Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/397

Rh said it if we had been alone together, because I could not help seeing in her a somewhat proud, but at the bottom a noble character, who, by the injustice of the Abolitionists against the position of the slave-holder, has been driven to injustice against that of the workers, but who could and who would look at the truth, if, without any polemical asperity, it were placed before her unbiassed judgment. But I did not find any opportunity for trying the experiment because we never were alone.

The slave-villages in Georgia have the same exterior as those in Carolina, and the condition of the slaves on the plantations seem to me similar also. The good and the bad masters make the only difference; but then in such circumstances this is immeasurable.

“Here lives the owner of a plantation who is universally known as cruel to his people,” was once said to me as I went past a beautiful country-house, almost concealed by thick trees and shrubs. People know this, and they do not willingly hold intercourse with such a man, that is all. Neither the angel of justice nor of love ventures into these mystical groves, where human beings are sacrificed. What paganism amid Christianity! But this avenges itself nevertheless on the white races, as is evident in many things.

One day I went to see, in the forest, some of the poor people called “clay-eaters;” these are a kind of wretched white people, found in considerable numbers both in Carolina and Georgia, who live in the woods, without churches, without schools, without hearths, and some times also without homes, but yet independent and proud in their own way, and who are induced by a diseased appetite to eat a sort of unctuous earth, which is found here, until this taste becomes a passion with them, equally strong with the love of intoxicating liquors; although, by slow degrees, it consumes its victim, causes the complexion to become grey, and the body soon to mingle with the