onerously assessed
by them for contributions for carrying on the war. The sum he has been
forced to pay, is stated as high as forty thousand dollars, but that may
be, and I trust is, an exaggeration. In addition--and this fact is
within my own knowledge--five of his vessels have been seized in the
Northern ports by our Government. This exposure of true Union men to a
double fire, is one of the most unhappy circumstances attendant upon
this most unhappy war.]

CHAPTER III.

CROSSING THE "RUNS."

The long, tumble-down bridge which spans the Waccamaw at Conwayboro,
trembled beneath our horse's tread, as with lengthened stride he shook
the secession mud from his feet, and whirled us along into the dark,
deep forest. It may have been the exhilaration of a hearty dinner of
oats, or it may have been sympathy with the impatience of his
fellow-travellers that spurred him on; whichever it was, away he went as
if Lucifer--that first Secessionist--were following close at his heels.

The sun, which for a time had been industriously wedging his way into
the dark masses of cloud, finally slunk out of sight and left us
enveloped in a thick fog, which shut from view all of Cottondom, except
a narrow belting of rough pines, and a few rods of sandy road that
stretched out in dim perspective before us. There being nothing in the
outside creation to attract my attention, I drew the apron of the
carriage about me, and settling myself well back on the seat to avoid
the thick-falling mist, fell into a train of dreamy reflection.

Niggers, slave-auctions, cotton-fields, rice-swamps, and King Cotton
himself, that blustering old despot, with his swarthy arms and
"under-pinning," his face of brass, and body of "raw material," passed
through my mind, like Georgia trains through the Oconee Swamp, till
finally my darky friend came into view. He seemed at first a little
child, amid the blazing ruins of his wilderness home, gazing in stupid
horror on the burning bodies of his father and his kindred. Then he was
kneeling at the side of his dying mother in the slave-pen at Cape Lopez,
and--still a child--cooped in the "Black-hole" of the accursed
slave-ship, his little frame burning with the fever-fire, and his
child-heart longing for death. Then he seemed mounting the Cuban
slave-block, and as the "going! going! gone!" rung in my ear, he was
hurried away, and driven to the cruel task--still a child--on the hot,
unhealthy sugar-field. Again