blow in our rigging. Fort Gratiot was blotted out; then the woods; then the other ship; then came the orderly march of the rain over the myrtle-green waters; then the storm seized us. We could scarcely see each others' faces, except for the lightning; the ship groaned, and dragged her anchor, so that a second was dropped.
In twenty minutes, the sun gilded the fort, the woods, and the green, prairie-like, Canada shore. On the verge of this prairie, under the shelter of the forest, an immense herd of wild horses were seen scampering, and whisking their long tails. A cloud of pigeons, in countless thousands, was shadowing alternately the forests, the lake, and the prairie; and an extensive encampment of wild Indians was revealed on the Michigan shore. It was a dark curtain lifted up on a scene of wild and singular beauty.
Then we went to the anxious work of tacking again. We seemed to be running aground on either shore, as we approached each. Our motions were watched by several gazers. On the Canada side, there were men on the sands, and in a canoe, with a sail which looked twice as big as the bark. The keepers of the Gratiot light-house looked out from the lantern. A party of squaws, in the Indian encampment, seated on the sands, stopped their work of cleaning fish, to see how we got through the rapids. A majestic personage, his arms folded in his blanket, stood on an eminence in the midst of the camp; and behind him, on the brow of the hill, were groups of unclothed boys and men, looking so demon-like, as even in that scene to remind me of the great staircase in the ballet of Faust. Our ship twisted round and round in the eddies, as helplessly as a log, and stuck, at last, with her stem within a stone's throw of the Indians. Nothing more could be done that night. We dropped anchor, and hoped the sailors would have good repose after two days of tacking to achieve a progress of twenty miles. Two or three of them went ashore, to try to get milk. While they were gone, a party of settlers stood on the high bank, to gaze at us; and we were sorry to see them, even down to the little children, whisking boughs without ceasing. This was a threat of mosquitoes which was not to be mistaken. When the sailors returned, they said we were sure to have a good watch kept, for the mosquitoes would let no one sleep. We tried to shut up our cabin from them; but they were already there: and I, for one, was answerable for many murders before I closed my eyes. In the twilight, I observed something stirring on the high bank; and on looking closely, saw a party of Indians, stepping along, in single file, under the shadow of the wood. Their simplest acts are characteristic; and, in their wild state, I never saw them without thinking of ghosts or demons.
In the morning, I found we were floating down the current, stern foremost, frequently swinging round in the eddies, so as to touch the one shore or the other. There seemed to be no intermission of settlers' houses; all at regular distances along the bank. The reason of this appearance is a good old French arrangement, by which the land is divided into long, narrow strips, that each lot may have a water frontage. We were evidently returning to a well-settled country. The more comfortable houses on the Canada side were surrounded by spacious and thriving fields: the poorer by dreary enclosures of swamp. We saw a good garden, with a white paling. Cows were being milked. Cow-bells, and the merry voices of singing children, were heard from under the clumps; and piles of wood for the steam-boats, and large stocks of shingles for roofing were laid up on either hand. The Gratiot steamer puffed away under the Michigan bank. Canoes shot across in a streak of light; and a schooner came down the clear river, as if on the wing between the sky and the water. I watched two horsemen on the shore, for many miles, tracing the bay pony and the white horse through the woody screen, and over the brooks, and along the rickety bridges. I could see that they were constantly chatting, and that they stopped to exchange salutations with every one they met or overtook. These, to be sure, were few enough.
I was quite sorry when the twilight drew on, and hid them from me. I saw a little boy on a log, with a paddle, pushing himself off from a bank of wild roses, and making his way in the sunshine, up the river. It looked very pretty, and very unsafe; but I dare say he knew best. The captain and mate were both ill to-day. The boat was sent ashore for what could be had. The men made haste, and rowed bravely; but we were carried down four miles before we could "heave to," for them to overtake us. They brought brandy for the captain; and for us, butter just out of the churn. The mosquitoes again drove us from the deck, soon after dark.
The next morning, the 10th, the deck was in great confusion. The captain was worse: the mate was too ill to command; and the second mate seemed to be more efficient in swearing, and getting the men to swear, than at anything else. After breakfast, there was a search made after a pilferer, who had abstracted certain small articles from our cabin; among which was Charley's maple-sugar basket, which had been seen in the wheel-house, with a tea-spoon in it. This seemed to point out one of the juniors in the forecastle as the offender; the steward, however, offered to clear himself by taking an oath, "on a bible as big as the ship," that he knew nothing of the matter. As we did not happen to have such a bible on board, we could not avail ourselves of his offer. A comb and tooth-brush, which had been missing, were found, restored to their proper places: but Charley's pretty basket was seen no more.
It was a comfortless day. We seemed within easy reach of Detroit; but the little wind we had was dead ahead; the sun was hot; the mosquitoes abounded; the captain was downcast, and the passengers cross. There was some amusement, however. Dr. F. went ashore, and brought us milk, of which we each had a draught before it turned sour. He saw on shore a sight which is but too common. An hotel-keeper let an Indian get drunk; and then made a quarrel between him and another, for selfish purposes.
The whites seem to have neither honour nor mercy towards the red men.
A canoe full of Indians,--two men and four children,--came alongside, this afternoon, to offer to traffic. They had no clothing but a coarse shirt each. The smallest child had enormous ear-ornaments of blue and white beads. They were closely packed in their canoe, which rocked with every motion. They sold two large baskets for a quarter dollar and two loaves of bread. Their faces were intelligent, and far from solemn. The children look merry, as children should. I saw others fishing afar off, till long after dark. A dusky figure stood, in a splendid attitude, at the bow of a canoe, and now paddled with one end of his long lance, now struck at a fish with the other. He speared his prey directly through the middle; and succeeded but seldom. At dark, a pine torch was held over the water; and by its blaze, I could still see something of his operations.
The groaning of our ship's timbers told us, before we rose, that we were in rapid motion. The wind was fair; and we were likely to reach Detroit, forty miles, to dinner. Lake St. Clair, with its placid waters and low shores, presents nothing to look at. The captain was very ill, and unable to leave his berth. No one on board knew the channel of the Detroit river but himself; and, from the time we entered it, the lead was kept going. When we were within four miles of Detroit, hungry, hot, tired of the disordered ship, and thinking of friends, breezes, and a good dinner at the city, we went aground,--grinding, grinding, till the ship trembled in every timber. The water was so shallow that one might have touched the gravel on either side with a walking-stick. There was no hope of our being got off speedily. The cook applied himself to chopping wood, in order to lighting a fire, in order to baking some bread, in order to give us something to eat; for not a scrap of meat, or an ounce of biscuit, was left on board.
It occurred to me that our party might reach the city, either by paying high for one of the ship's boats, or by getting the mate to hail one of the schooners that were in the river. The boats could not be spared. The mate hoisted a signal for a schooner; and one came alongside, very fully laden with shingles. Fifteen of us, passengers, with our luggage, were piled on the top of the cargo, and sailed gently up to the city. The captain was too ill, and the mate too full of vexation, to bid us farewell; and thus we left our poor ship. We were glad, however, to pass her in the river, the next day, and to find that she had been got off the shoal before night.
As we drew near, Charley, in all good faith, hung out his little handkerchief to show the people of Detroit that we were come back. They did not seem to know us, however. "What!" cried some men on a raft, to the master of our schooner, "have you been robbing a steam-boat?" "No," replied the master, gravely; "it is a boat that has gone to the bottom in the lakes." We expected that some stupendous alarm would arise out of this. When we reached New York, a fortnight after, we found that our friends there had been made uneasy by the news that a steam-boat had sunk on the Lakes, and that eight hundred passengers were drowned.
Catastrophes grow as fast as other things in America.
Though our friends did not happen to see Charley's pocket-handkerchief from the river, they were soon about us, congratulating us on having made the circuit of the Lakes. It was indeed matter of congratulation.
I have now given sketches of some of the most remarkable parts of the country, hoping that a pretty distinct idea might thus be afforded of their primary resources, and of the modes of life of their inhabitants.
I have said nothing of the towns, in this connection; town-life in America having nothing very peculiar about it, viewed in the way of general survey. The several departments of industry will now be particularly considered.
FOOTNOTES: [8] I know not why I should suppress a name that I honour.
[9] Isaiah xvi. 3.
[10] It is possible that this term may not yet be familiar to some of my English readers. It means summary punishment. The modes now in use among those who take the law into their own hands in the United States, are tarring and feathering, scourging with a cow-hide, banishing, and hanging. The term owes its derivation to a farmer of the name of Lynch, living on the Mississippi, who, in the absence of court and lawyers, constituted himself a judge, and ordered summary punishment to be inflicted on an offender. He little foresaw the national disgrace which would arise from the extension of the practice to which he gave his name.
[11] I preserve the original name, which is that of the first French missionary who visited these parts. The place is now commonly called Juliet; and a settlement near has actually been named Romeo: so that I fear there is little hope of a restoration of the honourable primitive name.
CHAPTER I.
AGRICULTURE.
"Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche, moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le Souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts."
_Rousseau._ The pride and delight of Americans is in their quantity of land. I do not remember meeting with one to whom it had occurred that they had too much. Among the many complaints of the minority, this was never one. I saw a gentleman strike his fist on the table in an agony at the country being so "confoundedly prosperous:" I heard lamentations over the spirit of speculation; the migration of young men to the back country; the fluctuating state of society from the incessant movement westwards; the immigration of labourers from Europe; and the ignorance of the sparse population. All these grievances I heard perpetually complained of; but in the same breath I was told in triumph of the rapid sales of land; of the glorious additions which had been made by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and of the probable gain of Texas. Land was spoken of as the unfailing resource against over manufacture; the great wealth of the nation; the grand security of every man in it.
On this head, the two political parties seem to be more agreed than on any other. The federalists are the great patrons of commerce; but they are as proud of the national lands as the broadest of the democrats. The democrats, however, may be regarded as the patrons of agriculture, out of the slave States. There seems to be a natural relation between the independence of property and occupation enjoyed by the agriculturist, and his watchfulness over State Rights and the political importance of individuals. The simplicity of country life, too, appears more congenial with the workings of democratic institutions, than the complex arrangements of commerce and manufactures.
The possession of land is the aim of all action, generally speaking, and the cure for all social evils, among men in the United States. If a man is disappointed in politics or love, he goes and buys land. If he disgraces himself, he betakes himself to a lot in the west. If the demand for any article of manufacture slackens, the operatives drop into the unsettled lands. If a citizen's neighbours rise above him in the towns, he betakes himself where he can be monarch of all he surveys. An artisan works, that he may die on land of his own. He is frugal, that he may enable his son to be a landowner. Farmers' daughters go into factories that they may clear off the mortgage from their fathers' farms; that they may be independent landowners again. All this is natural enough in a country colonised from an old one, where land is so restricted in quantity as to be apparently the same thing as wealth. It is natural enough in a young republic, where independence is of the highest political value. It is natural enough in a country where political economy has never been taught by its only effectual propounder--social adversity. And, finally, it falls out well for the old world, in prospect of the time when the new world must be its granary.
The democratic party are fond of saying that the United States are intended to be an agricultural country. It seems to me that they are intended to be everything. The Niagara basin, the Mississippi valley, and the South, will be able to furnish the trading world with agricultural products for ever,--for aught we can see. But it is clear that there are other parts of the country which must have recourse to manufactures and commerce.
The first settlers in New England got land, and thought themselves rich.
Their descendants have gone on to do the same; and they now find themselves poor. With the exception of some Southerners, ruined by slavery, who cannot live within their incomes, I met with no class in the United States so anxious about the means of living as the farmers of New England. In the seventeenth century, curious purchases of land were made, and the fathers were wealthy. In those days, a certain farmer Dexter bought the promontory of Nahant, which stretches out into Massachusetts Bay, of Black Willey, an Indian chief, for a suit of clothes; the part of the promontory called Great Nahant measuring a mile and a half in circuit. Others, who held land in similar or larger quantities, divided it equally among their children, whose portions had not been subdivided below the point of comfort, when the great west on the one hand, and the commerce of the seas on the other, opened new resources. From this time, the consolidation of estates has gone on, nearly as fast as the previous division. The members of a family dispose of their portions of land to one, and go to seek better fortunes elsewhere than the rocky soil of New England can afford. Still, while the population of Massachusetts is scarcely above half that of London, its number of landowners is greater than that of all England.
The Massachusetts farmers were the first to decline; but now the comparative adversity of agriculture has extended even into Vermont. A few years ago, lenders of money into Vermont received thirty per cent.
interest from farmers: now they are glad to get six per cent.; and this does not arise from the farmers having saved capital of their own. They have but little property besides their land. Their daughters, and even their sons, resort to domestic service in Boston for a living. Boston used to be supplied from Vermont with fowls, butter, and eggs: but the supply has nearly ceased. This is partly owing to an increased attention to the growth of wool for the manufacturers; but partly also to the decrease of capital and enterprise among the farmers.
In Massachusetts the farmers have so little property besides their land, that they are obliged to mortgage when they want to settle a son or daughter, or make up for a deficient crop. The great Insurance Company at Boston is the formidable creditor to many. This Company will not wait a day for the interest. If it is not ready, loss or ruin ensues. Many circumstances are now unfavourable to the old-fashioned Massachusetts farmer. Domestic manufactures, which used to employ the daughters, are no longer worth while, in the presence of the factories. The young men, who should be the daughters' husbands, go off to the west. The idea of domestic service is not liked. There is an expensive family at home, without sufficient employment; and they may be considered poor. These are evils which may be shaken off any day. I speak of them, not as demanding much compassion, but as indicating a change in the state of affairs; and especially that New England is designed to be a manufacturing and commercial region. It is already common to see agriculture joined with other employments. The farmers of the coast are, naturally, fishermen also. They bring home fish, manure their land with the offal; sow their seed, and go out again to fish while it is growing.
Shoemaking is now joined with farming. In the long winter evenings, all the farmers' families around Lynn are busy shoe-making; and in the spring, they turn out into the fields again. The largest proportion of factory girls too is furnished by country families.
The traveller may see, by merely passing through the country, without asking information, how far New England ought to be an agricultural country, if the object of its society be to secure the comfort of its members, rather than the continuance of old customs. The valleys, like that of the Connecticut river, whose soil is kept rich by annual inundations, and whose fields have no fences, gladden the eye of the observer. So it is with particular spots elsewhere, where, it may be remarked, the fences are of the ordinary, slovenly kind, and too much care does not seem to have been bestowed on the arrangements and economy of the estate. Elsewhere, may be seen stony fields, plots of the greenest pasture, with grey rocks standing up in the midst, and barberry bushes sprinkled all about: trim orchards, and fences on which a great deal of spare time must have been bestowed. Instead of the ugly, hasty snake-fence, there is a neatly built wall, composed of the stones which had strewed the fields: sometimes the neatest fence of all; a wall of stones and sods, regularly laid, with a single rail along the top: sometimes a singular fence, which would be perfect, but for the expense of labour required; roots of trees, washed from the soil, and turned side upwards, presenting a complete chevaux-de-frise, needing no mending, and lasting the "for ever" of this world. About these farm-houses, a profusion of mignonette may be seen; and in the season, the rich major convolvulus, or scarlet runners, climbing up to the higher windows. The dove-cotes are well looked to. There has evidently been time and thought for everything. This is all very pretty to look at,--even bewitching to those who do not see beneath the surface, nor know that hearts may be aching within doors about perilous mortgages, and the fate of single daughters; but, it being known that such worldly anxieties do exist, it is not difficult to perceive that these are the places in which they abide.
There is, of course, a knowledge of the difficulty on the spot; but not always a clear view of coming events, which include a remedy. The commonest way of venting any painful sensibility on the subject, is declamation against luxury; or rather, against the desire for it in those who are supposed unable to afford it. This will do no good. If the Pilgrim Fathers themselves had had luxury before their eyes, they would have desired to have it; and they would have been right. Luxury is, in itself, a great good. Luxury is _delicious fare_,--of any and every kind: and He who bestowed it meant all men to have it. The evil of luxury is in its restriction; in its being made a cause of separation between men, and a means of encroachment by some on the rights of others. Frugality is a virtue only when it is required by justice and charity. Luxury is vicious only when it is obtained by injustice, and carried on into intemperance. It is a bad thing that a Massachusetts farmer should mortgage his farm, in order that his wife and daughters may dress like the ladies of Boston; but the evil is not in the dress; it is rather in his clinging to a mode of life which does not enable him to pay his debts. The women desire dress, not only because it is becoming, but because they revolt from sinking, even outwardly, into a lower station of life than they once held: and this is more than harmless; it is honourable. What they have to do is to make up their minds to be consistent. They must either go down with their farm, for love of it, and the ways which belong to it: or they must make a better living in some other manner. They cannot have the old farm and its ways, and luxury too. Nobody has a right to decide for them which they ought to choose; and declaiming against luxury will therefore do no good. It is, however, pretty clear which they will choose, while luxury and manufactures are growing before their eyes; and, in that case, declaiming against luxury can do little but harm: it will only destroy sympathy between the declaimers and those who may find the cap fit.
One benevolent lady strongly desires and advises that manufactures should be put down; and the increased population all sent away somewhere, that New England may be as primitive and sparsely peopled as in days when it was, as she supposes, more virtuous than now. Whenever she can make out what virtue is, so as to prove that New England was ever more virtuous than now, her plans may find hearers; but not till then. I mention these things merely to show how confirmed is the tendency of New England to manufactures, in preference to agriculture.
There is one certain test of the permanent fitness of any district of country for agricultural purposes; the settlement of any large number of Germans in it. The Germans give any price for good land, and use it all. They are much smiled at by the vivacious and enterprising Americans for their plodding, their attachment to their own methods, and the odd direction taken by their pride.[12] The part of Pennsylvania where they abound is called the Boeotia of America. There is a story current against them that they were seen to parade with a banner, on which was inscribed "No schools," when the State legislature was about establishing a school system. On the other hand, it is certain that they have good German newspapers prepared among themselves: that their politics do them high honour, considering the very short political education they have had: and that they know more of political economy than their native neighbours. They show by their votes that they understand the tariff and bank questions; and they are staunch supporters of democratic principles.
Nothing can be more thriving than the settlements of Germans, when they have once been brought into order. Their fields are well fenced; their implements of the most substantial make; and their barns a real curiosity. While the family of the farmer is living in a poor log-house, or a shabby, unpainted frame-house, the barn has all the pains of its owner lavished upon it. I saw several, freshly painted with red, with eleven glass windows, with venetian blinds, at each end, and twelve in front. They keep up the profitable customs of their country. The German women are the only women seen in the fields and gardens in America, except a very few Dutch, and the slaves in the south. The stores of pumpkins, apples, and onions in the stoup (piazza) are edifying to behold. Under them sits the old dame of the house, spinning at her large wheel; and her grand-children, all in grey homespun, look as busy as herself.
The German settlers always contrive to have a market, either by placing themselves near one, or bestirring themselves to make one. They have no idea of sitting down in a wilderness, and growing wild in it. A great many of them are market-gardeners near the towns.[13] It is scarcely possible to foresee, with distinctness, the destination of the southern States, east of the Alleghanies, when the curse of slavery shall be removed. Up to that period, continual deterioration is unavoidable. Efforts are being made to compensate for the decline of agriculture by pushing the interests of commerce. This is well; for the "opening" of every new rail-road, of every new pier, is another blow given to slavery. The agriculture of Virginia continues to decline; and her revenue is chiefly derived from the rearing of slaves as stock for the southern market. In the north and west parts of this State, where there is more farming than planting, it has long been found that slavery is ruinous; and when I passed through, in the summer of 1835, I saw scarcely any but whites, for some hundreds of miles along the road, except where a slave trader was carrying down to the south the remains that he had bought up. Unless some new resource is introduced, Virginia will be almost impoverished when the traffic in slaves comes to an end; which, I have a strong persuasion, will be the case before very long.
The Virginians themselves are, it seems, aware of their case. I saw a factory at Richmond, worked by black labour, which was found, to the surprise of those who tried the experiment, to be of very good quality.
The shores of the south, low and shoaly, are unfavourable to foreign commerce. The want of a sufficiency of good harbours will probably impel the inhabitants of the southern States to renew their agricultural pursuits, and merely confine themselves to internal commerce. The depression of agriculture is only temporary, I believe. It began from slavery, and is aggravated by the opening of the rich virgin soils of the south-west. But the time will come when improved methods of tillage, with the advantage of free labour, will renew the prosperity of Virginia, and North and South Carolina.
No mismanagement short of employing slaves will account for the deterioration of the agricultural wealth of these States. When the traveller observes the quality of some of the land now under cultivation, he wonders how other estates could have been rendered so unprofitable as they are. The rich Congaree bottoms, in South Carolina, look inexhaustible; but some estates, once as fine, now lie barren and deserted. I went over a plantation, near Columbia, South Carolina, where there were four thousand acres within one fence, each acre worth fifteen hundred dollars. This land has been cropped yearly with cotton since 1794, and is now becoming less productive; but it is still very fine.
The cotton seed is occasionally returned to the soil; and this is the only means of renovation used. Four hundred negroes work this estate. We saw the field trenched, ready for sowing. The sowing is done by hand, thick, and afterwards thinned. I saw the cotton elsewhere, growing like twigs. I saw also some in pod. There are three or four pickings of pods in a season; of which the first gathering is the best. Each estate has its cotton press. In the gin, the seed is separated from the cotton; and the latter is pressed and packed for sale.
There seems nothing to prevent the continuance or renovation of the growth of this product, under more favourable circumstances. Whether the rice swamps will have to be given up, or whether they may be tilled by free black labour, remains to be seen. The Chinese grow rice; and so do the Italians, without the advantage of free black labour. If, in the worst case, the rice swamps should have to be relinquished, the loss would be more than compensated by the improvement which would take place in the farming districts; land too high for planting. The western, mountainous parts of these States would thus become the most valuable.
It was amusing to hear the praises of corn (Indian corn) in the midst of the richest cotton, rice, and tobacco districts. The Indian looks with silent wonder upon the settler, who becomes visibly a capitalist in nine months, on the same spot where the red man has remained equally poor, all his life. In February, both are alike bare of all but land, and a few utensils. By the end of the next November, the white settler has his harvest of corn; more valuable to him than gold and silver. It will procure him many things which they could not. A man who has corn, may have everything. He can sow his land with it; and, for the rest, everything eats corn, from slave to chick. Yet, in the midst of so much praise of corn, I found that it cost a dollar a bushel; that every one was complaining of the expenses of living; that, so far from mutton being despised, as we have been told, it was much desired, but not to be had; and that milk was a great rarity. Two of us, in travelling, asked for a draught of milk. We had each a very small tumbler-full, and were charged a quarter-dollar. The cultivation of land is as exclusively for exportable products, as in the West Indies, in the worst days of their slavery; when food, and even bricks for building, were imported from England. The total absence of wise rural economy, under the present system, opens great hope of future improvement. The forsaken plantations are not so exhausted of their resources as it is supposed, from their producing little cotton, that they must be. The deserted fields may yet be seen, some day, again fruitful in cotton, with corn-fields, pasturage, and stock, (not human,) flourishing in appropriate spots.
Adversity is the best teacher of economy here, as elsewhere. In the first flush of prosperity, when a proprietor sits down on a rich virgin soil, and the price of cotton is rising, he buys bacon and corn for his negroes, and other provisions for his family, and devotes every rod of his land to cotton-growing. I knew of one in Alabama, who, like his neighbours, paid for his land and the maintenance of his slaves with the first crop, and had a large sum over, wherewith to buy more slaves and more land. He paid eight thousand dollars for his land, and all the expenses of the establishment, and had, at the end of the season, eleven thousand dollars in the bank. It was thought, by a wise friend of this gentleman's, that it was a great injury, instead of benefit to his fortune, that his labourers were not free. To use this wise man's expression, "it takes two white men to make a black man work;" and he was confident that it was not necessary, on any pretence whatever, to have a single slave in Alabama. Where all the other elements of prosperity exist, as they do in that rich new State, any quality and amount of labour might be obtained, and the permanent prosperity of the country might be secured. If matters go on as they are, Alabama will in time follow the course of the south-eastern States, and find her production of cotton declining; and she will have to learn a wiser husbandry by vicissitude. But matters will not go on as they are to that point. Cotton-growing is advancing rapidly in other parts of the world where there is the advantage of cheap, free labour; and the southern States of America will find themselves unable to withstand the competition of rivals whom they now despise, but by the use of free labour, and of the improved management which will accompany it. There is already a great importation of mules for field work from the higher western States. Who knows but that in time there may be cattle-shows, (like those of the more prosperous rural districts of the north,) where there are now slave markets; or at least agricultural societies, whereby the inhabitants may be put in the way of obtaining tender "sheep's meat," while cotton may be grown more plentifully than even at present?
I saw at Charleston the first great overt act of improvement that I am aware of in South Carolina. One step has been taken upwards; and when I saw it, I could only wish that the slaves in the neighbourhood could see, as clearly as a stranger could, the good it portended to them. It is nothing more than that an enterprising gentleman has set up a rice-mill, and that he avails himself to the utmost of its capabilities; but this is made much of in that land of small improvement; as it ought to be. The chaff is used to enrich the soil: and the proprietor has made lot after lot of bad land very profitable for sale with it, and is thus growing rapidly rich. The sweet flour, which lies between the husk and the grain, is used for fattening cattle. The broken rice is sold cheap; and the rest finds a good market. There are nine persons employed in the mill, some white and some black; and many more are busy in preparing the lots of land, and in building on them. Clusters of houses have risen up around the mill.
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, present the extreme case of the fertility of the soil, the prosperity of proprietors, and the woes of slaves. I found the Virginians spoke with sorrow and contempt of the treatment of slaves in North and South Carolina: South Carolina and Georgia, of the treatment of slaves in the richer States to the west: and, in these last, I found the case too bad to admit of aggravation. It was in these last that the most heart-rending disclosures were made to me by the ladies, heads of families, of the state of society, and of their own intolerable sufferings in it. As I went further north again, I found an improvement. There was less wealth in the hands of individuals, a better economy, more intelligent slaves, and more discussion how to get rid of slavery. Tennessee is, in some sort, naturally divided on the