Without many more words we rode into the forest which lay between Clayville and Moore’s plantation.  Through the pine barrens ran the road, and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers.  The sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect blossom.  Here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home, and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf of the “live oak,” combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar.  There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun’s beams only painted, as it were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all the boughs.

The trees grew thinner as the road approached the town.  Dusty were the ways, and sultry the air, when we rode into Clayville and were making for “the noisy middle market-place.”  Clayville was but a small border town, though it could then boast the presence of a squadron of cavalry, sent there to watch the “border ruffians.”  The square was neither large nor crowded, but the spectacle was strange and interesting to me.  Men who had horses or carts to dispose of were driving or riding about, noisily proclaiming the excellence of their wares.  But buyers were more concerned, like myself, with the slave-market.  In the open air, in the middle of the place, a long table was set.  The crowd gathered round this, and presented types of various sorts of citizens.  The common “mean white” was spitting and staring—­a man fallen so low that he had no nigger to wallop, and was thus even more abject, because he had no natural place and functions in local society, than the slaves themselves.  The local drunkard was uttering sagacities to which no mortal attended.  Two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a few planters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen, loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general.  At either end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with the traditional facetiousness of the profession.  As the “lots” came on for sale they mounted the platform, generally in family parties.  A party would fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according to its numbers and “condition.”  The spectacle was painful and monstrous.  Most of the “lots” bore the examination of their points with a kind of placid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddings grew keen and flattered their pride.