Henry C. Rowland

“ A fortnight passed happily on Live Oak Plantation. They rode; they hunted; they shot deer, turkey, and innumerable snipe. Neighbors dropped in for an afternoon call and spent three days. Giles was delighted with the place, the life, the people, the delicious informality. He wanted to buy a plantation and plant rice.
One day while at luncheon Manning, opening his mail, uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
"Who do you think is coming?" he asked.
"Leyden?" asked Virginia and Giles in eager chorus. ”

“ They make fair professional men, but did you ever hear of a negro financier? promoter? or anything else which required long foresight, patience, and hard work? I tell you they haven't got it in them!"
"They've never really had a fair chance, have they?" asked Giles.
"They've ruled their own country, Hayti, for almost a century; Leyden says it's a fine, fertile island which, properly cultivated, might supply the coffee market of the world; yet the average American, right next door, knows less of Hayti than he does of Iceland. ”

“ Sometimes the outlines of the ancient mansion may be traced; by rooting, as have the wild hogs, under the carpet of leaves and mold, one may unearth the long English bricks, brought by shiploads long ago from far across the western ocean. Tombs there are of men who fought against the buccaneers—perhaps, who knows, beside them! ”

“ During the boyhood of Manning's grandfather huge "loblollys" rose straight from the middle of the long, low mound, and it is not probable that anyone would be so foolish as to build a dike around a growing tree.
Although the greater part of the seven thousand broad acres of the Moultrie estate stretched away toward the swamp in square after square of cultivated marshland, there was a great deal in timbered "high land," which, in the rice belt, means land well above the reach of swamp and tide water; ground having an elevation of perhaps ten feet above the rice dikes. ”

“ He seems to lack something; imagination I fancy. A negro mixes his trails like a mongrel hound. He can't resist the temptation to reach for the nearest and easiest object at hand. He will follow the line of least resistance every time."
"But see how steadily Dessalines kept at his work of preparation," said Virginia. "You are biased, Manning." ”

“ Oh, bother the negro!" concluded Manning, with his usual intolerance of the subject.
Leyden arrived in Charleston two days later. Giles drove in to meet him.
"My dear boy!" cried the naturalist, who had arrived early and was at the hotel, "I am delighted to see you! And Miss Moultrie? She is well?"
"Never better!" answered Giles heartily. "Manning, too. I say, jolly place, this,—what? Went out last Saturday and each of us got a turkey; magnificent birds, turkeys,—what?"
Leyden laughed. "They are the true American birds and far more admirable than the eagle. And so you like Carolina! ”

“ You had better go down with me; you can make the trip in three days."
"Right!" exclaimed Giles. "It does seem a shame to be so near and not see the place. Believe I'll go with you if Virginia and Manning will let me. Besides I've always rather fancied the idea of having an orange grove myself and it might not be a bad plan to look it over."
"No," said Leyden meditatively, "not as long as you are with me. Don't try it alone, however; it is a very popular English vice, buying orange groves. ”

“ One never sees anything much about Hayti; surprising, too, so near the States."
"The last account I saw," said Manning, whose face had slightly darkened at Giles's reference to the negro, "it appeared as if a man called Alexis Nord had the best chance; the whole thing's been the most absurd opéra bouffe. I haven't seen Dessalines' name mentioned."
"Perhaps he's lying low until some one does the work for him," suggested Giles.
"We will hear from him yet, you may depend upon it," replied Virginia with conviction. ”

“ There are a great many people south of the tropic in both hemispheres to whom I am under obligation, and one wishes to pay one's debts, both good and ill. The day before sailing for Charleston I dropped in there and among others, whom should I meet but my old acquaintance, Rosenthal; a Jew, a man whose talents and qualities I respect. ”

“ Giles ordered his buckboard and a few minutes later, behind one of Manning's Kentuckians, they were rapidly leaving the city.
Halfway to the plantation they traversed a district known as "Red Top," a place of bad repute by virtue of the congregation there of the rice-field laborers, a class of negroes lower than those found in the cotton lands, many of the latter of whom were unable to live in the rice belt owing to the fever. It is possible that these rice-field negroes were originally brought from the fever coast and were the nearest that could be got to malarial immunes ”

“ There are many such ruins, not of a single house and of its environments, but of acres and acres of what was once the garden spot of North America. One views the ruins of a noble habitation with sadness ”

“ Leyden.
"Y' all ain't seen a loose nigger 'long the road?"
"No," replied Leyden, and Giles glancing at him was surprised to see him draw out a cigar, light it slowly, and drop the match, still burning, into the dry grass beside the road. He knew that Leyden never smoked at that time of day.
"What do you want the negro for?" asked Leyden, taking a puff of his cigar.
The men regarded him suspiciously. "What we allers want niggers for," snarled the leader half defiantly. ”