than be deprived of my services, politely offered to pass the winter on the banks of Ashley River: Nay, he even proposed to send his son, when the war terminated, to make with me the tour of the Continent of Europe. There are few men that in my situation would have resisted such allurements; but I dreaded the tainted atmosphere that had despatched so many of my countrymen to the house appointed for all living; and, filled with apprehension, I left this charming family in whose bosom I had been so kindly cherished, to seek another climate, and brave again the rigours of adversity.* *The mortality among foreigners during the summer months, at Charleston, is incredibly great. Few Europeans escape that plague of plagues the yellow fever. The attack is always sudden, and lays hold of the strongest. He whose veins glowed but yesterday with health shall to-day be undergoing the agonies of the damned. The temporal arteries of the wretched victim are ready to burst; black vomiting ensues; the skin turns yellow; the man so lately rioting in lustihood is without the strength of a child; and his tongue lolling out, he dies delirious. 66 What now avail The strong-built sinewy limbs, and well-spread shoulders? See how he tugs for life, and lays about him, Mad with his pain! The sight how hideous! Oh! how his eyes stand out, and stare full ghastly! While the distemper's rank and deadly venom Shoots like a burning arrow cross his bowels, And drinks his marrow up. Heard you that groan? Just like a child that crawl'd itself to rest, [The author's footnote is one of alarm. The mortality The fifteenth of December, 1799, I rode from Ashley River to Charleston, with the design of proceeding to George-town, and visiting the academic bowers of my friend. I had again determined to travel on foot, and enjoy the meditations produced from walking and smoking amidst the awful solitude of the woods. Having provided myself with a pouch of Havannah segars, and put a poem into my pocket, which Mr. George had composed over the grave of a stranger on the road, I crossed the ferry at Cooper's River, and began my journey from a spot that retains the aboriginal name of Hobcaw. In travelling through an endless tract of pines, a man can find few objects to describe, but he may have some reflections to deliver. I was journeying through endless forests, that, once inhabited by numerous races of Indians, were now without any individual of their original possessors; for the diseases and luxuries introduced by the Colonist had exterminated the greater number, and the few wretches that survived, had sought a new country beyond the rivers and mountains.* from yellow fever among strangers in Charleston at that time was undoubtedly high. See, Dr. David Ramsay's Charleston Medical Register for 1802, reviewed in Medical Repository, VI, 308 ff. Dr. Ramsay gives an interesting account of an attempt, during the hot season, to rob the Charleston Bank. The operator, a Kentucky man, was ninety days underground: the hypothesis is that desire of gain rendered him immune.] [* Not very distant. The country between Knoxville and For the last fifteen miles of my journey I encountered no human being but a way-faring German; and heard no sound but that of the wood-pecker,* and the noise of the negroe's axe felling trees. There was no other object to employ the sight, and no other noise to disturb the repose of the desert. I supped and slept at a solitary tavern kept by young Mr. Dubusk, whose three sisters might have sat to a painter for the Graces. Delicate were their shapes, transparent their skins, and the fire of their eyes drove the traveller to madness. Finding my young landlord companionable, I asked him why he did not pull down the sign of General Washington, that was over his door, and put up the portrait of his youngest sister. That, said he, would be a want of modesty: and, besides, if Jemima is really handsome, she can want no effigy; for good wine, as we landlords say, needs no bush. Mr. Dubusk was a mighty great dancer. Nashville, Tennessee, was Indian Territory then, and the Creeks and Chickasaws lay to the south. In 1796 and 1797 Francis Baily, later President of the Royal Astronomical Society, travelled through that region. Cf. his Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America. London, 1856, pp. 346 ff.] * The wood-pecker of Carolina, in striking his beak against a tree, makes a quick, sharp noise, which he keeps up for some time by repetition. An emigrant planter on first hearing it, was terrified beyond measure; and ran pale and quaking to his house, calling out, a rattlesnake! oh! a rattlesnake! Indeed, he would frequently fall a capering, unconscious of being observed. But he swore he would dance no more in the day-time, because it was ungenteel. We drew our chairs near the fire after supper, when Mr. Dubusk did his utmost to entertain me. He related that, only a few nights before, some sparks had put a black-pudding into his bed, which, by the moon-light through his window, his apprehension magnified into a black snake, and made him roar out murder! What, cried I, can you, who are a native of Carolina, be afraid of a snake? Not, said he, if I meet him on the road, or in the woods. I wish I had as many acres of land as I have killed rattlesnakes in this country. My plantation would be a wide one.-Mr. Dubusk was somewhat a wag. Being called on after supper to sing the patriotic song of Hail Columbia; he parodied it with much drollery. Hail Columbia! happy land! Full of pines, and burning sand! At this I was surprised; for Hail Columbia exacts not less reverence in America, than the Marselloise Hymn in France, and Rule Britannia in England. Before I quit the subject of Mr. Dubusk, I will mention a delicacy of conduct which I could not but remark in him; and which I record for the imitation of American Plant ers. Having thoughtlessly chastised a negroboy in the room, he apologized for doing it before me; a circumstance which verified the observation that good breeding is the natural result of good sense. The next morning, Mr. Dubusk walked with me a few miles on my road; but my companion having business at a plantation in the woods, I was soon left to pursue my journey alone through the sand. My sight was still bounded by the same prospect as ever. I could only distinguish before me a road that seemed endless, and mossy forests on each border of it. An European gazes with wonder at the long and beautiful moss, that spreading itself from the branches of one tree to those of another, extends through whole forests.* It was now eight in the morning; the weather was mild, and I walked vigorously forward, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. At Darr's tavern, I found nobody but a negro-woman, who was suckling her child, and quieting its clamours by appropriating, instead of a common rattle, the rattles of a snake. I would have much rather heard her *This moss when it becomes dead serves many useful purposes. The negroes carry it to Charleston, where it is bought to stuff mattrasses, and chair bottoms. The hunters always use it for wadding to their guns. |