Night on a Sage-Bush — Blue Water Station — The grumbling Keeper, 211

CHAPTER XYI.

Down the River of Despair — Sacaton — Pimo Villages — A man of Family —Squaws and Pappooses— Inside a Wigwam— Pimo Dolls— A Texan Emigrant in Arizona — Sad Incident — The Painted Rocks — Lunch with the Maricopas — Merry Savages — Grand Scenery — Twilight on the Desert — A Sleepless Night — A dreary Walk — The Estrella Mountains — Sunset — Starving for Water — Gila Bend Station, 226

Chapter XVII

In the Home of the Heat — Down the Gila — The Impertinent Cayotes — " Oft in the Stilly Night "—Veteran Hunter— A Shot in the Dark— A Hideous Chasm — Massacre of an Emigrant Family — Taken for a Mule — Denizens of the River — An interesting Character — Love in the Desert — An odd Genius — The Predatory Cow — Arizonian Civilization — Apache Slaves — A Woman's Camp — Arizona City, 235

Chapter XVIII

Walks on the Desert — Fort Yuma — The Colorado — Yuma Indians — A happy Event — Drifting Sands — Skeletons — Fate of a Deserter — Yankee Station-Keepers — A Walk by Moonlight — Approaching the Sierra Nevada — A Mysterious River — Sunrise at Carriza Station — A Fairy Spectacle — A Soldier Boy's Story — Vallecito Oasis — Diegeno Huts — Invited to Ride — "You Bet" — SanFelipe Pass — View from the Mountains— Farewell to the Chaparral, 246

CONTENTS. XV

Chapter XIX

Honey in Green Hills — Diegenos Village — Buying Pan-Cakes — In the Valley of San Felipe — California Birds and Flowers — Encounter with a Diegeno — An Impromptu Circus — A Fearful Adventure — An Amazed Vaquero — Amusing Incident — Forlorn Habitations — My Host at Temecula — A Silent Mexican — A Moonlight Night — One of the Forty- Niners — Peter Qnartz's Adventures — A Miner's Story — Flour Sacks vs. Biled Shirts — Early Mining Times — A Preacher in Camp — Gambling and the Result, 263

Chapter XX

Wine in Dry Valleys — California Rivers — The Santa Ana — The Chino Plains — An Amusing Sight — About Blackbirds — A Night with a Mexican — The Corn-Huskers — Autumn Scenery — The Valley of San Jose — Roxy and Her Suitors — The City of the Angels — A Visit to the Wine-Cellars — Life in Los Angeles — Socrates Hyacinth in Trouble — Vineyards and Wine Making — Wine vs. Whiskey — Tropical Fruits — On the Mustard Plains — The Mexican Shepherd — Starting for a Bear Hunt — Santa Susana Mountains — A Bear Hunter — Game Discovered— "Load for Your Life "—End of the Hunt, 280

Chapter XXI

Coast Walks — An Immense Rancho — Inside the Hut — A Night with the Shepherds — California Girls — Early Days in California— The Native Inhabitants— The Fatal Gold-Discovery— First View of the Pacific — The Music of the Sea — My first Chinaman — A Day in Santa Barbara California Farmers — Story of James W. Marshall, the Original Gold Discoverer — Ruined by a Gold Mine, 293

Chapter XXII

With the Shepherds— Gaviota Pass— Reminiscence of Fremont's Guide — Teamsters and Tramps — Mission Santa Ines — Inside the Old Church

. Adjacent Grog-Shops— Talk with a Stage-Driver— The Alfileria— Dry Sowing— A Dingy Town— The Hot Sulphur Springs— The Great Wool Growing Region— Sequestered Shepherds— A Child of Nature— Herding Sheep— New Sensations— The Humming Bird's Song— Old John and the Migueleno Boy— A Whistling Indian— Story of Jack Powers the Famous Brigand— The Influence of the Mines— Evidences of Poverty—The Large Land-Owners— About Trees— The Valley of the Salinas—Life of a Vaquero— The Chinese Cook— Blanket-Men— An Earthquake—A Typical Californian— Mania for Wheat— A Wheat-Colored Maiden— Domestic Felicity— The Tale of an Ox-Tail, 308

XVI

CONTEXTS.

Chapter XXIII

Down the Yalley of Gardens — Interview with a Blanket-Man — An Agricultural Experiment — Redwood Villages — San Juan — Standing Treat Wheat Fields — The Windmills — California Pumpkins — San Jose — A Noble Yalley — Suburban Residences — Rural Life in California — The Laboring Classes — The Employers — The Story of the Seizure of Monterey by Commodore Sloat, 318

CHAPTER XXIY.

1846 — The Stevenson Regiment — The Thomas H. Perkins — Incidents of the Yoyage — Story and Fate of a Pioneer's Son — Yictim of a Yigilance Committee — Approach to San Francisco — The Bay — Autumn. Scenery — Mission Hill — Dolores — Lone Mountain — Then and Now — Our Ultimate City— California Children— The Chinese—" Grass Widows " — " Spiritual Widowers " — Local Characteristics — Sunset at the

ITINERARY.

From Raleigh to Charleston, -

" Charleston

" Savannah, -

" Savannah

" Macon

" Columbus, -

11 Columbus

" Montgomery,

" Montgomery

11 Selma, -

" Selma

" Meridian, ...

" Meridian

" YlCKSBURG, -

" VlCKSBURG

" Shreveport,

" Shreveport

" Athens, -

11 Athens

" Marshall,

" Marshall

" Waxahatchie,

" Waxahatchie

" Franklin, (El Paso,)

" Franklin

" Tucson, -

" Tucson

" Los Angeles, ...

" Los Angeles u San Francisco, -

Total Walk,

3,556

A JOURNEY FROM SEA TO SEA.

Chapter I. Outfitting

OBERT,' said I to the colored factotum of the ^ hotel in Raleigh, " come hither and let me behold J^your beauty."

Robert came and stood before me — an oldish African, say forty-five, with his head a little grizzled, his eyes popped out nearly half their diameters, and his mouth always ajar, disclosing the absence of every alternate tooth ; they having been principally eliminated in the process of his youthful fights.

" Robert, I propound unto your intelligence the following theorem, to wit : — That many a bold soldier boy, in the recent sanguinary unpleasantness, who might have fought gloriously for his country, was prevented from so doing by the Quartermaster, who so overloaded him with baggage that he broke down before seeing the enemy. Do you admit the correctness of the postulate, Robert ?"

" Well, sah, a nigger dat waited on a gemmen in de Sanguinary Commission, sah, he tell me de Quartermaster mighty hard on de boys sometimes, sah."

" That's it, Robert, undoubtedly. Now, I am going on a journey of some thousands of miles, and I intend to be my own Quartermaster, or rather, I am going to promote

18 OUTFITTING.

you to that office, as an experiment. You perceive scattered on the bed yonder, the entire extent of my worldly possessions. Here is my hat, Robert, and I desire you now to fill it with such articles, selected from my personal property, as you consider most necessary for my uses during a journey of that length. If you succeed in filling it according to my notions, all that remains over of my goods and chattels shall accrue to you, as the emoluments and perquisites of your office, the same to continue and appertain to yourself and your lawful heirs or assigns in perpetuum. You comprehend perfectly, Robert ?"

" Wha' fur gwine fur to pu 'em in de hat '?" asjied Eobert in profound astonishment.

" It is necessary for me to start very soon, Robert ; will you make the experiment, or not ?"

He scrutinized me with one searching look, as if to satisfy himself that I was not demented, then with another, to assure himself whether or not it was a solemn jest; then he took the hat and proceeded hesitatingly to the bedside. The bedstead was of unpainted pine, undiminished at the head, but the upper segment of the foot-board had been kicked off by some piney-woods lodger of too long legs ; and on it was spread a counterpane with a white ground, upon which were depicted in green, divers crooked-necked cranes or gourds, I am uncertain which.

First, he selected a couple of gorgeous neckties, and laid them carefully in the hat. Then he took a box of collars, and endeavored to put them in also, without rumpling the neckties ; but finally he had a happy inspiration, took out the collars and the neckties, wrapped the latter around the box, and then returned them triumphantly into the hat. Then he ventured another furtive glance, before I could smooth out of my face the smile with which it was wrinkling, and immediately the explosion took place.

'•' Yah, yah, yah ! De hat won't hold nuffin more but

OUTFITTING. 19

jest dese hyur an' de socks — yah, yah ! — an' mighty soon you jest go plumb naked, 'cept socks and a collar. Yah, yah, yah !"

I thought Robert would certainly have fallen on the floor. He clutched the bed-post convulsively with both hands, bowed down his head between his arms, and finally tumbled over helplessly on the bed, and the foot-board seemed about to be demolished entirely.

" Packin' a shirt in a hat !" and then he yelled outright, and the house shook under his " irrepressible laughter."

" I see, Robert, I shall have to retire you from the rank of Quartermaster, and take upon myself the high functions of that office."

So I produced a traveling-bag and placed therein the following articles : — a " diamond edition " of Longfellow, the Harper's text of Horace, a manifold note-book for the res gestae, a change of flannel, a tooth-brush, my sister's spool of snuff-colored thread, and my mother's hussif. This latter article was very wonderfully and inscrutably made, and contained a thimble, an elegant assortment of pins, needles and buttons, scissors, and leaves for needles, some of white flannel, daintily stitched with pink thread around the edges, and some of scarlet, stitched with white. When wrapped together it was no larger than a cylindrical nutmeg-grater ; and it was of such marvelous potency in repairing rips and rents, that I herewith state my belief that, if my mother simply sat in the room with it, it could keep house itself.

I was dressed in a pair of doeskin trowsers ; light top-boots, with the ends of the trowsers inserted therein ; a shortish frock-coat ; and a planter's hat.

Thus rigged out, and equipped with a mighty jackknife, I left Raleigh on New Year's day, 1868.

CHAPTER II. THE TUEPENTmE-MAKEES

WEAKLY everybody to whom I imparted my tremendous secret sought to dissuade me from the enterprise. I was solemnly warned that I should certainly be assassinated by the freedmen ! Even Madge-howlet herself, sitting alone in a tree-top in the solemn deeps of the pineries at evening, called out to me, "Tou fool ! you fool ! fool ! fool !" Nevertheless, no enemy assailed me more terrific than the robber Peynard, prowling in the gloaming by the fence, and shooting back at me, Scythian-like, a couple of blood-red bullets from the end of his wry neck.

Awful is the gloom and the solitude by night in these philosophic pines of the Old North State. Presently there comes a mournful and fitful moaning for a moment, as the wind soughs through the topmost branches. Then the wind is still, and the silence is doubly awful. Hear the dull thud of the assassin's bludgeon, and the gurgling of the blood ! 'Twas only the hoarse-throated owl. Hist ! see those dreadful bogeys, stalking through the woods in their flaming sarks ! Fool ! it is only the long gashes on the pines, faintly phosphorescing with gum.

Some hear in this plaintive lament of the pines the voice of Nature, weeping over the follies and miseries of her children. The disciples of Darwin may detect in the moaning some inchoate brother's fractional " world-soul," struggling for its human development. Every imaginative soul hears its own language, as Homer says the wor-

IX THE PIXEY WOODS. 21

shipers at Delos heard the priestesses each in his own tongue.

Of these two theories, O wise reader, "ehuse you whilk." Let us dip our drinking-cups into this deft little pocket chopped in the pine, and quaff some gum-water, for it will make us wise like a medicine ; and then let us reason together. For my part, I cleave to the Darwinian theory, for in no other manner can we account for the extraordinary populousness of these woods.

Here, too, it was that Sherman passed — the comet of the war — when, disdaining the meaner orbits of little men, he wheeled on his baleful flight through Confederate heavens, while his fiery train consumed many homes and hoary tyrannies together. Here it was that he returned, beneath the shadow of the Eagle and the Stars, while his cannon-wheels laughed their big chuckling laugh, as they went home, and these old woods winked with the glinting of bayonets.

Ah ! how many bright star-lives, both in Northern and and Southern orbits, were blotted out in the night when this comet crushed the rival luminary of the Republic !

The first freedman I met, instead of assassinating me, grinned fearfully, when he discovered I was a Northern man. He wore but one shoe, and that was much dilapidated. His trowsers were sustained by a corn-husk belt, and he wore a government blouse, split all the way down the back, and kept to duty by a tow-string tied around his neck. Yet from his tattered breast fluttered a Union League badge, a bit of ribbon worth five cents, for which he said he expended a dollar. Said I to him :

" Uncle, do you enjoy ' the feast of reason and the flow of soul ' in the Union League ?"

" No, sah ; I can't say as we does, sah."

" What stands between you and your soul's enjoyment. Uncle ? Tell me about your troubles."

22 ONE OF SHERMAN'S ASH-CAKES.

He glanced rather dubiously at his badge, as if he had a faint suspicion I might be poking fun at it ; then he shifted his weight upon his other leg, as if to shift off the burden of conscience for telling the little family secret he was about to impart.

"Well, you see, sah, we was 'joy in ourselves pretty sharp, and feelin' de lub ob de Union in de sperrit of de flesh, 'till dese hyur free niggers jined in. Dey was boun' for to rule de roost, and dey was all de time a kickin' up a fuss."

" But you are all free negroes now."

" But dese hyur is de old free niggers, I mean, afo' de wah. Dey calls us, sence de wah, Sherman's ash-cakes, and dey's all de time a kickin' up a fuss."

The boys would have deserved well of posterity if they had only exterminated that melodious " pot-rack, pot-rack 1" of the southern guinea-hens. But every African fowl once boiled in Sherman's mess-kettles had risen like a Phoenix ; and every one of those geese which had such an insane propensity for swallowing Federal ramrods, had reappeared upon the scene, with all the iron-rust still in its screeching throat. "Wonderful is the South for the multitude of these pensive fowls, warbling " their native wood-notes wild."

Every one of the original rail-fences is rehabilitated in its pristine vermiculation. Kot one is missing of those tan, baked-looking hogs, with the "imped ribs" and arching spine, which are muzzling in the pine-straw in every well wellrregulated landscape of the South. Again, as before the war, slender columns of shingles flank the road, towering among the aromatic, golden snow-drifts of the Carolinas.

The fat gold of shingles gives yellow gleams from the new-made cabin-roof. Does the carpenter stretch a plummet against his work ? He steps away ten paces, and ranges his infallible perpendicular by any pine.

MY CAPE FEAR FERRYMAN. 23

Here, in a roadside shop, a dusky cooper beats his complaining barrel, in a kind of Runic rhyme, expounding the constitution the while to his neighbor. It is pleasant to hear these sable Federalists explain our polity so absolutely, without any of the customary friction and lire.

" Whackety-whang- whang-whang ! "Whackety-whang ! Mind, Sam, de gallantry ob de cons'tution is 'zactly — whackety — whang ! — is 'zactly what I tell you, life, liberty, and de 'suit ob property. Whackety — whang !"

" Ta'n't de 'suit ob property ; it's de de 'suit ob happiness, I tell you," said the other earnestly.

" Go 'way, you fool nigger ! Tell me I don't know ! When you got property you got happiness, ha'n't you ? "Whackety — whang — whang ! It's de same anyhow."

" Dat's so, Jim. But dere a' n't no gallantry ob de constitution. De gallantry — why, dat's de wimmen."

" Go 'way ! I knowed you didn't know nuthin' nohow. Whacket — whang — whang ! De gallantry ob de constitution, I tell you, is de obscurity ob de fundileus principles. Whackety — whang !"

" Dat's so, Jim, come to think. De pundibus principles — yes, dat's so."

Here and there in an " old field " is a pair of spectral chimneys, whose great eyes of fireplaces alow and aloft glower wrathfully at each other across the intervening heap of ashes, flickering at each other as the cause of the disaster. But most of them are rebuilt, and the Old North State has "beauty for ashes, the air of^ joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

At the Cape Fear one of those gigantic negroes, nearly seven feet high, who are occasionally seen in North Carolina, sat in the stem of a frail punt, and wafted me over the river. He had never seen a Yankee before, and he riveted his great eyes on me, and never moved them till

24 EXPERIENCES AT JOXESBORO'.

we touched the other bank, while he sat dipping first on this side, then on that, slowly and abstractedly, as if he were slicing invisible cheese. He did not even quench his gaze when the boat touched, and I handed him my fare, but he came to the bow, and stood looking at me till I reached the top of the bank, when his eyes reached my traveling-bag, and speech came to him again at last.

"Got anything to sell dar, boss — rings or sich like truck?"

" I am not a peddler," I replied. " I carry about with me no worldly possessions but justice and an equal mind."

" Well, 'scuse me, boss ; but I thought, bein' you was a Yankee, you mout hev some sich truck."

In Jonesboro town I graduated in pine. I sat down in a little pine house, on a bare pine floor, before a bare pine table, and a rosy little woman, very communicative for a piney-woods inhabitant, gave me some capital yams, baked and mealy, and spareribs thinly fattened on pine roots. Then I sat down by a stove which was under heavy bombardment with tobacco juice from a circle of blue-nosed, yellow-faced, piney-woods men, who were discussing the price of tar and rosin. Presently one of them produced a black bottle from his pocket, and passed it around. When it reached my neighbor, he extracted it from his mouth with a clamorous " flunk," and offered it to me.

"Hev pinetop, stranger?"

But in the spareribs I had tried the pine roots, and I excused myself, not caring to become familiar with the higher branches.

In these great pineries of the coast, sometimes the golden sun, shining with a rich piney yellowness, is let right down into natural glades, gilded over with the dying broom-grass. Here, in these sheltered dells, a January noon is the finest relish of the year ; amid the golden and evergreen splendors of the sunny Carolinas; the pale-

ILLUSTRATIONS OF NEGRO CHARACTER. 25

green "mystic mistletoe" aloft; the tender myrtle, the cassena, and the row-palmetto alow; the Spanish moss, which bourgeons on the lustrous-leaved magnolia, or swings its soft festoons, in their delicate pearly-gray, across the purple and frosted berries of the cedar. Here, in the mellow lilac of the haze, the brooding silence of the softened winter is broken only by the swift straight whiz of some roving bee, or, perchance, occasionally by the silvery garrulity of the bobolink, that genuine Yankee, spending the winter in the South, but not for bronchitis. He babbles so fast one would think he had come down peddling.

"Notions here ! Notions here ! cheap— cheap— cheap 1"

How these piney woods and turpentine villages swarm with those strange, little, timid, bloodless, sand-colored children, whom it makes one sad to behold ! Yet they are remarkably healthy.

In one of these villages I saw a couple of incidents which illustrate negro character. A tall sallow woman came out of a house, evidently in anger, picked up a splinter, and started towards a group of children playing on the lumber. Her little girl saw a rod was in pickle, and started to run, crying, while the mother said, " Now I will whip you ! I will whip you this time !" None of the white children pitied the little girl, but a colored lad caught her up, and hurried with her toward the mother, pleading, " Please don't, Mrs. Martin, let her go this time." He scudded away to the door, and so averted the catastrophe.

Next, I saw a couple of pickaninnies who had toddled down to a puddle of refuse tar, with which they smeared their little pug noses, then touched them together and pulled them apart — an operation which they accomplished with great and hilarious cackling. This same boy was sent by his mother to bring the babies ; but, instead of showing the kindness he did toward the white child, he

26 THE CROSS-ROADS GROCERYMEX.

ran down and pushed them over, and the little woolly head of one of them went into the tar so deep that the boy lifted him almost perpendicular, before it was extricated.