|
October 3, 1867 - Toward evening I arrived at the home of Mr. Cameron, a wealthy
planter, who had large bands of slaves at work in his cotton fields. They
still call him "Massa." He
tells me that labor costs him less now than it did before the emancipation
of the negroes. When I arrived I found him busily engaged in scouring the
rust off some cotton-gin saws which had been lying for months at the bottom
of his mill-pond to prevent Sherman's "bummers" from destroying them. The most
valuable parts of the grist-mill and cotton-press were hidden in the same way. "If
Bill Sherman," he said, "should come down now without his army, he would never
go back."
When I asked him if he could give me food and lodging for the night he said, "No, no, we have no accommodations for travelers." I said, "But I am traveling as a botanist and either have to find lodgings when night overtakes me or lie outdoors, which I often have had to do in my long walk from Indiana. But you see that the country here is very swampy; if you will at least sell me a piece of bread, and give me a drink at your well, I shall have to look around for a dry spot to lie down on."
Then, asking me a few questions, and narrowly examining me, he said, "Well, it
is barely possible that we may find a place for you, and if you will come to
the house I will ask my wife." Evidently he was cautious to get his wife's opinion
of the kind of creature I was before committing himself to hospitality. He halted
me at the door and called out his wife, a fine-looking woman, who also questioned
me narrowly as to my object in coming so far down through the South, so soon
after the war. She said to her husband that she thought they could, perhaps,
give me a place to sleep.
After supper, as we sat by the fire talking on my favorite subject of botany, I described the country I had passed through, its botanical character, etc. Then, evidently, all doubt as to my being a decent man vanished, and they both said that they would n't for anything have turned me away; but I must excuse their caution, for perhaps fewer than one in a hundred, who passed through this unfrequented part of the country, were to be relied upon. "Only a short time ago we entertained a man who was well spoken and well dressed, and he vanished some time during the night with some valuable silverware."
Mr. Cameron told me that when I arrived he tried me for a Mason, and finding that I was not a Mason he wondered still more that I would venture into the country without being able to gain the assistance of brother Masons in these troublous times.
"Young man," he said, after hearing my talks on botany, "I see that your hobby is botany. My hobby is e-lec-tricity. I believe that the time is coming, though we may not live to see it, when that mysterious power or force, used now only for telegraphy, will eventually supply the power for running railroad trains and steamships, for lighting, and, in a word, electricity will do all the work of the world."
Many times since then I have thought of the wonderfully correct vision of this Georgia planter, so far in advance of almost everybody else in the world. Already nearly all that he foresaw has been accomplished, and the use of electricity is being extended more and more every year.
|