Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[205] found it best, to shove off shore-boats, expel all visitors, ‘drop down’ out of the influences of the port, and send an officer or two back, to arrange these last things. A boat was now ac cordingly dispatched back to the town, for this purpose, and as she would not return until late in the night, inviting the surgeon and paymaster, and my clerk to accompany me, I pulled on shore, in my gig, to make a visit to an adjoining sugar plantation, that lay close by, tempting us to a stroll under its fine avenues of cocoanut and acacia trees. We were received very hospitably at the planter's mansion, where we found some agreeable ladies, and with whom we stayed late enough, to take tea, at their pressing solicitation. It was a Hollandese household, but all the inmates spoke excellent English. Whilst tea was being prepared, we wandered over the premises, the sugar-house included, where we witnessed all the processes of sugar making, from the expression of the juice from the cane, to the crystallization of the syrup. There were crowds of negroes on the place, old and young, male and female—some at work, and some at play; the players being rather the more numerous of the two classes. The grounds around the dwelling were tastefully laid out, in serpentine walks, winding through a wilderness of rare tropical shrubbery, redolent of the most exquisite of perfumes. True to the Dutch instinct for the water, the river, or rather the bay, for the river has now disembogued into an arm of the sea, washed the very walls of the flower-garden, and the plash, or rather the monotonous fretting of the tiny waves, at their base, formed no unmusical accompaniment to the hum of conversation, as the evening wore away. Among other plants, we noticed the giant maguey, and a great variety of the cactus, that favorite child of the sun. Our visit being over, we took a warm leave of our hospitable entertainers, and pulled on board the Sumter, by moonlight, deeply impressed, and softened as well by the harmonies of nature, and feeling as little like ‘pirates,’ as possible.

The next morning, having run up our boats, and taken a final leave of the waters of the Surinam, we steamed out to sea, crossing the bar about meridian; the weather being fine, and the wind fresh from the north-east. Having given it out that we were, bound to Barbadoes, to look for the Keystone State,