bonnets; many of the women, handkerchiefs, turban fashion, and a few nothing at all on their heads. They were evidently a picked lot. I thought that every one would pass for a "prime" cotton hand.
The slaves generally of this district appear uncommonly well—doubtless, chiefly, because the large incomes of their owners enables them to select the best from the yearly exportations of Virginia and Kentucky, but also because they are systematically well fed.
The plantation residences were of a cottage class, sometimes, but not usually, with extensive and tasteful grounds about them.
An old gentleman, sensible, polite, and communicative, who rode a short distance with me, said that many of the proprietors were absentees—some of the plantations had dwellings only for the negroes and the overseer. He called my attention to a field of cotton which, he said, had been ruined by his overseer's neglect. The negroes had been allowed at a critical time to be careless in their hoeing, and it would now be impossible to recover the ground then lost. Grass grew so rampantly in this black soil, that if it once got a good start ahead, you could never overtake it. That was the devil of a rainy season. Cotton could stand drouth better than it could grass.[1]*
- ↑ "Fine Prospect for Hay.—While riding by a field the other day, which looked as rich and green as a New England meadow, we observed to a man sitting on the fence, 'You have a fine prospect for hay, neighbour.' 'Hay! that's cotton-sir,' said he, with an emotion that betrayed an excitement which we cared to provoke no further; for we had as soon sport with a rattlesnake in the blind days of August as a farmer at this season of the year, badly in the grass. * * * "All jesting aside, we have never known so poor a prospect for cotton in this region. In some instances the fields are clean and well worked, but the cotton is diminutive in size and sickly in appearance. We have seen some fields so foul that it was almost impossible to tell what had been planted. "All this backwardness is attributable to the cold, wet weather that we have had almost constantly since the planting season commenced. When there was a warm spell, it was raining so that ploughs could not run to any advantage; so, between the cold and the rain, the cotton crop is very unpromising. * * *
