A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a
month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever. The island
has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactly to the main
shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats used to navigate.
No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.' Some farmer will turn
up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt, and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region. These poor
people could never travel when they were slaves; so they make up for the
privation now. They stay on a plantation till the desire to travel
seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat, and clear out. Not
for any particular place; no, nearly any place will answer; they only
want to be moving. The amount of money on hand will answer the rest of
the conundrum for them. If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let
it be fifty. If not, a shorter flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails. Sometimes
there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins, populous
with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless patches of dry
ground here and there; a few felled trees, with skeleton cattle, mules,
and horses, eating the leaves and gnawing the bark - no other food for
them in the flood-wasted land.
