are here seen in the zenith are there low on the northern horizon. The Pole-star rises but thirty degrees, and then gently dips into the northern wave. It is a glorious night: the sea is like glass, only that long swells come in from the Gulf, while the faint land breeze is loaded with the odours of the jessamine, which now fills the forests with its blossoms, and floods the whole air with its fragrance.
How our fleet boat cuts through the water! I walk forward to her stem, before which rises a slender stream—a little fountain, which falls in a silver shower in the moonlight, with halos of faint lunar rainbows; aft, we leave a long slender line of glittering foam. Our rapid arrow-flight scarcely more disturbs the sea than the flight of a bird over its waters.
Music on the waves! Music and moonlight, beauty and fragrance on the star-gemmed southern sea. A group of ladies and gentlemen have gathered around the pianoforte in the great saloon. The fair Southerners are showing their musical accomplishments. Hark! it was “Ben Bolt” just now, and now it is “Casta Diva;” the next will be some negro melody, or “Old Dog Tray.” But this is not the only music. I hear the mellow twanging of the banjo forward, and the pulsing beat of dancing feet keeping time to the rude music. Between decks are groups of negroes—men, women, and children—who have come down the river from Kentucky and are bound to the plantations up the Alabama. Some are asleep; others are reclining in picturesque groups, while a ring of whites and blacks are enjoying the rude music and dance. The owners of the negroes are making them comfortable for the night, or talking the eternal politics, and chewing the eternal tobacco.
I fall easily into conversation with one of the most intelligent. He is a fiery Southerner, and there is no measure for his contempt of Northern politicians. Trust Douglas? Never! The time has come when the South must control her own destinies. The Northern democracy must join with the South, and elect a Southern candidate, or the Union is gone for ever. They have borne too much. They will bear no longer. There was much more, but it is not needful to recite it. It was the quiet and gentlemanly but determined expression of the spirit that has already covered the gory battle-fields of that fair Southern land with thousands of her devoted sons, that has carried desolation and mourning into thousands of Southern homes.
When I questioned about slavery, and the condition of the negroes, he only pointed to the groups lying around us.
“There they are,” said he, “look at them. We have four millions of such; and in some way we must take care of them. If we can contrive any better method for all parties concerned, you may be mighty sure that we shall adopt it. We claim that we, who live among our negroes and were raised among them, understand their condition and necessities better than people thousands of miles away. We are all in the same boat, and we must sink or swim together.”
As I had no vocation to convert the gentleman to my views, or impress him with my feelings, we passed to other subjects. But it was clear that his mind was full of the sense of injury and injustice—clear that he, like all the Southerners I ever met, believed that he understood the whole subject of his own domestic institutions better, and could manage it more wisely, than his near or distant neighbours.
I took one more look at the soft bright scene through which we were gliding, and retired to my state room. At dawn we were passing up Mobile Bay. The great cotton ships were lying at anchor outside the bar, some miles below the city, and the steamers were bringing down their loads of cotton. If Mobile had but a channel of twenty-five feet of water over her bar, she would be the great cotton city of the South. But the Bay closes in, and we glide up to the wharves. It is early; few are stirring, and the city is almost silent, but the view up the long, shaded garden streets, lined with white villas, with their green blinds, is enchanting.
It is too early for breakfast, but the steward has his smoking coffee-urn on a table set out with small cups, and he offers us a cup of café noir and a biscuit before we go on shore. The passage-fee has paid for everything, but I pass a dime to the negro steward with my empty cup. It is worth it to see the grace and dignity of his salutation of thanks. I really think there cannot be found anywhere a more perfect manner than among the better class of Southern negroes, but why the manners of the Southern slaves should be superior to those of the free negroes of the North, I will leave it to others to determine. The fact is unquestionable. I have not been to Liberia, and cannot tell how it may be where negroes, with the advantages of civilisation, are masters of the situation, and have no antipathies or rude repulsions of race to contend against. There may be great refinement of manners in Liberia; it is certain that the habitual deference of the negro to the white, and the corresponding condescension of the white gentleman to the negro, produces a kind of courtliness of behaviour which is not seen in the free communities of the Northern States.
Mobile is one of the oldest cities of the Southern States. Lemoine d’Iberville, a brave French officer, planted a colony at Biloxi, on the coast west of Mobile, in 1699. In 1701 he removed his colony to the site of the present city of Mobile. The Spanish had a few years before built a fort at Pensacola. Mobile is older than New Orleans; but I will not write its history. It has now a population of 28,000, a large commerce, and as it lies at the mouth of two rivers, navigable for hundreds of miles through the richest cotton regions of the South, it is, with respect to this trade, one of the most important of American cities. The streets are broad and finely built, with a profusion of shade, trees and shrubbery. The drives around are exceedingly fine, as the land rises gradually from the sea. The hedges are of the Cherokee rose, which climbs over everything and covers the trees with its rich foliage and flowers.
There are, as in all American cities, immense hotels, accommodating hundreds of guests, an
