my view. About half a mile
from the mouth of the creek, which watercourse was on my direct route to
Bull's Bay, a large tide-gate was found at the mouth of a canal. This
being wide open, I pushed up the canal to a low point of land which rose
like an island out of the rushes. Here was a negro hamlet of a dozen
houses, or shanties, and the ruins of a rice-mill. The majority of the
negroes were absent working within the diked enclosures of this large
estate, which before the war had produced forty thousand bushels of rice
annually. Now the place was leased by a former slave, and but little
work was accomplished under the present management.

Seba Gillings, a powerfully built negro, came to the dike upon which I
had landed the canoe. I quickly told him my story, and how I had been
forced to leave the last negro quarters. I used Jacob Gilleu's name as
authority for seeking shelter with him from the damps of the
half-submerged lands. The dignified black man bade me "fear nuffing,
stay here all de night, long's you please; treat you like white man.
I'se mity poor, but gib you de berry best I hab." He locked my boat in a
rickety old storehouse, and gave me to understand "dat niggers will
steal de berry breff from a man's mouff."

He took me to his home, and soon showed me how he managed "de niggers."
His wife sat silently by the fire. He ordered her to "pound de rice;"
and she threw a quantity of unhulled rice into a wooden mortar three
feet high planted in the ground in front of the shanty. Then, with an
enormous pestle, the black woman pounded the grains until the hulls were
removed, when, seating herself upon the floor of the dark, smoky cabin,
she winnowed the rice with her breath, while her long, slim fingers
caught and removed all the specks of dirt from the mass. It was cooked
as the Chinese cook it--not to a glutinous mass, as we of the north
prepare it--but each grain was dry and entire. Then eggs and bacon were
prepared; not by the woman, but by the son, a lad of fourteen years.

All these movements were superintended by old Seba, who sat looking as
dark and as solemn and as learned as an associate judge on the bench of
a New Jersey county court. On the blackest of tables, minus a cloth, the
well-cooked food was placed for the stranger. As soon as my meal was
finished, every member of the family made a dash for the fragments, and
the board was cleared in a wonderfully short space of time.

Then we gathered round t