Rhetoric and Reality

Peter McCandless

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511977428.007

1 - Rhetoric and Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011

Peter McCandless

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Peter McCandless: Affiliation:
College of Charleston, South Carolina

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Summary

Black and white all mixed together,

Inconstant, strange, unhealthful weather

Burning heat and chilling cold

Dangerous both to young and old

Boisterous winds and heavy rains

Fevers and rheumatic pains

Agues plenty without doubt

Sores, boils, the prickling heat and gout

Mosquitoes on the skin make blotches

Centipedes and large cockroaches…

Water bad, past all drinking

Men and women without thinking…

Many a widow not unwilling

Many a beau not worth a shilling

Many a bargain if you strike it,

This is Charles-town, how do you like it?

Capt. Martin, captain of a Man of War, 1769

[Charleston] is a noble monument of what human avarice can effect; its soil is a barren burning sand; with a river on either side, overflowing into pestilential marshes, which exhale a contagion so pernicious as to render sleeping a single night within its influence, during the summer months, an experiment of the utmost hazard … But what will not men do, and bear, for money? These pestilential marshes are found to produce good rice, and the adjacent alluvions cotton; true, it is, no European frame could support the labour of cultivation, but Africa can furnish slaves, and thus amid contagion and suffering, both of oppressors and oppressed, has Charleston become a wealthy city – nay a religious one, too; to judge by the number of churches built, building, and to be built.

Francis Hall, 1817

Type: Chapter
Information: Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry , pp. 3 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511977428.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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