Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/284

Rh There stood beside a well a very old negro-woman, who was come hither to fetch water. I asked her how old she was.

“A little better than a hundred, ma'am!” was her reply.

The negroes have a great desire to be very old, and really do live to extreme old age when their life is easy.

I should have retained nothing but the most agreeable impression of this plantation had I not, in returning to the shore, met at a gate the overseer of the plantation (the owner and his family were abroad) and in him had seen a strong-limbed young man, with that fierce, lawless, wandering gaze, which I have remarked in many overseers on the plantations, and which takes away all faith in the justice and integrity of their treatment of the slave. The slaves who are digging around our vessel, are strong-built, and work hard, but as silently as if they were digging a grave. This is not natural for negroes, and is not a good sign.

There is the most beautiful moonlight in the evenings, and the melodious but monotonous cry of the whip-poor-will, resounds from the Magnolia grove. In the daytime the heat is great and—may St. Matthew only have mercy upon us!

&emsp; I now write to you from the heart of blooming Florida, reposing upon one of its lovely mirror-like lakes, with horrible alligators swimming around our little floating dwelling (a very ricketty steam-boat, named Sarah Spalding). A garland of dark green wood, resembling myrtle, surrounds the great lake, for at this distance we cannot distinguish between groves of orange and palmetto and forests of cypress. The whole shore is low, and the lake as clear as a mirror, and everything profoundly still around it. No cities and towns, no steamboats, no