he Puritans--a people whose descendants
have made much sacrifice in the cause of negro emancipation--this about
Darke may seem strange. It is, notwithstanding, a common tale; one
which no traveller through the Southern States can help hearing. For
the Southerner will not fail to tell him, that the hardest task-master
to the slave is either one, who has been himself a slave, or descended
from the Pilgrim Fathers, whose feet first touched American soil by the
side of Plymouth Rock!

Having a respect for many traits in the character of these same Pilgrim
Fathers, I would fain think the accusation exaggerated--if not
altogether untrue--and that Ephraim Darke was an exceptional individual.

To accuse _him_ of inhumanity was no exaggeration whatever. Throughout
the Mississippi valley there could be nothing more heartless than his
treatment of the sable helots, whose luckless lot it was to have him for
a master. Around his courts, and in his cotton-fields, the crack of the
whip was heard habitually--its thong sharply felt by the victims of his
caprice, or malice. The "cowhide" was constantly carried by himself,
and his overseer. He had a son, too, who could wield it wickedly as
either. None of the three ever went abroad without that pliant,
painted, switch--a very emblem of devilish cruelty--in their hands;
never returned home, without having used it in the castigation of some
unfortunate "darkey," whose evil star had caused him to stray across
their track, while riding the rounds of the plantation.

A far different discipline was that of Colonel Armstrong; whose slaves
seldom went to bed without a prayer poured forth, concluding with: "God
bress de good massr;" while the poor whipped bondsmen of his neighbour,
their backs oft smarting from the lash, nightly lay down, not always to
sleep, but nearly always with curses on their lips--the name of the
Devil coupled with that of Ephraim Darke.

The old story, of like cause followed by like result, must, alas! be
chronicled in this case. The man of the Devil prospered, while he of
God came to grief. Armstrong, open-hearted, free-handed, indulging in a
too profuse hospitality, lived widely outside the income accruing from
the culture of his cotton-fields, and in time became the debtor of
Darke, who lived as widely within his.

Notwithstanding the proximity of their estates, there was but little
intimacy, and less friendship, between the two. The Virginian--scion of
an