After war was declared there was little danger of exposure, and the Africans belonging to Foster, to Jim and Tim Meaher were taken to the Meaher settlement, at what is known to-day as Magazine Point, where they were kindly treated by their respective owners. Those left at Burns Meaher’s plantation tell of great hardship. When they first arrived they were given one pair of shoes and never any more. Before daybreak they were sent to the fields to work and kept hard at it until night, when they returned home by torchlight. After the surrender, these joined the others of their tribe at Magazine Point. [Illustration: Wreck of the “Clotilde.”] CHAPTER IX TARKAR LIFE IN AMERICA Magazine Point--the site of Meaher’s mill and ship-yard--though but three miles from Mobile, was inaccessible, except by water or a circuitous route of some miles by land. Between the two places lay an impenetrable swamp and forest. Red clay hills rolled away from the northern border of this jungle, diversifying the strip of country between Three Mile Creek and Chickasabogue. This extensive area was known as Meaher’s hummock and was thickly wooded by a suburb forest of native trees--pine, cypress, bays, magnolias, beech, junipers, gums, and oaks. These had sheltered the goings and comings of many peoples. This place had been beloved by the Indians; some still lingered on among what the Tarkars called the “high trees,” living in their pine-bark tepees. During the Spanish régime it had been included in the grant of land known as the St. Louis tract, and Dr. Charles Mohr points out in his _Plant Life in Alabama_ that it must have been a feeding place for migratory birds, for tropical plants are found there which are not known to other parts of the coast. Near the mouth of Chickasabogue, overlooking the river, there is a prehistoric shell-mound, overgrown by patriarchal live-oaks, hundreds of years old, and on this the Tarkars had their first dwellings. Much has been told and written by casual visitors of the queer rites and superstitions of “Africa-Town”--the little cluster of huts which have long since been abandoned--none of which is substantiated by fact or by the actual knowledge of those who have known and appreciated the Tarkars. But nothing has been told of the other superstitions with which this region fairly reeks.