Methods of Culture in the South. 123 



Only in the peace and beauty that crowned the closing hours of the 

 day, as we steamed past Fortress Monroe and up the Elizabeth river, did 

 the prosaic fade out of the hours just past, and now before us was the 

 " sunny South " and strawberries and cream. 



In the night there was a steady downfall of rain, but sunshine came 

 with the morning, and we found that the spring we had left at the North 

 was summer here, and saw that the season was moving forward with 

 quickened and elastic tread. Before the day grew warm, we started 

 from our hotel at Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and 

 bouncing past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement that 

 surpassed even the ups and downs of fortune. Here and there, sur- 

 rounded by a high brick wall, would be seen a fine old mansion, 

 embowered in a wealth of shrubbery and foliage that gave, even in the 

 midst of the city, a suburban seclusion. The honeysuckle and roses are 

 at home in Norfolk, and their exquisite perfume floated to us across the 

 high garden fences. Thank heaven ! some of the best things in the 

 world cannot be walled in. St. Paul's Church and quaint old burying- 

 ground, shadowed by trees, festooned with vines and gemmed with 

 flowers, seemed so beautiful, as we passed, that we thought its influence 

 on the secular material life of the people must be almost as good 

 through the busy week as on the Sabbath. 



The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country 

 stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves 

 of pine. The shell road ceased and our wheels now passed through 

 many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are pre- 

 served year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied class 

 of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on 

 any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and 

 buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks 

 laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, 

 piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and 

 so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts 

 drawn by cows all converging toward some northern steamer, whose 

 capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. We had 

 not proceeded very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, 

 sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right of it a large 

 barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, smithy, sheds, etc., grouped 

 about it. A previous visit enabled me to point out the cottage as the 

 home of the proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a straw- 

 berry crate manufactory. As was the case on large plantations in the 



