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. Mr. Johnson, Dr.
Kollock, Thomas Williams, and Henry Cunningham."
While in Savannah, I paid a visit to Bonaventure, formerly a country seat
of Governor Tatnall, but now abandoned. A pleasant drive of a mile or two,
through a budding forest, took us to the place, which is now itself almost
grown up into forest. Cedars and other shrubs hide the old terraces of the
garden, which is finely situated on the high bank of a river. Trees of
various kinds have also nearly filled the space between the noble avenues
of live-oaks which were planted around the mansion. But these oaks - never
saw finer trees - certainly I never saw so many majestic and venerable
trees together. I looked far down the immense arches that overshadowed the
broad passages, as high as the nave of a Gothic cathedral, apparently as
old, and stretching to a greater distance. The huge boughs were clothed
with gray moss, yards in length, which clung to them like mist, or hung in
still festoons on every side, and gave them the appearance of the vault of
a vast vapory cavern. The cawing of the crow and the scream of the jay,
however, reminded us that we were in the forest. Of the mansion there are
no remains; but in the thicket of magnolias and other trees, among
rosebushes and creeping plants, we found a burial-place with monuments of
some persons to whom the seat had belonged.
Savannah is more healthy of late years than it formerly was. An
arrangement has been made with the owners of the plantations in the
immediate vicinity by which the culture of rice has been abandoned, and
the lands are no longer allowed to be overflowed within a mile from the
city. The place has since become much less subject to fevers than in
former years.
I left, with a feeling of regret, the agreeable society of Savannah. The
steamboat took us to St. Mary's, through passages between the sea-islands
and the main-land, similar to those by which we had arrived at Savannah.
In the course of the day, we passed a channel in which we saw several huge
alligators basking on the bank. The grim creatures slid slowly into the
water at our approach.
