had
become wearisome to the sight. The soil where it appeared, was rich,
vegetation was luxuriant; great clumps of laurel showed glossy richness
in the greenness of its verdure, that reminded us of the fresh color of
the vegetation of our Northern homes, so different from the parched and
impoverished look of Georgian foliage. Immense flocks of wild fowl
fluttered around us; the Georgian woods were almost destitute of living
creatures; the evergreen live-oak, with its queer festoons of Spanish
moss, and the ugly and useless palmettos gave novelty and interest to the
view.

The rice swamps through which we were passing were the princely
possessions of the few nabobs who before the war stood at the head of
South Carolina aristocracy--they were South Carolina, in fact, as
absolutely as Louis XIV. was France. In their hands--but a few score in
number--was concentrated about all there was of South Carolina education,
wealth, culture, and breeding. They represented a pinchbeck imitation of
that regime in France which was happily swept out of existence by the
Revolution, and the destruction of which more than compensated for every
drop of blood shed in those terrible days. Like the provincial 'grandes
seigneurs' of Louis XVI's reign, they were gay, dissipated and turbulent;
"accomplished" in the superficial acquirements that made the "gentleman"
one hundred years ago, but are grotesquely out of place in this sensible,
solid age, which demands that a man shall be of use, and not merely for
show. They ran horses and fought cocks, dawdled through society when
young, and intrigued in politics the rest of their lives, with frequent
spice-work of duels. Esteeming personal courage as a supreme human
virtue, and never wearying of prating their devotion to the highest
standard of intrepidity, they never produced a General who was even
mediocre; nor did any one ever hear of a South Carolina regiment gaining
distinction. Regarding politics and the art of government as, equally
with arms, their natural vocations, they have never given the Nation a
statesman, and their greatest politicians achieved eminence by advocating
ideas which only attracted attention by their balefulness.

Still further resembling the French 'grandes seigneurs' of the eighteenth
century, they rolled in wealth wrung from the laborer by reducing the
rewards of his toil to the last fraction that would support his life and
strength. The rice culture was immens