St. Helenaville, Thursday, January 26, 1865.
We are often put to it for forage, and being distressingly short, we got into the way of turning our beasts out to pick brush. They often went to the marsh for the salt grass, but we hoped for the best. One night this week when it was pouring rain, it was discovered that the horses had not come up. I sent a boy after them. He went, and not finding them, went quietly home, not letting me know. Brister had been away, but after I knew he had been home a long time, I went to his house and asked him if he had been for the horses. “No.” They never go for the animals in rainy weather. I started Brister and the boy both after the horses, charging them to look in the bog first, and tell me when they found them. An hour or two after, I got uneasy and went to Brister’s house again. There he and the boy sat, and informed me, or rather let me stormily guess, that Betty was in the bog. The way they did it was by assuring me that Charley and Saxby were not “bogged.” I had the nice kerosene lantern I bought at the fair, and we all set out together, for I was sure that at the least discouragement they would turn back, and the tide coming up, Betty would be dead by morning. I was equipped for the weather, but had rubber shoes — if they had only been boots! We found poor Betty worn out with her struggles, and though we got her twice to her feet, the first step forward she sank to her shoulder again, or else a hind leg would go down. I think Brister and Harry would have tried “licking” her up, and letting her sink till the tide drove them off and drowned her, but I insisted upon Brister’s going for more men, which he did at last. Then Betty was thrown on her side, her hind legs tied together and she was hauled to firm ground. While Brister went for the men we were doing our best — the two boys and I — to get Betty up and out, but she only got up and tumbled down again. The next day she was stiff, but pretty well, and I went to school.
It was so cold this morning that there was ice made while the bucket was being drawn up from the well. Of course there was ice in our basins and pitchers. As this is almost the first time I have had to stay away from school since I have been down here, the schoolchildren went home with open-mouthed wonder, “Miss Towne de sick,” having given Fanny, who took my class, all the trouble they could. I think I shall let it go to-morrow (Friday) and I hope by Monday to have hearing enough to go back to it. Fanny is spending a week with us, her first visit. Great changes are taking place. Edisto is to be reoccupied and that takes Mr. John Alden, one of our best friends, away — he is to be General Superintendent. Then Mr. Tomlinson is made Inspector General of Freedmen’s affairs and goes to Beaufort. Mr. Williams[1] is to be our General Superintendent. So we are, as usual, in an upside-down state. The poor negroes die as fast as ever. The children are all emaciated to the last degree, and have such violent coughs and dysenteries that few survive. It is frightful to see such suffering among children. Our little waif is almost well, but is a sulky, lazy, vicious little piece. We shall not keep her any longer than we can help. Her cousin is still in the hospital and will take her, when she comes out, to “mind child.” Most of our good people and children are going back to Edisto. We lose Hastings, our mainstay here, Brister, Clarissa, and ever so many of our brightest scholars.
[1] C. F. Williams.
