Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/23

Rh and waggons, mostly with hoods or some sort of protection from the sun, and a seat for the negro boy behind. The bay was gay, too, with many belonging to the gentlemen who had a fishing club, which met at a house among the myrtles; and many  also, chiefly rowed by negroes. Arthur often went out with my father on the water.

'Six miles off lay Charleston, on a peninsula, between its two rivers, the Cooper and the Ashley. The first sight of it showed a long line of wharves made of palmetto logs fastened together into a sort of wall, stretching perhaps half a mile along the bay, and lined with the ships and smaller craft that frequented the port. As you approached from the water you heard the songs of the negroes at work on the vessels. Beyond the wharves was a battery or public walk, supported against the sea by a substantial very white wall formed of oyster shells beaten fine and hard. This species of pier extended nearly a mile along the sea, and was a favourite resort both for walking and driving in the summer. It was all roughly done, as most things were in the South, but the sunshine and clear skies made it bright and cheerful. The city was not regularly built like the Northern towns. In the lower part indeed the houses were mostly built close together in rows; but in the upper part, where the wealthier people lived, it was full of villas mostly standing in gardens, all built with verandahs, and many with two, an upper and a lower one. In the gardens grew many flowering trees, such as the almond, occasionally the orange, the fringe tree, a gay shrub with a very abundant white flower, and the fig; and these hung over the garden walls into the streets. The streets, too, which were for the most part unpaved, were often planted with trees for the sake of shade. Here and there one came on a large mansion, that at once showed it belonged to the times before the Revolution.

'From Charleston, Sullivan's Island was to be seen in the distance, beyond the battery, and on the right James Island,