The Charleston city negroes were represented as unexpectedly intelligent. “Out of two hundred and seventy-four laborers at work on the streets,” said one of the city officials who had joined us, “one hundred and seventy-four are negroes—the rest whites. Of the negroes, over a hundred (or over four-sevenths) can read, while scarcely one-seventh of the whites have made the same advancement!”[11] Captain Bradford gave a significant illustration of the progress of some ideas among the less intelligent negroes of the country. They had again and again asked him, he said, what good it did them to make them free, unless they were to own the land on which they had been working, and which they had made productive and valuable. “Gib us our own land and we take care ourselves; but widout land, de ole massas can hire us or starve us, as dey please.” A huge mass of iron was pointed out as we passed, not unlike the plates of the famous “Merrimac,” or like the gunboat “Benton,” on the Mississippi. It was one of the Rebel iron clads, sunk just before the evacuation of the city. They had injured it very little, and our authorities are confident of making it one of the best iron clads in the service. Enforced self-reliance, had, indeed, gone far toward making the South a nation; for here were fine engines, worthy of our most extensive Northern shops, which had been manufactured in Georgia within a year. Before the war, such an undertaking as making engines for a great steamer, in the South, was scarcely dreamed of. Near the iron clad lay some of the cigar-shaped torpedo boats—an invention never very successful, and now, let us hope, with its occupation, wholly gone. The obstructions in the harbor, which so long kept the iron clads under Dupont and Dahlgren at bay, still stretched in a long line, unbroken in parts, across from Sumter toward the land on either side. Plenty of torpedoes were supposed to be still in the harbor—Captain Bradford himself had been blown up not long ago by one of them, to the serious discomposure of his personal effects, in cabin and state-room, but without actual physical injury. * * * * * But for two things, a stranger might have supposed Sumter a mere pile of mortar, stones and sand, which only culpable lack of enterprise left to block up the harbor. From the center of the rubbish rose a flagstaff, with the stars and stripes floating at the top; and near the water’s edge, uninjured casements still stood among the debris, with black muzzles peeping out, as from the lower deck of an old ship of the line. Closer inspection showed, also, some little howitzers and other light pieces, placed on what was once the parapet.