At daylight we were steaming into the broad sheet of water which Dupont first made famous, and which our sailors have since come to consider the finest harbor on the Southern coast. Admiral Dahlgren had evidently prepared the naval authorities for our arrival. Within a few moments, the numerous vessels were dressed in all their colors, the sailors manned the yards, and a salute was fired from all the men of war in the harbor. A few minutes later a deluge of naval officers set in, till the quarter deck of the “Wayanda” overflowed with the dignitaries, and the indefatigable boatswain grew weary blowing his whistle as they came over the ship’s side.

Everybody seemed possessed with the mania of speculation. Even these naval gentlemen were infected by it; and we saw no civilians or army officers who were not profoundly versed in the rival claims of Hilton Head, Bay Point and Beaufort. That a great city must spring up hereabouts, has been laid down as an axiom. This is the best harbor on the coast, while that of Charleston is positively bad, and that of Savannah is contracted, and not easy of access. Situated midway between the two, the speculators insist that it ought to fall legitimate heir to the trade of both. Besides, the Carolina sea-coast must have a seaport, and Charleston is so utterly ruined, they argue, and so odious to the nation that Northern trade and capital would discriminate against it, in favor of its younger rival. And the most flourishing part of South Carolina to-day is made up of the sea islands, cultivated by the freedmen, all whose trade already centers here. Therefore, for these reasons, and many more, which your speculator will set out in ample array before you, if you only listen, it is necessary and fated that a great city should grow up on the waters of Port Royal harbor.

But where?—that is the rub. Not at Hilton Head, say some, for there are hurricanes there, every dozen years or so, that blow everything flat, and even now, in rough weather, shipping can hardly live at the wharf. Not at Bay Point, rejoin the Hilton Head landholders, for it is low and unhealthy. And not at Beaufort, some ten or fifteen miles up Broad river from here, they both agree, because it is so far off.

And so, while they make it quite clear that an immense fortune is to be realized here by the purchase of real estate, they leave one in the most provoking uncertainty as to the precise point at which the fortune is located. It is very clear that you can treble and quadruple and quintuple your money here in two or three years—if you don’t lose it all by investing in the wrong place! But, alas, what good did it do Archimedes to know that he could move the world, when he couldn’t find the place to fix his lever?

Hilton Head has taken a start, however, and quite a village of frame houses line the shore—wide, roomy cottages, occupied by army officers, and mostly built for them by the Government, under a liberal construction of the regulations about providing the officers with quarters, making up the street fronting on the water. Back of these are warehouses and other Government buildings; and a row of two-story houses, ambitiously entitled “Broadway” or some other high-sounding name, by the occupants, has received, from the unfortunates who are compelled to frequent it, the more expressive designation of “Robbers’ Row.” It is the street of the sutlers!

General Gillmore had arrived from Charleston in advance, and he had carriages in waiting for us when we landed. Captain James, of his staff, had provided horses for those who preferred to ride, and the delights of a gallop along the superb beach were not to be overrated. The sun was intensely hot, and the horses were in a lather, almost in a moment; but the Captain said they were used to it, and that they really seemed to stand as much fatigue and rough usage here as at the North.

Half an hour’s ride brought us to an extraordinary collection of cabins, arranged in long streets, and teeming with little woolly-headed, big-stomached picaninnies, in all stages of primitive costume. This was the village of Mitchelville, so named in honor of General Ormsby M. Mitchel, who died here shortly after he had begun his work, but not until he had impressed the grateful negroes with a firm belief in his friendship. The population is made up entirely of freedmen, and is regularly organized, with a Mayor and Common Council, Marshal, Recorder and Treasurer—all black, and all, except the Mayor and Treasurer, elected by the negroes themselves.^[17] The Common Council requires every child, between the ages of six and fifteen, to attend school regularly, except in cases where their services are absolutely necessary for the support of their parents, of which the teacher is made the judge! General Mitchel was one of Cincinnati’s contributions to the war. But is Cincinnati behind Mitchelsville?

As we passed up Broad river, in the afternoon, a straggling collection of old two-story frame houses, with faded paint and decayed boards, but with the inevitable wide halls and spacious verandahs, rose among the islands on the left. Of old, it was the very center of the aristocratic country residences of the wealthier South Carolinians; to-day, it is the capital, if I may so call it, of a new community of South Carolinians, liberated by the war, and settled on the famous sea-island plantations.

“Here,” says some one, “secession was first plotted,” and he points out houses which had been the residences of the Barnwells and the Barnwell Rhetts. Near here, another tells, is the plantation where the “South-Side View” was taken; and there are negroes in the village who tell of the rustic seat in the bough of a great live-oak tree, where Dr. Nehemiah Adams wrote the book, and of the appetizing claret cobblers they bore him to cheer him up, from time to time, in his work. Could the good Doctor return now, he would scarcely find the blacks so affectionately attentive, but he would be pleased to see that the plantation is in a much higher state of cultivation than when it elicited his eulogies.

General Saxton had carriages waiting for us at the wharf, and, after a short drive through the sandy streets, we were taken to see the dress-parade of a regiment of negroes, commanded by a brother of General Howard. The men marched from their camps, by companies, into line with as steady a tramp and as soldierly a carriage as the average of other troops, and, however lacking in beauty the individual negro may be, the bitterest negro hater would have been willing to admit a thousand of them looked handsome. Yet these men were scarcely a month from the plantations! They had made little progress in the drill beyond the manual of arms and the formation of the regimental line, but what they did know, they knew thoroughly. They were all coal black, and seemed larger and more muscular than the negro troops raised farther north.

General Saxton has, within his present district, over a hundred thousand negroes. He claims that all are now absolutely self-sustaining, save those swept in the wake of Sherman’s march. Even the rations issued to these are charged to them, and the thrifty negroes make all haste to quit leaning on the Government, lest their debt should swell to too great proportions. Most of the older-settled negroes, who were originally dependent on Government support, have already repaid the advances thus made them, and many have, besides, accumulated what is, for them, a handsome competence.

The astonishment of our Doctor at the changes he witnessed, among these scenes of his earlier life, is unbounded. His old slaves have been greeting him very enthusiastically; and many a hand-kissing, or worse, has “Massa Richard” had to endure; but he sees among them manliness of bearing, and a sober cheerfulness wholly novel to his experience of negro character; and he begins to suspect that perhaps, after all, there were characteristics of the negro nature which all his former familiarity with it had not disclosed. Withal, he says, that he never saw the slaves of Beaufort so well clad, or seemingly so comfortable. General Saxton rather proudly responds that the peasantry of no country in the world is better behaved or more prosperous.