ence gathered among the blacks of
other lands impressed me with the well-founded belief, that in more than
one place in the south would the African Fetich be set up and worshipped
before long, unless the church bestirs herself to look well to her
_home_ missions.

In all my travels, outside of the cities, in the south it has not been
my good fortune to find an educated white man preaching to negroes, yet
everywhere the poor blacks gather in the log-cabin, or rudely
constructed church, to listen to ignorant preachers of their own color.
The blind leading the blind.

A few men of negro extraction, with white blood in their veins, not any
more negro than white man, consequently _not_ negroes in the true sense
of the word, are sent from the negro colleges of the south to lecture
northern congregations upon the needs of _their_ race; and these
one-quarter, or perhaps three-quarters, white men are, with their
intelligence, and sometimes brilliant oratory, held up as true types of
the negro race by northerners; while there is, in fact, as much
difference between the pure-blooded negro of the rice-field and this
false representative of "his needs," as can well be imagined.

An Irishman, just from the old country, listened one evening to the
fascinating eloquence of a mulatto freedman. The good Irishman had never
seen a pure-blooded black man. The orator said, "I am only half a black
man. My mother was a slave, my father a white planter." "Be jabbers,"
shouted the excited Irishman, who was charmed with the lecturer, "if you
are only half a nigger, what must a _whole one_ be like!"

The blacks were kind and civil, as they usually are when fairly treated.
They stood upon the dike and shouted unintelligible farewells as I
descended the canal to Alligator Creek. This thoroughfare soon carried
me on its salt-water current to the sea; for I missed a narrow entrance
to the marshes, called the Eye of the Needle (a steamboat thoroughfare),
and found myself upon the calm sea, which pulsated in long swells. To
the south was the low island of Cape Roman, which, like a protecting
arm, guarded the quiet bay behind it. The marshes extended from the main
almost to the cape, while upon the edge of the rushy meadows, upon an
island just inside of the cape, rose the tower of Roman Light.

This was the first time my tiny shell had floated upon the ocean. I
coasted the sandy beach of the muddy lowlands, towards the light-house,
until I found a