The South As It Is: 1865–1866

Chapter 22

XXII COLUMBIA, S. C., December 5,1865 THE hardships of railway travelling over the swamps and uplands of South Carolina have been often set forth of late, and have not been exaggerated. Rails worn out, shaky, creaking trestleworks , the slow, thumping motion, the frequent transfers from dirty cars to dirtier ferry-boats and stages, the lack of hotels at the stopping places, and the long delays, with a dozen other inconveniences , rob the traveller of rest and peace of body and mind. After a few hours' ride, everybody becomes fatigued and thoroughly illhumored , and only speaks to grumble. At Florence, in the dusk of the evening, I heard a small, smoke-dried, vicious-looking boy, a poor white of thirteen or fourteen years old, giving expression to his own feelings and those of his fellow-passengers. He stood on the car-platform, leaning over the brake in an attitude of exhaustion , and accosted me as I went up the steps: "A'n't there no sellers round yer sellin' snacks?" "No," I told him; "there's a hotel, though." "Yes, hominy for a dollar. There'd ought to be sellers. I'm starved myself and so's ma'am. Dog-gorn sich roads anyhow. Wear me out. By G--, I could git down an' walk a heap faster'n these cussed kyars. Creepin' along so durned slow! I'd like to know if they think they're goin' to make connections." Then he pronounced the engineer and conductor "no account," and imprecated curses on his own head if he ever was hired to run trains on that road. Going into the car he joined his mother, a person even more irascible and fierce than himself, to whom he 225 226 John Richard Dennett briefly reported his ill success, and then the two slept, curled up in one seat for the sake of warmth, till we reached Sumterville. A seven or eight hours' ride, at the rate of four miles an hour, brought us, at four o'clock in the morning, to Kingsville. The village never contained more than half a dozen buildings, and, as Sherman's men have been there, only two of these remain. A bed could be had at neither, and the passengers made themselves as comfortable as might be in the cars. The air was full of a white mist, obscuring the stars; but the night was not dark, for the moon was shining, and the weather was unseasonably warm. I walked about, therefore, a little while, and went along towards some fires that were burning in the open air at a few rods' distance. Close beside the track lay a confused heap of bundles and boxes and rude furniture, evidently the household property of Negroes. There were small pots and pans, bags of corn, groundnuts tied up in sheets, three-legged stools, and coops in which hens and chickens were cackling and peeping. Behind this barricade were several rude huts, made of poles or boards, with a covering of canvas or rusty sheets of iron from the ruined locomotives. In front of each shelter was a fire, with men and women round it talking and smoking. Other Negroes lay among the luggage guarding it, and the whole camp seemed to contain about a hundred people. I talked first with one of the old women. She rose from her seat on the ground as I approached and made a courtesy, while her companion, still older than herself, remained cowering over the embers. Both were without shoes and very ragged. "You're sitting up late," I said. "Who for watch de tings, mawssa, ef we sleep? Who for watch my leel corn and grun-nut? Tell er, mawssa, 'bleeged to sit up late, 'less dey be gone 'fore day, clean." "You've got a good deal of corn, have you?" "Got not but tree peck. Dat's my sheer when dey sheered. Ounno ef I has tree peck." "Is that what you've got to keep you next year?" "Oat leel bit 0' corn keep me! Can't. Not ef I was to eat it by grains. No, can't, can't, sister," said the other old creature. The South As It Is: 1865-1866 227 "All we gang 0' nigger," they told me, "is rice nigger." Three years ago, Mr. H. B--, their master, who was a rice planter on the Combahee, had moved more than a hundred of them up into Richland district out of the...