All about Savannah, within easy reach by trolley, motor or boat, lie pleasant retreats and interesting things to see.  The roads of the region, built by convict labor, are of the finest, and the convict prison camps are worth a visit.  In the Brown Farm camp, living conditions are certainly more sanitary than in ninety nine out of a hundred negro homes.  The place fairly shines with cleanliness, and there are many cases in which “regulars” at this camp are no sooner released than they offend again with the deliberate purpose of carrying out what may be termed a “back to the farm” movement.  The color line is drawn in southern jails and convict camps as elsewhere.  White prisoners occupy one barracks; negroes another.  The food and accommodations for both is the same.  The only race discrimination I could discover was that when white prisoners are punished by flogging, they are flogged with their clothes on, whereas, with negroes, the back is exposed.  The men in this camp are minor offenders and wear khaki overalls in place of the stripes in which the worse criminals, quartered in another camp, are dressed.  Strict discipline is maintained, but the life is wholesome.  The men are marched to work in the morning and back at night escorted by guards who carry loaded shotguns, and who always have with them a pack of ugly bloodhounds to be used in case escape is attempted.

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All the drives in this region are extremely picturesque, for the live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish moss, like faded, tattered battle-flags.

On country roads you will come, now and then, upon a negro burial ground of very curious character.  There may be such negro cemeteries in the upper Southern States, but if so I have never seen them.  In this portion of Georgia they are numerous, and their distinguishing mark consists in the little piles of household effects with which every grave is covered.  I do not know whether this is done to propitiate ghosts and devils (generally believed to “hant” these graveyards), or whether it is the idea that the deceased can still find use for the assortment of pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, statuettes, alarm-clocks, and heaven only knows what else, which were his treasured earthly possessions.

In Savannah, I have heard Commodore Tatnall, who used to live at Bonaventure, credited with having originated the saying “Blood is thicker than water,” but I am inclined to believe that the Commodore merely made apposite use of an old formula.  The story is told of one of the old Tatnalls that in the midst of a large dinner-party which he was giving at his mansion at Bonaventure plantation, a servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire.  Whereupon the old thoroughbred, instead of turning fireman, persisted in his role of host, ordering the full dining-room equipment to be moved out upon the lawn, where the company remained at dinner while the house burned down.