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Frank and the major rode in front, followed by the coxswain, who held fast to the horse which their prisoner rode, and Archie brought up the rear. In this manner they dashed along, passing several plantation-houses, whose inmates ran to the doors and gazed at them in astonishment.
In Europe there may, perhaps, be less bad taste, though I am not sure of that; but there, and everywhere, I think, the memorable houses, among those of recent date, are not those carefully elaborated for effect, the premeditated irregularity of the English Gothic, the trig regularity of the French Pseudo-Classic, or the studied rusticity of Germany, but such as seem to have grown of themselves out of the place where they stand, Swiss chalets, Mexican or Manila plantation-houses, Italian farm-houses, built, nobody knows when or by whom, and built without any thought of attracting attention.
It was a singular sensation, this going round and round over the same ground, so to speak, and for the life of me I could not understand how I seemed now and then to be passing the same plantation-houses and familiar landmarks. The skiff which accompanied me was also in the same predicament, sometimes pulling up and sometimes pulling down stream.
Pleasant still seemed our enterprise, as we anchored at early morning in the quiet waters of St. Simon's Sound, and saw the light fall softly on the beach and the low bluffs, on the picturesque plantation-houses which nestled there, and the graceful naval vessels that lay at anchor before us.
Thrice a day we go to the plantation-houses for our meals, camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect.
Dusky forms hovered over large iron cauldrons, continually thrusting down into the boiling dye the product of the looms, to be transformed into Confederate gray or butternut jeans. In the wide halls within the plantation-houses stood tables piled with newly-dyed cloth and hanks of woollen or cotton yarns. The knitting of socks went on incessantly.
The sugar-making season was well advanced, and the cutters were at work; the waggons creaked drearily after them; the Negro teamsters inspired the mules to greater speed with mellow and sonorous imprecations. Dark-green groves, blurred by the blue of distance, showed where the plantation-houses stood. The tall chimneys of the sugar-mills caught the eye miles distant, like lighthouses at sea.
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