CHAPTER IX.
FROM LOUISIANA THROUGH TEXAS.
The largest part of the cotton crop of the United States is
now produced in the Mississippi valley, including the lands
contiguous to its great Southern tributary streams, the Red
River and others. The proportion of the whole crop which is
produced in this region is constantly and very rapidly increasing.
This increase is chiefly gained by the forming of new
plantations and the transfer of slave-labour westward. The
common planter of this region lives very differently to those
whose plantations I have hitherto described. What a very
different person he is, and what a very different thing his
plantation is from the class usually visited by travellers in the
South, I learned by an extended experience. I presume
myself to have been ordinarily well-informed when I started
from home, but up to this point in my first journey had no
correct idea of the condition and character of the common cotton-planters.
I use the word common in reference to the whole
region: there are some small districts in which the common
planter is a rich man—really rich. But over the whole district
there are comparatively few of these, and in this chapter
I wish to show what the many are—as I found them. I
shall draw for this purpose upon a record of experience extending
through nearly twelve months, but obtained in different
journeys and in two different years.
My first observation of the common cotton-planters was
