Twelve Years a Slave Solomon Northup (android e book reader .txt) đ
- Author: Solomon Northup
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Lawson suggested that it might be, overseer Chapin would be appointed to inflict the punishment, in which case it would not be severe, whereupon Mary, Rachel, Bristol, and others hoped it would be Master Ford, and then it would be no whipping at all. They all pitied me and tried to console me, and were sad in view of the castigation that awaited me, except Kentucky John. There were no bounds to his laughter; he filled the cabin with cachinnations, holding his sides to prevent an explosion, and the cause of his noisy mirth was the idea of my outstripping the hounds. Somehow, he looked at the subject in a comical light. âI knowâd dey wouldânt cotch him, when he run cross de plantation. O, de lorâ, didânt Platt pick his feet right up, thoâ, hey? When dem dogs got whar he was, he wasânt darâ âhaw, haw, haw! O, de lorâ aâ mity!ââ âand then Kentucky John relapsed into another of his boisterous fits.
Early the next morning, Tibeats left the plantation. In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Tibeatsâ boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. I took off my hat, and answered that I was.
âHow would you like to work for me?â he inquired.
âOh, I would like to, very much,â said I, inspired with a sudden hope of getting away from Tibeats.
âYou worked under Myers at Peter Tannerâs, didnât you?â
I replied I had, adding some complimentary remarks that Myers had made concerning me.
âWell, boy,â said he, âI have hired you of your master to work for me in the Big Cane Brake, thirty-eight miles from here, down on Red River.â
This man was Mr. Eldret, who lived below Fordâs, on the same side of the bayou. I accompanied him to his plantation, and in the morning started with his slave Sam, and a wagon-load of provisions, drawn by four mules, for the Big Cane, Eldret and Myers having preceded us on horseback. This Sam was a native of Charleston, where he had a mother, brother and sisters. He âallowedââ âa common word among both black and whiteâ âthat Tibeats was a mean man, and hoped, as I most earnestly did also, that his master would buy me.
We proceeded down the south shore of the bayou, crossing it at Careyâs plantation; from thence to Huff Power, passing which, we came upon the Bayou Rouge road, which runs towards Red River. After passing through Bayou Rouge Swamp, and just at sunset, turning from the highway, we struck off into the âBig Cane Brake.â We followed an unbeaten track, scarcely wide enough to admit the wagon. The cane, such as are used for fishing-rods, were as thick as they could stand. A person could not be seen through them the distance of a rod. The paths of wild beasts run through them in various directionsâ âthe bear and the American tiger abounding in these brakes, and wherever there is a basin of stagnant water, it is full of alligators.
We kept on our lonely course through the âBig Caneâ several miles, when we entered a clearing, known as âSuttonâs Field.â Many years before, a man by the name of Sutton had penetrated the wilderness of cane to this solitary place. Tradition has it, that he fled thither, a fugitive, not from service, but from justice. Here he lived aloneâ ârecluse and hermit of the swampâ âwith his own hands planting the seed and gathering in the harvest. One day a band of Indians stole upon his solitude, and after a bloody battle, overpowered and massacred him. For miles the country round, in the slavesâ quarters, and on the piazzas of âgreat houses,â where white children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the âBig Cane,â is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated fieldâ âserpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture of desolation.
Passing âSuttonâs Field,â we followed a new-cut road two miles farther, which brought us to its termination. We had now reached the wild lands of Mr. Eldret, where he contemplated clearing up an extensive plantation. We went to work next morning with our cane-knives, and cleared a sufficient space to allow the erection of two cabinsâ âone for Myers and Eldret, the other for Sam, myself, and the slaves that were to join us. We were now in the midst of trees of enormous growth, whose wide-spreading branches almost shut out the light of the sun, while the space between the trunks was an impervious mass of cane, with here and there an occasional palmetto.
The bay and the sycamore, the oak and the cypress, reach a growth unparalleled, in those fertile lowlands bordering the Red River. From every tree, moreover, hang long, large masses of moss, presenting to the eye unaccustomed to them, a striking and singular appearance. This moss, in large quantities, is sent north, and there used for manufacturing purposes.
We cut down oaks, split them into rails, and with these erected temporary cabins. We covered the roofs with the broad palmetto leaf, an excellent substitute for shingles, as long as they last.
The greatest annoyance I met with here were small flies, gnats and mosquitoes. They swarmed the air. They penetrated the porches of the ear, the nose, the eyes, the mouth. They sucked themselves beneath the skin. It was impossible to brush or beat them off. It seemed, indeed, as if they would devour usâ âcarry us away piecemeal, in their small tormenting mouths.
A lonelier spot, or one more disagreeable, than the centre of the âBig Cane Brake,â it would be difficult to conceive; yet to me it was a paradise, in comparison with
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