Oglethorpe seems to have understood how a city should be
built in a warm climate, and the people of the place are fond of reminding
the stranger that the original plan of the founder has never been departed
from. The town, so charmingly embowered, reminded me of New Haven, though
the variety of trees is greater. In my walks about the place I passed a
large stuccoed building of a dull-yellow color, with broad arched windows,
and a stately portico, on each side of which stood a stiff looking
palmetto, as if keeping guard. The grim aspect of the building led me to
ask what it was, and I was answered that it was "the old United States
Bank," It was the building in which the Savannah branch of that bank
transacted business, and is now shut up until the time shall come when
that great institution shall be revived. Meantime I was pained to see that
there exists so little reverence for its memory, and so little gratitude
for its benefits, that the boys have taken to smashing the windows, so
that those who have the care of the building have been obliged to cover
them with plank. In another part of the city I was shown an African
church, a neat, spacious wooden building, railed in, and kept in excellent
order, with a piazza extending along its entire front. It is one of the
four places of worship for the blacks of the town, and was built by negro
workmen with materials purchased by the contributions of the whites.
South of the town extends an uninclosed space, on one side of which is a
pleasant grove of pines, in the shade of which the members of a quoit-club
practice their athletic sport. Here on a Saturday afternoon, for that is
their stated time of assembling, I was introduced to some of the most
distinguished citizens of Savannah, and witnessed the skill with which
they threw the discus. No apprentices were they in the art; there was no
striking far from the stake, no sending the discus rolling over the green;
they heaped the quoits as snugly around the stakes as if the amusement
had been their profession.
In the same neighborhood, just without the town, lies the public cemetery
surrounded by an ancient wall, built before the revolution, which in some
places shows the marks of shot fired against it in the skirmishes of that
period. I entered it, hoping to find some monuments of those who founded
the city a hundred and ten years ago, but the inscriptions are of
comparatively recent date. Most of them commemorate the death of persons
born in Europe, or the northern states. I was told that the remains of the
early inhabitants lie in the brick tombs, of which there are many without
any inscription whatever.
At a little distance, near a forest, lies the burial-place of the black
population. A few trees, trailing with long moss, rise above hundreds of
nameless graves, overgrown with weeds; but here and there are scattered
memorials of the dead, some of a very humble kind, with a few of marble,
and half a dozen spacious brick tombs like those in the cemetery of the
whites. Some of them are erected by masters and mistresses to the memory
of favorite slaves. One of them commemorates the death of a young woman
who perished in the catastrophe of the steamer Pulaski, of whom it is
recorded, that during the whole time that she was in the service of her
mistress, which was many years, she never committed a theft, nor uttered a
falsehood. A brick monument, in the shape of a little tomb, with a marble
slab inserted in front, has this inscription:
"In memory of Henrietta Gatlin, the infant stranger, born in East
Florida, aged 1 year 3 months."
A graveyard is hardly the place to be merry in, but I could not help
smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab
commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the
explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of
powder. It closes with this curious sentence:
"This stone was erected by the members of the Axe Company, Coopers and
Committee of the 2nd African Church of Savannah for the purpose of
having a Herse for benevolent purposes, of which he was the first
sexton."
A poor fellow, who went to the other world by water, has a wooden slab to
mark his grave, inscribed with these words:
"Sacred to the memory of Robert Spencer who came to his Death by A Boat,
July 9th, 1840, aged 21 years.
Reader as you am now so once I
And as I am now so Mus you be Shortly.
Amen."
Another monument, after giving the name of the dead, has this sentence:
"Go home Mother dry up your weeping tears. Gods will be done."
Another, erected to Sarah Morel, aged six months, has this ejaculation:
"Sweet withered lilly farewell."
One of the monuments is erected to Andrew Bryan, a black preacher, of the
Baptist persuasion. A long inscription states that he was once imprisoned
"for preaching the Gospel, and, without ceremony, severely whipped;" and
that, while undergoing the punishment, "he told his persecutors that he
not only rejoiced to be whipped, but was willing to suffer death for the
cause of Christ." He died in 1812, at the age of ninety-six; his funeral,
the inscription takes care to state, was attended by a large concourse of
people, and adds:
"An address was delivered at his death by the Rev.
