she needs it.'
I will here explain that on large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for out-door labor.
Madam P–, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her 'Good-by,' and galloped away.
We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman dismounting, called him out.
'Hurry up, hurry up,' said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, 'we haven't a moment to spare.'
'Jest so, jest so, Cunnel; I'll jine ye in a jiffin,' replied he of the reddish extremities.
Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation—the impatience of my host had infected me—the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-incrusted children, following close at his heels, and the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly broke away from the negro, who was holding him. Seeing this, the Colonel said:
'Clear out, you young scarecrows. Into the house with you.'
'They hain't no more scarecrows than yourn, Cunnel J–,' said the mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone. 'You may 'buse my old man—he kin stand it—but ye shan't blackguard my young 'uns!'
The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when Sandy yelled out:
'Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye – –.'
With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up the road.
The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl, and started off at the speed of a reindeer. He had struck the trail, and urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.
We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that her back seemed a rocking-chair. Saddle-horses at the South are trained to the gallop—Southern riders deeming it unnecessary that one's breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in order that one may pass for a good horseman.
We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the Colonel shouted to our companion:
'Sandy, call the dog in; the horses won't last ten miles at this gait—we've a long ride before us.'
The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle gallop.
We had passed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a 'bottom country,' where some of the finest deciduous trees, then brown and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of spring, reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the mimosa, and the persimmon, gayly festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun—flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest heroes the world has worshiped.
The woods were free from underbrush, but a coarse, wiry grass, unfit for fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only vegetation visible. The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and burs of the pine.
We passed great numbers of swine, feeding on these burs, and now and then a horned animal browsing on the cypress-moss where it hung low on the trees. I observed that nearly all the swine were marked, though they seemed too wild to have ever seen an owner, or a human habitation. They were a long, lean, slab-sided race, with legs and shoulders like a deer, and bearing no sort of resemblance to the ordinary hog except in the snout, and that feature was so much longer and sharper than the nose of the Northern swine, that I doubt if Agassiz would class the two as one species. However, they have their uses—they make excellent bacon, and are 'death on snakes;' Ireland itself is not more free from the serpentine race than are the districts frequented by these long-nosed quadrupeds.
'We call them Carolina race-horses,' said the Colonel, as he finished an account of their peculiarities.
'Race-horses! Why, are they fleet of foot?'
'Fleet as deer. I'd match one against an ordinary horse at any time.'
'Come, my friend, you're practicing on my ignorance of natural history.'
'Not a bit of it. See! there's a good specimen yonder. If we can get him into the road, and fairly started, I'll bet you a dollar he'll beat Sandy's mare on a half-mile stretch—Sandy to hold the stakes and have the winnings.'
'Well, agreed,' I said, laughing, 'and I'll give the pig ten rods the start.'
'No,' replied the Colonel, 'you can't afford it. He'll have to start ahead, but you'll need that in the count. Come, Sandy, will you go in for the pile?'
I'm not sure that the native would not have run a race with Old Nicholas himself, for the sake of so much money. To him it was a vast sum; and as he thought of it, his eyes struck small sparks, and his enormous beard and mustachio vibrated with something that faintly resembled a laugh. Replying to the question, he said:
'Kinder reckon I wull, Cunnel; howsomdever, I keeps the stakes, anyhow?'
'Of course,' said the planter, 'but be honest—win if you can.'
Sandy halted his horse in the road, while the planter and I took to the woods on either side of the way. The Colonel soon maneuvered to separate the selected animal from the rest of the herd, and, without much difficulty, got him into the road, where, by closing down on each flank, we kept him till he and Sandy were fairly under way.
'He'll keep to the road when once started,' said the Colonel, laughing, 'and he'll show you some of the tallest running you ever saw in your life.'
Away they went. At first the pig seemed not exactly to comprehend the programme, for he cantered off at a leisurely pace, though he held his own. Soon, however, he cast an eye behind him—halted a moment to collect his thoughts and reconnoiter—and then, lowering his head and elevating his tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind, or a steam-engine—their gait is not to be compared with it. Nothing in nature I have ever seen run—except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician—could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse at every pace, and I soon saw that my dollar was gone!
'In for a shilling in for a pound,' is the adage, so turning to the Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid steps, and my own excited risibilities would allow:
'I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that you can't beat the pig!'
'No—sir!' the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions; 'you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that you can't do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand not a month ago.'
'Well, I'll do it; Sandy to have the stakes.'
'Agreed,' said the Colonel, and
