Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876

Notwithstanding this frightful mortality, the number of infants always on hand in the foundlings of Portugal is nearly 40,000, or 1 per cent of the entire population. One-eighth of all the reported births in the kingdom become foundlings: as for the non-reported ones, their fate is known only to the recording angel. Says Claudio Adriano da Costa: "Promiscuous intercourse has become common all over the country;" and he attributes it, though I think superficially, to the "misplaced indulgence to concubinage awarded by the rodas."12

The true cause of Portuguese immorality and crime is the unequal distribution of wealth, which leaves the mass of the inhabitants a prey to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the tyranny of the powerful and wealthy and the despair of insecurity. The origin of this evil state of affairs was the tenure of emphyteusis: its active and unfeeling promoters have been always the nobility and ecclesiastics, and its only powerful enemy, the only hope of the people, the Crown.

After what has been mentioned it is unnecessary to speak of minor crimes– of street assassinations, highway robberies and the like. Your own McCulloch will inform you that according to official information reported to the Cortes there occurred in one year, and merely in the two districts of Oporto and Guarda, no less than three hundred and forty-two assassinations and four hundred and sixty robberies. It is true that life is not quite so insecure now as when McCulloch wrote. Some few rays of light have penetrated the profound abyss of misery and evil in which the country was then plunged; nevertheless, the improvement has been but slow and partial, and nothing short of revolution can accelerate it. There is but one man in the world who possesses the means to render that revolution successful, and that man—His Majesty Dom Pedro II., the emperor of Brazil—is now, or soon will be, on his way to the United States. May he not peruse in vain this sad account of famine and crime in Portugal!

There are persons with nervous organisms so abused that a sudden cry, whether it be of boisterousness or despair, will cause them great agony: so there are others with moral susceptibilities so overstrained that the story of a nation's misery and crime, such as I have endeavored to sketch, will evoke within them more pain than interest. Regard for such exceptional persons has created a namby-pambyism in literature which would banish these topics—the greatest and holiest in which human sympathy can be enlisted—to the domains of science. But science cannot aid unhappy Portugal. Sympathy and prayer alone can mitigate our sufferings. Therefore sympathize with and pray for us, you who stand in the broad glare of freedom, filled with plenty and surrounded by promise, Pray for unhappy Portugal!

AT THE OLD PLANTATION

TWO PAPERS.—I

The life of the low-country South Carolina planter, until broken up by the war, had changed but little since colonial times. It was the life which Washington lived at Mount Vernon, with some slight differences of local custom. The two-storied house, with its ten or twenty rooms and broad piazza, had probably been built in ante-Revolutionary days by the British country gentleman or Huguenot exile from whom the present owner drew his descent. I well remember how the old house at Hanover bore near the top of the chimney stack the legend "Peu à peu" written with a stick in the soft mortar with which the bricks had been covered. The old Huguenot builder had burned his bricks by guess, and three times the work had to stop until the kiln could be replenished and a new lot prepared. The top was finally reached, however, and the triumphant Peu à peu was only his French way of proclaiming to posterity Perseverantia vincit omnia. In many instances, however, fire has destroyed the original structure—a danger to which the country residence is specially exposed—but the new one has usually been modeled after that which it succeeded. Indian names, flowing softly from the tongue, have usually come down with the tracts to which they originally belonged, as Pooshee, Wantoot, Wampee, Wapahoula, though Chelsea, White Hall, Sarrazin's or Sans Souci often betrays the English or French origin of the first patentee.

To understand the home and life of the wealthy Carolina planter we must remember that he was the most contented man in the world. The greed of gain was unknown to him, and his deep-rooted conservatism forbade everything like speculation. Solid, substantial comfort and large-hearted hospitality were the objects in all his expenditures. He never invested his surplus money except in another plantation to put his surplus negroes on, for he never sold a negro except for incorrigible bad qualities or to pay some pressing debt. He had no expensive tastes except for rare old madeira and racing-stock, from the last of which his splendid saddle-horses were always selected; and these were usually of the best and purest blood. He was as much at home in the saddle as an English fox-hunter or a Don Cossack, and the only wheeled vehicles in his spacious carriage-house were the heavy family coach, and the light sulky in which his summer trips were made between the pineland and the plantation.

Come back with me now to the days when the North-eastern Railroad was a possibility of the future, and join me in a Christmas visit to old Pooshee. We take the little steamer for the head of Cooper River, the December sun being warm enough to tempt us from the close cabin to the airy deck. The graceful spire of old St. Michael's cuts sharply against the sky, reminding you, if you have visited the suburbs of London, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, that fine specimen of Sir Christopher Wren's style, after which it was modeled. The old customhouse looks just as it did when Governor Rutledge had the tea locked up in its store-rooms, and the gray moss droops in weeping festoons from the live-oaks of beautiful Magnolia. I wonder how the miles of green marsh through which we pass can seem to you such a dreary waste. To my eye it is all alive with interest. I never tire of watching how the lonely white heron spears his scaly prey, how the clapper-rail floats on his raft of matted rushes, how the marsh-wren jerks his saucy little tail over his bottle-shaped nest, or how with quick and certain stroke the oyster-catcher extracts the juicy "native" from his bivalved citadel. We are now getting above the salt-water line, and on either hand the rice-fields, now covered with water, stretch away from the banks, their surface covered with countless thousands of ducks. As the winding river brings the channel somewhat nearer to the shore, the splash of the paddles startles the feeding multitude, and they rise with a rush and roar of wings which might be heard for miles. Could we stop for a day or two at Rice Hope, we might have rare sport among the mallards and bald-pates as they fly out between sunset and dark, or in the early morning from behind a well-constructed blind. But we must decline the cordial invitation which urges us to do so as the boat casts off from the landing, and in a couple of hours more we step ashore at Fairlawn, where we find the carriage waiting to take us over the twelve remaining miles of our journey. The road, like the marsh, may seem lonely and tedious to you, but I know every turn and bend of it, and the trees are all old friends. I'm sure I know that green heron which "skowks" to me as he springs from the rail of the bridge, and there is something familiar in the bark of the black squirrel which has just rushed up that pine. Hark! that was the yelp of a turkey. Stop the horses for a moment and we may see them. One, two, four, seven! What a splendid old gobbler last crossed the road, and no guns loaded! And there is the track of as noble a buck as I ever saw: that's where he jumped into the pea-field, and ten to one he's lying now in that patch of sedge.

"Well!" I think I hear you say, "you have seen more to interest you in a hundred yards than I should have found in two miles."

Exactly; and that is why I enjoy the country so much. Learn to love Nature in her every mood and to study her every feature, and you will never know the feeling of loneliness if you keep outside the walls of a jail. But we are at the outer gate, and our journey is nearly over. At the end of a long enclosed road, shaded by trees—which, however, do not form an avenue, such as you may see near the coast, where the live-oaks flourish more vigorously—stands the spacious mansion, with its white walls, green Venetian shutters and red tin roof. There is no enclosure about it save that which is formed by the rail fences of the distant fields. The "yard" contains about forty acres of grassy lawn shaded by spreading forest trees—white-oaks, water-oaks and hickories—from which hang the graceful folds of the Spanish moss. The out-buildings are scattered about without the slightest reference to distance, except in the case of the kitchen, which is at the back and some twenty yards from the dwelling. The stable and carriage-house stand on either side, in front, but at a distance sufficient to prevent unsightliness or discomfort. In the background are the large "cotton-houses," with their bleaching-platforms, the "gin-house," the corn-house, the fodder-house and the poultry-house, which is nearly as large as any of them; while nearer the mansion are grouped the "loom-house," the dairy and the oven-shed, under which is built the huge brick oven capable of baking to a sugary confection several bushels of yam "slips" at a time. On the left is the "negro-yard" (never called "the quarter" in this region), with its fifty or sixty substantial cabins, each gleaming with whitewash and having its own little vegetable patch and chicken-house.

It is Saturday evening, and the sun is just entering the heavy cloud-bank which rests on the western horizon as we drive up to the door. Our genial and venerable host, "the old doctor," is at the stables superintending the feeding of his horses, and thither we bend our steps with a sense of exhilaration which only the crisp, fresh country air can impart, and a new vigor thrilling through every muscle as the foot presses the green and springy sod. Our old friend is a worthy representative of the old régime, the only change which the lapse of thirty years has made in his costume being the substitution of black for blue broadcloth in the velvet-collared, brass-buttoned, narrow-skirted coat with its side-pocket flaps. The collar sits as high in the neck; the red silk handkerchief peeps out behind; the trousers are cut with the "full fall," over which hangs the watch fob-chain with its heavy seals; the low-crowned beaver hat has the same wide brim; and the silver snuff-box is still redolent of Scotch maccaboy.

"The hounds have got fat waiting for you, and the birds are almost tame enough to put salt on their tails," says the old gentleman after the hearty welcome is over. "Old Nannie says the foxes are eating up all her turkeys, and Loudon tells me that he sees deer-tracks coming out of the new ground every morning."

"How are ye, gentlemen?" says stout John Myers, the "obeshay," which is negro for "overseer."—"I say, there! you Cuffee, that basket ain't half full o' corn.—I s'pose you're goin' to clean out all the game by Chris'mas?—You Cæsar, why don't you fill up old Chester's stall with trash? You niggers are gittin' too lazy to live;" and he walks off to see that the negroes, who are watching us with open mouths and eyes, do not allow their astonishment to interfere with the comfort of the horses. Five sturdy negro men are doing the work of two boys, forking in the "pine-trash" from the huge pile outside, and bringing ear-corn in oak bushel-baskets on their shoulders from the corn-house three hundred yards away.

We cross over to this building when the stable-door has been locked and watch the eager crowd which is waiting for the weekly "'lowance." Sturdy, strapping women, with muscular arms and stout calves freely displayed under the skirts which are tucked around their waists, are standing in picturesque attitudes or sitting on their upturned baskets, while ragged, wild-looking little "picknies" are clinging to the said skirts and peeping with great staring eyes at the strange "buckrah man." Each will take the week's supply of ear-corn and potatoes for her household—a peck for each member of the family, large and small—and will grind her own grist at the mill-house, or more probably trade away the entire supply at the cross-roads store for flour, sugar and coffee.

"Why, Rose, is that you? How are you, and how are the children?"

"De Lawd! Wha' dat? who dat da' talk me? Bless de Lawd! da' nyoung maussa! Ki! enty you tek wife yet? Go 'way! Look! he done got bayd (beard) same like ole nanny-goat! Bless de Lawd!"

"I'm glad to see you looking so young, Kitty: your children must be grown up."

"Tenk de Lawd, maussa," with a low curtsey, "I day yah yet! Dem pickny, da big man an' 'oman now. Enty you got one piece t'bacca fo' po' ole nigger?"

The tobacco is forthcoming, together with a few gaudy head-handkerchiefs and little parcels of sugar, and "nyoung maussa" has it all his own way with the simple creatures. These negroes are as near the original wild African type as if a few years instead of more than a century of contact with civilization had passed over them. They are all the direct descendants of original importations, chiefly Ghoolahs and Ashantees; indeed, "Gullah niggah" is a favorite term of playful reproach among them. Their male names are still largely Ashantee, as "Cudjo," "Cuffee," "Quarcoo," "Quashee," etc., and their dialect, a mixture of "pigeon English" and Ghoolah, strongly impregnated with the French of the Huguenot masters of their forefathers, is simply incomprehensible to a stranger, whether white or black. Indeed, when excited and talking rapidly even those who have grown up among them can scarcely understand the lingo. "Coom, Hondree," says an old nurse to her little charge at bedtime, "le' we tek fire go atop:" in English, "Come, Henry, let's take a light and go up stairs." "Child" is "pickny;" "white man" (or woman), "buckrah;" "I don't know," "Me no sabbée;" "Is it not?" "Enty?"; "watermelon" is "attermillion" or "mutwilliam;" and so on.

Paying a medical visit, I enter a house where the patient is a sick child: the old crone who is sitting in the doorway with a boy's head between her knees, performing the office of which monkeys are so fond, calls out, "Lindy! de buckrah coom."

"What's the matter with the child?" I inquire.

"Ki, maussa! me no sabbée wha' do a pickny," replies the intelligent Lindy, who wishes me to know that she knows nothing about the case.

We shall see more of them before leaving the plantation.

A day on the water and a long drive are excellent preparatives for a supper of broad rice-waffles toasted crisp and brown before the crackling hickory fire, of smoking spare-ribs and luscious tripe, of rich, fragrant Java coffee with boiled milk and cream; nor does a sound night's sleep unfit one for enjoying at breakfast a repetition of the same, substituting link sausages and black pudding for the tripe and spare-ribs, and superadding feathery muffins and soft-boiled eggs.

It is Sunday morning, but the service to-day is at the other end of the parish, some twenty miles away. The sky seems brighter and the grass more green than on the work-days of the week: the birds sing more cheerily, and seem to know that for one day they are safe from man's persecution. Certain it is that the wary crow will on that day eye you saucily as you pass within ten yards of him, while on any other you cannot approach him within a hundred. At ten o'clock the household is assembled in the drawing-room, the piano—with, it may be, a flute accompaniment—is made to do the organ's duty, and the full service of the Prayer-Book is read and sung and listened to with reverent attention. There are yet two hours to dinner, and as the wild, wailing chant from the negro-yard comes to our ears we determine to visit their chapel. If there was one point in which, more than in others, the Carolina planter was faithful to his duty, it was in securing the privileges of religion to his slaves. Every plantation had its chapel, sometimes rivaling in its appointments the churches for the whites. One of the largest congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, having lost its silver during the sack of Columbia, is still using the sterling communion service of a chapel for negroes which was burned upon a neighboring plantation. The missionary is to-day upon another portion of his circuit, and we have a specimen of genuine African Christianity. On one side the rough benches are filled with men clad, for once in the week, in clean cotton shirts, with coat and pants of heavy "white plains," some young dandies here and there being "fixed up" with old black silk waistcoats and flashy neckties, holding conspicuously old mashed beaver hats, which have been carefully wetted to make them shine. On the other are ranged the women, the front benches holding the sedate old "maumas," with gaudy yellow and red kerchiefs tied about their heads in stiff high turbans, and others folded à la Lady Washington over their bosoms; behind them sit the young women in white woolen "frocks," without handkerchiefs on head or breast; while the children who are not minding babies at home or hunting rabbits in the woods are gathered about the door.

Old Bob, the preacher, rises and fixes his eyes severely on the small fry near the door: "We's gwine to wushup de Lawd, an' I desiah dem chilluns to know dat no noise nor laffin', nor no so't o' onbehavin', kin be 'lowed; so min' wot you's 'bout dere. You yerry me? (hear me)."

Then, adjusting the great silver-rimmed spectacles and opening a ragged prayer-book (upside down), he proceeds to read over the hymn, the whole congregation listening with rapt attention. As he utters the last word all rise together, the old women with closed eyes, heads on one side and hands crossed over their breasts, and he begins to "line out," dividing the words rhythmically into spondaic measure, with the accent strongly on every second syllable and the falling inflection invariably on the last uttered:

When I'—kin read'—my ti'—tul clear'—To man'—shuns in'—de skies'.

Immediately the old mauma at the end of the front bench "sets de tchune," a sad, quavering minor, and pitched so high that any attempt to follow it seems utterly hopeless. But no: the women all strike in on the same soaring key, while the men, by a skillful management of the falsetto, keep up with the screamiest flights. As they wail out the last word, "skies," the women all curtsey with a sharp jerk of the body and the men droop their heads upon their breasts—a token that the strophe is ended; and the next two lines follow in the same manner. Then follows the prayer, in which due remembrance is made of "ole maussa" and "nyoung missis an' maussa," and all their friends and visitors. We are considerate enough to withdraw before the sermon, lest our presence should embarrass the preacher, but a little eavesdropping gives us an opportunity of hearing how practically he deals with "lyin' an' tiefin', an' onbehavin' 'mongst de nyoung 'omans," and how he holds up "de obeshay," as Saint Paul did the magistrate, in terror to those who "play 'possum w'en de grass too t'ick," or "stick t'orn in he finger so he can't pick 'nuff cotton w'en de sun too hot." With our withdrawal is removed a restraint which has chilled the active devotion of the assembly, and soon the singing begins again, accompanied now, however, by the heavy tramp of feet and the clapping of hands keeping time to the sad, wailing minor which characterizes all their music. The hymn, too, is no longer selected from the prayer-book, but from some unwritten collection better adapted to their ideas of "heart-religion":

De angel cry out A-men,A-men! A-men!De angel cry out A-men!I'se bound to de promis' lan'!I da gwine up to hebbin in a long w'ite robe,Long w'ite robe! long w'ite robe!My Sabiour tell me wear dat robeW'en I meet him in de promis' lan'!

We've a great deal before us during the coming week, for we must give a day to the partridges (never called "quail" in the South), and we have a fox-hunt or two in the mornings, and that old buck to look after whose tracks I showed you in the road; besides the ducks and turkeys which are waiting to be shot, and all the Christmas frolicking, from which the ladies will not excuse us. We will therefore take this quiet Sunday afternoon for a walk among the fields and woods to see what manner of country we are in. Bending our steps first toward the huge old oak which seems to hang upon the very edge of the green hill near the house, we suddenly find ourselves just over a large basin enclosed with an octagonal brick wall, except where the clear water runs out over silvery gravel between curbings of heavy plank. This is the spring, and a queer sort of spring it is. Just under the tree-roots the water is but a few inches deep over a bed of bluish-gray limestone, and in no part of the basin, which is about twelve by twenty feet, does it seem to be more than a half fathom in depth. But just under the ledge of rock a shelving hole slopes back under the hill, the bottom of which no man has ever found. This hole is only about three feet by two, and the narrow outlet to the basin is but four inches deep, and loses itself within fifty yards in an oozy bog. Yet, peering into the depth, you catch a glimpse of the black head and beady white eyes of a mudfish at least two feet long, and presently of the silvery side of a three-pound bass which glides across the opening. Drop a line with the cork set at ten feet, and you will draw out of the very bosom of the earth a mess of fat perch and bream each as large and as thick as your hand, and eels three feet in length are sometimes caught in the basin at night. Two miles away, in the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and into which they retreat when disturbed. Hundreds of perch, bream and young bass sport in the shallow parts, and are easily caught with rod and line, the water being so clear that you can watch the fish gorging the bait, and strike when the entire hook disappears. Now, where do these fish live? where do they breed? and upon what do they feed? But the mystery does not end there. About a mile in the opposite direction as we walk through a little belt of wet pineland, where the woodcock runs across our path or whistles up from the wet leaves, we come suddenly upon a dozen or more little basins, the largest not over six feet by nine, which have no outlet whatever. One hole about two feet in diameter goes sheer down between two pine trees to a depth never yet fathomed: you cannot see it until right on it, and you cannot use a rod, but drop your line about twelve feet deep, and your cork will go down like lead, while you pull up red perch and blue bream until your arm wearies of the sport. I have caught five dozen in a winter's afternoon, for the fish bite best in the coldest weather, the temperature of the water being sixty-two degrees the year round, irrespective of the weather. You must go fifteen miles before reaching another of these springs or fountains, and then ten more to the last of the chain, the famous Eutaw Springs of Revolutionary memory. Here, then, must be a subterranean river or reservoir at least twenty-eight miles long, teeming with the same fish which swim in the surface-streams, yet having no discoverable connection with any of these. We meet with no rocks or stones anywhere, but our walk leads us past many marl-pits from which numerous fossil remains have been obtained. The fertile and superstitious imagination of the negroes has not been idle in such a suggestive field, and they have peopled these fountains with spirits which they call "cymbies," akin to the undine and the kelpie. On Saturday nights you may hear a strange rhythmic, thumping sound from the spring, and looking out you may see by the wild, fitful glare of lightwood torches dark figures moving to and fro. These are the negro women at their laundry-work, knee-deep in the stream, beating the clothes with heavy clubs. They are merry enough when together, but not one of them will go alone for a "piggin" of water, and if you slip up in the shadow of the old oak and throw a stone into the spring, the entire party will rush away at the splash, screaming with fear, convinced that the "cymbie" is after them.