A COLORED COURT.

385

Judge: "Do you want twelve men to come in and help me?"

Culprit, emphatically: "No, sah!"-for he thinks one man will probably be too much for him.

Judge, sternly: "Now listen you! You and your mother are a couple of low-down darkies, trying to get a living without work. You are the cause that respectable colored people are slandered, and called thieving and lazy niggers; when it's only the likes of you that's thieving and lazy. Now this is what I'll do with you. If you and your mother will hire out to-day, and go to work like honest people, I'll let you off on good behavior. If you won't, I'll send you to Captain Norton. That means, you'll go up with a sentence. And I'll tell you what your sentence will be: three months' hard labor on the Home Farm, and the ball and chain in case you attempt to run away. Now which will you do?"

Culprit, eagerly: "I'll hire out, sah!" And a contract is made for him and his mother on the spot.

The next point of interest is Grand Gulf; the only place that offered any resistance to our gunboats between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. It had before the war a thousand inhabitants, three churches, and several steam-mills. Water and fire appear to have conspired against it. The Yankees burned every vestige of the village, and the river has torn away a large section of the bank on which it stood. A number of cheap whitewashed wooden buildings have taken its place on the shore; above and behind which rises a steep rocky bluff, covered with sparse timber, sedge, and cane-brakes, and crowned by Rebel batteries.

There was formerly an extensive whirlpool below the confluence of the Big Black with the Mississippi, which had worn a gulf six hundred feet deep, just above this place: hence its name, Grand Gulf. This immense chasm has been filled, since the beginning of the war, by the river that excavated it; and where the whirlpool was there is now a solid sand-bar overgrown with cotton-wood bushes. Opposite the town, on the Louisiana side, there is another sand-bar, bare and low, occu

pying the place of a fine plantation that flourished there before the war.

A hundred and twenty miles below Vicksburg is Natchez, one of the most romantically and beautifully situated cities in the United States. It is built on an almost precipitous bluff, one hundred and fifty feet above the river, which is overlooked by a delightful park and promenade along the city front. The landing is under the bluff.

The "Quitman." (in which I had taken passage) stopped several hours at Natchez getting on board a quantity of cot ton. Above Vicksburg, I noticed that nearly all the cotton was going northward: below, it was going the other way, toward New Orleans. At every town, and at nearly every plantation landing, we took on board, sometimes a hundred bales and more, sometimes but two or three, until the "Quitman showed two high white walls of cotton all round her guards, which were sunk to the water's edge. She was constructed to carry forty-three hundred bales.

On the levee at Natchez I made the acquaintance of an old plantation overseer. He knew all about cotton raising. "I've overseed in the swamps, and I've overseed on the hills. You can make a bale to the acre in the swamps, and about one bale to two acres on the hills. I used to get ten to fifteen hundred dollars a year. I'm hiring now to a Northern man, who gives me three thousand. A Northern man will want to get more out of the niggers than we do. Mine said to me last night, 'I want you to get the last drop of sweat and the last pound of cotton out of my niggers; and I shall do it. I can if anybody can. There's a heap in humbuggin' a nig ger. I worked a gang this summer, and got as much work out of 'em as I ever did. I just had my leading nigger, and says to him, I says, Sam, I want this yer crop out by such a time; now you go a-head, talk to the niggers, and lead 'em off right smart, and I'll give you twenty-five dollars.' Then I got up a race, and give a few dollars to the men that picked the most cotton, till I found out the extent of what each man could pick; then I required that of him every day, or I docked his wages."

I

THE GERMANS AND NEGROES.

387

As we were talking, the mate of the “ Quitman" took up an oyster-shell and threw it at the head of one of the deck-hands, who did not handle the cotton to suit him. It did not hurt . the negro's head much, but it hurt his feelings.

"Out on the plantations," observed my friend the overseer, "it would cost him fifty dollars to hit a nigger that way. It cost me a hundred and fifty dollars just for knocking down three niggers lately, - fifty dollars a piece, by !"

He thought the negroes were going to be crowded out by the Germans; and went on to say, with true Southern consistency,

"The Germans want twenty dollars a month, and we can hire the niggers for ten and fifteen. The Germans will die in our swamps. Then as soon as they get money enough to buy a cart and mule, and an acre of land somewhar, whar they can plant a grape-vine, they 'll go in for themselves."

CHAPTER LV.

THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.

WE were nearly all night at Natchez loading cotton. The next day, I noticed that the men worked languidly, and that the mate was plying them with whiskey. I took an opportunity to talk with him about them. He said,

"We have a hundred and eighty hands aboard, all told. Thar's sixty deck-hands. That a'n't enough. We ought to have reliefs, when we 're shipping freight day and night as we are now."

I remarked: "A gentleman who came up to Vicksburg in the Fashion,' stated, as an excuse for the long trip she made, that the niggers would n't work, — that the mates could n't make them work."

He replied: "I reckon the hands on board the Fashion' are about in the condition these are. These men are used up. They ha'n't had no sleep for four days and nights. I've seen a man go to sleep many a time, standing up, with a box on his shoulder. We pay sixty dollars a month,- more 'n almost any other boat, the work is so hard. But we get rid of paying a heap of 'em. When a man gets so used up he can't stand no more, he quits. He don't dare to ask for wages, for he knows he'll get none, without he sticks by to the end of the trip."

While we were talking, a young fellow, not more than twenty years old, came up, looking very much exhausted, and told the mate he was sick.

"Ye a'n't sick neither!" roared the mate at him, fiercely "You 're lazy! If you won't work, go ashore."

The fellow limped away again, and went ashore at the next landing.

TOILSOME WORK AND BRUTAL TREATMENT. 389

"Is he sick or lazy?" I asked.

"Neither. He's used up. He was as smart a hand as I had when he came aboard. But they can't stand it."

"Was it always so?"

"No; before the war we had men trained for this work. We had some niggers, but more white men. We could n't git all the niggers we wanted; a fifteen hundred dollar man wore out too quick."

"The whites were the best, I suppose."

They was more active getting

"The niggers was the best. down bales. They liked the fun. They stand it better than white men. Business stopped, and that set of hands all dropped off, went into the war, the most of 'em. Now we have to take raw hands. These are all plantation niggers. Not one of 'm'll ship for another trip; they 've had enough of it. Thar 's no compellin' 'em. You can't hit a nigger now, but these d-d Yankee sons of b -s have you up and make you pay for it."

I told him if that was the case, I did n't think I should hit

one.

"They 've never had me up," he resumed.

"When I tackle a nigger, it'll be whar thar an't no witnesses, and it 'll be the last of him. That's what ought to be done with 'em, -kill 'em all off. I like a nigger in his place, and that's a servant, if thar's any truth in the Bible."

This allusion to Scripture, from lips hot with words of wrath and wrong, was especially edifying.

The "Quitman" was a fine boat, and passengers, if not deck-hands, fared sumptuously on board of her. The table was equal to that of the best hotels. An excellent quality of claret wine was furnished, as a part of the regular dinner fare, after the French fashion, which appears to have been introduced into this country by the Creoles, and which is to be met with, I believe, only on the steamboats of the Lower Mississippi.

On the "Quitman," as on the boat from Memphis to Vicksburg, I made the acquaintance of all sorts of Southern people. The conversation of some of them is worth recording.