mirrored in perfectly clear water. Here, indeed, might the poet have sung of How the water got there I cannot say. If it was simply the result of a flood, how came it so exquisitely clear? It seemed as though the forest grew naturally out of this pellucid mirror; the rather as we passed many open glades of blue water, where a race of lake-dwellers had built their cabins on piles. These glades I conceive to be “bayous,” but found no native who could inform me. In any case, I shall never forget that run up to Vicksburg. Until then, I scarcely knew 69the meaning of the word “green.” The South was afterwards to teach me many other shades of its significance. 69 This whole day’s journey lay through the “black belt” of the State of Mississippi. |Africa in the Ascendant.| It was manifest to the naked eye that the black population enormously outnumbered the white. Few and far between were the cottages occupied by white folks, numberless the cabins of the blacks. At the stations the blacks—who love hanging around railway stations—were to the whites as ten to one. They were a lively, good-humoured, talkative crowd, and on the whole, one would have said, a fine race physically. Neither the men nor the women showed any obvious sign of that dwindling vitality wherein my friend the Memphis bookseller rejoiced—which is not to say that he was entirely mistaken as regards the urban negro. These were rural negroes—a wholly different matter. |Africa in the Ascendant.| | | The newsman on the train was selling the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and I noticed that he found quite as many customers among the blacks as among the whites—two or three at each station. This would have gratified Mr. Booker Washington, for it was not only a proof of education but of easy circumstances—the paper costing just about as much as the Times. Mr. Washington, too, would have rejoiced to see the rather exquisitely-dressed negro cavalier, mounted 70on a pretty little well-bred mare, with spick-and-span new saddle and appurtenances, who, at Mound Bayou, rode up to the Jim Crow car, and chatted with a friend. Here was the Gospel of the Toothbrush supplemented by that of the curry-comb. 70 At this point I must face an avowal which I have long seen looming ahead. |The Jim Crow Car.| Without sincerity these impressions would be worse than useless. What I think about
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