h of the poorest, and
availed the world in all the uses of cloth.

The shipping and manufacturing interests of England grew; those of the
United States, from nothing, in a few years were great rivals of the
mother country, and very soon surpassed her in commercial tonnage.
Every interest prospered with the prosperity of the planter of the
Southern States. His class has passed away; the weeds blacken where the
chaste, white cotton beautified his fields; his slave is a freedman--a
constitution-maker--a ruler set up by a beastly fanaticism to control
his master, and to degrade and destroy his country.

This must bear its legitimate fruit. It is the beginning of the end of
the negro upon this continent. Two races with the same civil, political
and social privileges cannot long exist in harmony together. The
struggle for supremacy will come, and with it a war of races--then God
have mercy on the weaker! The mild compulsion which stimulated his
labor is withdrawn, and with it the care and protection which alone
preserved him. He works no more; his day of Jubilee has come; he must
be a power in the land. Infatuated creature! I pity you from my heart.
You cannot see or calculate the inevitable destiny now fixed for your
race. You cannot see the vile uses you are made to subserve for a time,
or deem that those who now appear your conservators, are but preparing
your funeral pyre.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE NATCHEZ TRADITIONS.

NATCHEZ--MIZEZIBBEE; OR, THE PARENT OF MANY WATERS--INDIAN MOUNDS--THE
CHILD OF THE SUN--TREATMENT OF THE FEMALES--POETIC MARRIAGES--UNCHASTE
MAIDS AND PURE WIVES--WALKING ARCHIVES--THE PROFANE FIRE--ALAHOPLECHIA
--OYELAPE--THE CHIEF WITH A BEARD.

The little city of Natchez is built upon a bluff some three hundred
feet in elevation above the Mississippi River, and immediately upon its
brink. It receives its name from a tribe of Indians once resident in
the country; and who were much further advanced in civilization than
their more warlike neighbors, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. The
country around is hilly and beautiful, fertile and salubrious. The
population was intelligent and refined, and was remarkable for having
more wealth than any community outside of a large city, in the United
States, of the same amount of population. The town of Natchez (for,
properly speaking, it is no more) consists of some three or four
thousand inhabitants, and has not increased to any considerable extent,
for man