rison Gohagen,--a quiet yellow man, young, smooth-faced, and
diligent,--of course he is lord of some hundred acres, and we expect to
see a vision of well-kept rooms and fat beds and laughing children.
For has he not fine fences? And those over yonder, why should they
build fences on the rack-rented land? It will only increase their rent.

On we wind, through sand and pines and glimpses of old plantations,
till there creeps into sight a cluster of buildings,--wood and brick,
mills and houses, and scattered cabins. It seemed quite a village. As
it came nearer and nearer, however, the aspect changed: the buildings
were rotten, the bricks were falling out, the mills were silent, and
the store was closed. Only in the cabins appeared now and then a bit
of lazy life. I could imagine the place under some weird spell, and
was half-minded to search out the princess. An old ragged black man,
honest, simple, and improvident, told us the tale. The Wizard of the
North--the Capitalist--had rushed down in the seventies to woo this coy
dark soil. He bought a square mile or more, and for a time the
field-hands sang, the gins groaned, and the mills buzzed. Then came a
change. The agent's son embezzled the funds and ran off with them.
Then the agent himself disappeared. Finally the new agent stole even
the books, and the company in wrath closed its business and its houses,
refused to sell, and let houses and furniture and machinery rust and
rot. So the Waters-Loring plantation was stilled by the spell of
dishonesty, and stands like some gaunt rebuke to a scarred land.

Somehow that plantation ended our day's journey; for I could not shake
off the influence of that silent scene. Back toward town we glided,
past the straight and thread-like pines, past a dark tree-dotted pond
where the air was heavy with a dead sweet perfume. White
slender-legged curlews flitted by us, and the garnet blooms of the
cotton looked gay against the green and purple stalks. A peasant girl
was hoeing in the field, white-turbaned and black-limbed. All this we
saw, but the spell still lay upon us.

How curious a land is this,--how full of untold story, of tragedy and
laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic
past, and big with future promise! This is the Black Belt of Georgia.
Dougherty County is the west end of the Black Belt, and men once called
it the Egypt of the Confederacy. It is full of historic interest.
First th