132 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



kept up for some time, you would have thought the whole 

 nation of snakes had been there in parliament assembled. 

 The anxious mother soon flew in again when we had 

 removed our ladder, gratified, no doubt, to find no murder 

 done." 



He had no opportunity for making many excursions 

 while he was at Mount Pleasant, and, indeed, the general 

 monotony of the thinly peopled country did not greatly 

 invite a traveller. On one occasion (June 2) he rode to 

 Cahawba and back, and saw something of the central dis- 

 trict of Alabama. Cahawba had then until lately been the 

 capital of the state and the seat of government ; it had, 

 however, decayed so rapidly, that the legislature had 

 removed to Tuscaloosa, Montgomery being as yet a little 

 place of no importance. The town of Cahawba stands on 

 a point of land between the Alabama river and the 

 Cahawba river ; it was, even then, a very desolate looking 

 collection of a few stores, a lawyer's office or so, and 

 two or three houses of business. Even the "groceries," as 

 the rum-shops were called, seemed, as the visitor went by, 

 to spread the hospitality of their verandahs almost in vain. 

 To reach Cahawba from Mount Pleasant had involved a 

 long ride through the dense pine forest, with hardly a 

 break save where the path dipped down, through a glade 

 of thickly blossomed hydrangea, to some deep and treacher- 

 ous "creek" or rivulet. The road led at last to the shore 

 of the broad Alabama, and there seemed no way to cross. 

 A shout, however, soon brought two old "nigger fellows" 

 into sight, slowly pushing a flat ferry-boat across. There 

 was no inn or house near by to put up his horse, so the 

 traveller took him into a little wood, according to the prac- 

 tice of the country, and tied him to a tree. 



The squirrels form a prominent feature of forest-life in 

 the Southern States. Deep in the woodlands they are not 



