Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/443

392 Another man, the blackest man we had ever seen, his skin being quite as black as ebony, had come from South Carolina five years ago, with chills and fever, had been cured by the juniper water, and had lived in the swamp ever since. White folk as well as black added their testimony as to the extraordinary salubrity of the swamp.

The phrase "Going out to the high land" is the usual expression of the "swamper" for going to the exterior world. He speaks as if the swamp were in a hollow, instead of being higher than "the high land." He says, "I came in," and again, "I went out to the bank;" a phrase that is impressively significant of his footing in the swamp.

We said good-by to our colored Hercules, whose mighty arms were bare to the shoulder and his ragged shirt open to the waist. He had on a thick white cotton cap, without a visor, that looked like a wadded turban. It became him mightily. In front he had sewed a strip of red cloth, not across, but upright, and behind he had fastened the long bushy tail of a squirrel, that hung down his back. "I killed dat fellow last night," he laughingly said, seeing our eyes fixed on the ornament.

No great tragedian on the stage ever dressed himself so becomingly as this black Ingomar.