This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[352]
to me, when showing us the lions of his hamlet.
“You see it in a place-get off as quickly as your horse will trot.
We call it fever-moss.
It is a sign that chills and fevers hang about.”
“ The weed seems widely spread; we see it everywhere along the Gulf.”
“Along this Gulf disease and death are widely spread.
It grows in every marsh and pool, round every lake and bay. You find it in Eastern Texas and Southern Louisiana, in Western Florida, and among the inland waters of Alabama.”
This parasite is ugly, fcetid, and of little use. Negroes rake it down and bury it in the earth.
In ten or twelve days the stench dies out, and then they dig it up and dry it in the sun. When crisp and hard, they stuff it into mattresses and pillows in place of straw.
Negroes are said to like sleeping on this dried fever-moss.
Brashear is a colony of Negroes, and a stronghold of the Black League.
Setting aside some dozen officers connected with the boats and trains, no White inhabitants dwell in Brashear.
Every doorway shows a Negro, every gutter a dusky imp. Grog-shops, billiard-rooms, and lottery stalls reek
1875.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.