A day or two after my visit to the plantations just described, I started on a little horseback trip down the river. I was furnished with letters to a planter, nineteen or twenty miles down, and I supposed that the distance might be easily made in three hours. I left Natchez at two; but the delays at the ferry made it three before I reached the Louisiana side of the river. The February frosts had been keen, but the afternoon was oppressively warm. For miles along the bank of the river the horizon was blue and misty with the columns of smoke from the trash-gangs on the plantations. Here and there an ox-team was passed by the roadside, hauling willow-poles from the river banks to repair the fences. The negroes were at work on every plantation—the plows near the road, the trash-gang further back toward the swamp that everywhere shut in the view. Houses appeared at but rare intervals, not averaging one per mile. But few seemed to be more than the mere lodgings for the overseers. There were no poor whites in this country, from which the aristocratic planters had driven them. Behind or beside each house stretched the unvarying double row of quarters, with the little mud-floored porches in front, and the swarms of little picaninnies tumbling about in the sunshine. Every one had accommodations for at least a hundred negroes. Coveys of quails and broods of pigeons started up with a whir by the roadside; and, occasionally, from the fields came faintly the shout of some plowman to his team. Other sounds they were none—the country seemed almost as silent as the unbroken wilderness. Not a traveler was seen on the whole road.

I had miscalculated the strength of my horse, and nightfall found me six or seven miles from my destination. For some time the road had been leading along the top of a high levee, a little distance from the river. The plantations were very low and partially covered with water. Finally the levee led off directly into the cypress swamp at a point where the land had been thought too low to be worth clearing out. Briars grew over its sides and occasionally stretched across the path; the road was very rough, and to leave it, on either hand, was to ride down the side of the levee into the swamp. Finally the exhausted horse could carry me no further, and I was compelled to dismount and plod slowly along on foot. Now and then the whir of a covey of quails sounded startling in the darkness—on either hand could be heard the rush of ducks and geese in the water. There were deer in the swamps, I had been told, and likewise bears. The latter suggestion was scarcely a pleasant one.

By and by the darkness became less profound on the river side of the levee; and straining my eyes to make out the dimly defined objects, I saw what seemed a two thousand acre plantation, with a large set of negro quarters outside the levee. Outside or inside, I was determined to stop there. Starting down the side of the levee I soon found that the ground was swampy. Returning, and following along the beaten road, I presently came directly up to the river—stopped short, in fact, within half-a-dozen feet of its brink. Turning up the bank I started again for the quarters, now more clearly seen. It was no slight disappointment to discover that they were unoccupied! The plantation had been thrown outside the levee, on account of a change in the current of the river, had been abandoned for years, and was under water every spring!

Groping my way tediously back to the road, I started again down the river. Half an hour’s walk brought me to a light, glimmering through the open windows of some negro quarters. The blacks showed the way to the house—further back from the levee—and here explicit directions were given for the plantation I was seeking. I had only to go down the river a couple of miles further, then turn off through a gate, follow the road across a little lake and along its bank for a quarter of a mile. All went well till I crossed the lake. Then, near where I supposed the house ought to be, bright lights were shining, and a beaten path, through an open gate led to them, and so I walked half across the plantation to find that the trash-gang had been firing some dead cypress trees, and that, instead of the house, I was near the swamp!

It was after ten o’clock when at last, groping my way among the negro quarters, I reached the double cabin, fronting the street, where the overseer lived. No other person was at home, but the welcome was a hearty one. Fried bacon and corn-bread were speedily served up for supper, and the fatigues of the journey forgotten as the jovial overseer told his experiences in running off slaves to Texas, when the Yankees came, and his disgust, that after all his trouble, the whole work proved useless.

This plantation contained eight hundred acres of land cleared for cotton, besides a thousand or twelve hundred of timber-land, covered with hackberry, cypress, and cotton-wood; a portion of which ran down to the river bank and afforded an excellent site for a wood-yard. Plenty of negroes could be hired to chop wood for a dollar per cord. Half a dollar more would pay for its delivery on the river bank, where steamboats bought all they could get for five dollars per cord—thus affording the proprietor of the wood-yard a net profit of three dollars and a half on every cord.

Less than fifty hands had yet been hired on the plantation; not as many by at least thirty, the overseer said, as were absolutely needed to cultivate the eight hundred acres; but with this inadequate force the work on the plantation was further advanced than on any I had seen. The most cordial good-feeling seemed to exist between the negroes and the overseer. “Him allus good man in de ole slavery times. He allus did jussice to us niggers,” said one of them. For twenty years this man had done nothing but oversee negroes. He boasted of having made, one unusually good year, seventeen bales to the hand. Here he expected to make about twelve or thirteen—not less, if the high water did not interfere, than a bale to every acre of the whole eight hundred. The proprietors paid ten thousand dollars for the lease. Twenty thousand dollars would probably pay the running expenses, (including the hire of additional hands, if they could be got,) and the net profit therefore ought to be nearly or quite fifty thousand dollars in a favorable year.

The laborers here went to the fields at daybreak. About eight o’clock all stopped for breakfast, which they had carried with them in their little tin buckets. Half an hour later they were at work again. At twelve they went to the quarters for dinner; at half-past one they resumed work, and at sunset they could be seen filing back in long noisy rows across the plantation, shouting, singing, and arranging for the evening dance.

They were divided into three gangs: the “hoes, log-rollers, and plows.” The plantation had been neglected for the last four years; briars grew everywhere, and the ground was covered with logs. The whole scene, when the laborers were at work, was one of the utmost animation. The overseer kept the three gangs near each other, the hoes ahead, pushing hard behind them the log-rollers, and shouting constantly to the log-rollers to keep out of their way the plowmen. The air was filled with a dense smoke from the burning briars and logs. Moving about among the fires, raking together the trash, chopping the briars, now seizing a brand from a burning heap, and dextrously firing half-a-dozen new ones, then hurrying forward to catch up with the gang, singing, laughing, teasing the log-rollers to “cotch us if you kin,” were the short-skirted, black-faced damsels, twenty or twenty-five in number, who composed the trash-gang.

Before the little heaps were half burnt the log-rollers were among them. A stout, black fellow, whisky bottle in hand, gave directions. At least half the gang were women, each armed, like the men, with a formidable handspike. They were very proud of their distinction, and wanted it understood that dey wasn’t none ob you’ triflin’ hoe han’s; dey was log-rollers, dey was. Selecting the log hardest to be moved, as the center for a heap, the driver shouted, “Now, heah, hurry up dat log dere, and put it on dis side heah!” A dozen handspikes were thrust under the log, and every woman’s voice shouted, in shrill chorus, “Come up wid de log! come up wid the log!” Sometimes the spikes were thrust under, and the log was lifted bodily, the foreman shouting, “Man agin man dere! gal agin gal! all togedder wid you, if you ’spec any water out o’ dis bottle!”

Sometimes, before these heaps were fired, the plows were upon them, every plowman urging his mules almost into a trot, and the driver occasionally shouting, “Git out o’ de way, there, you lazy log-rollers, or we plow right ober ye.” The land was a loose loam, turning up like an ash-heap; and both negroes and mules seemed to thrive on the hard work.

The overseer rarely left the field. With one leg lazily thrown across the pummel of his saddle, he lounged in his seat, occasionally addressing a mild suggestion to one of the men, or saying to the driver that the other gangs were pressing him pretty close. Then, riding over to the next, he would quietly hint that the trash-gang was getting ahead of them, or that the plows would catch them soon, if they weren’t careful. All treated him with the utmost respect. I am satisfied that no Northern laborers, of the same degree of intelligence, ever worked more faithfully, more cheerfully, or with better results.

On the first of April, the overseer told me, he intended to stop plowing and plant the land then prepared. Then he should resume plowing, and keep on plowing and planting till the whole eight hundred acres were taken up. If he could finish it by the middle of May he should feel sure of a good crop. Planting ended, he should go over the land, throwing the earth away from the young and tender cotton-plant, with a moldboard plow. The hoes would follow the plows, carefully dressing up the rows, and thinning out the cotton to one stalk for about every eighteen inches. Then fresh scrapings, and plowings, and hoeings, continued, without intermission, till perhaps the middle of July. Then would follow a month of leisure, to be spent making cotton baskets, repairing fences, and preparing the gins. By the middle of August, the lower bolls would be opening, and the pickers would take the field. A couple of days later the gin would be started. From that time until Christmas there would be one constant hurry to pick and gin the crop as it bolled out. Fifty bales a week were the capacity of the gin, and the overseer expected to keep it driven to the utmost. Every Saturday, the cotton baled through the week would be hauled to the river bank and shipped to New Orleans. By the last of August, returns would be coming in from the crop, and from that time the financial battle for the proprietors was over.

A day or two later I rode several miles further down the river, to a plantation of two thousand five hundred acres, one thousand two hundred of cleared land, which had recently been purchased for fifty-six thousand dollars by a Northern man. The house was a comfortable two-story frame, with abundant porches and large windows, looking directly out through the carefully trimmed shrubbery, upon the Mississippi, which flowed scarcely twenty yards from the door-step. At the North, it would have been considered a very proper residence for a substantial farmer owning a couple of hundred acres. On the river-bank stood a curious log structure, built from the fragments of two or three old flat-boats. Here, with genuine Yankee thrift, the new proprietor had established a store to catch the negro trade. Its business was done entirely for cash, and its sales averaged over fifty dollars a day—all made at an average profit of one hundred per. cent. Calicoes, cottonades, denims, shoes, hats, brass jewelry, head handkerchiefs, candy, tobacco, sardines, cheese, and whisky were the great staples. The latter was always watered down at least one-fourth, and the “fine” was kept up by a liberal introduction of red pepper-pods.

The work here did not seem to be progressing so well as at the plantation last visited. The negroes were dissatisfied—why they seemed scarcely able to explain. The new proprietor had not yet acquired their confidence; he had perhaps been unfortunate in not properly yielding on one or two points to their prejudices, and his overseer, with whom he had quarreled, was doing his best to foment the discontent. This overseer, it seemed, had been assigned a room in the house with the family. To the great disgust of a daughter of the proprietor, he brought a negro women with him. She couldn’t “stand such goings on under her roof;” and, in the absence of her father, she promptly notified the overseer “to turn out that nigger or leave.” The overseer preferred the latter alternative, moved out to the quarters with the woman, and speedily had the negroes in such a dissatisfied state that the proprietor discharged him, drove off a number of the negroes, and went to Georgia for more. Near Eufala he found a number who had formerly belonged to the plantation. The most of them were getting nothing but rations and lodging for their labor; six or eight dollars per month were the highest wages any received, and all were eager to go back to Louisiana, provided they were sure they wouldn’t be taken to Cuba and sold. He had partially convinced them on this point, and he hoped soon to have fifty or sixty fresh laborers, who would enable him to snap his fingers at the discharged overseer and the dissatisfied laborers.

The owner of this plantation, on his discharge from the army two years before, had come down to this country not worth a hundred dollars. He opened a wood-yard, got some fortunate wood contracts with the government, accumulated a little money, and the next year leased some plantations. His money was soon exhausted; but, by the aid of dextrous manipulations of his credit and unlimited bragging about the value of his crop, he worried through. His profits were about forty thousand dollars, out of which he owed ten thousand dollars lease, and, perhaps, as much more in small sums for supplies. His creditors, growing impatient, sued him. This suited him exactly; the law’s delays were all in his favor; and meantime he took the money and bought this plantation; mortgaged it at once and so borrowed enough to carry him through the year. Thus he was in two years the owner of a property which, before the war, had been valued at two hundred thousand dollars; and with one good crop would be entirely out of debt.

Next day I went to another plantation, not more than a mile or two distant, to witness the Saturday issue of rations. It was a small plantation, of six or eight hundred acres cleared land; but the owner had, as yet, only twenty-five negroes, and did not expect to raise more than three or four hundred bales. He had no overseer, went among the hands himself, supervised their operations, and in his absence trusted mainly to the two or three negroes to whom the rest had been accustomed to look up as leaders.

The little, one-story double cabin stood fronting the double row of quarters. The street was thoroughly cleaned, the quarters all looked neat, (for negro quarters,) and the negroes themselves seemed in the finest spirits. A group of them stood gathered about the door of one of the cabins, which was used as a store-room, with a motley collection of tin buckets, bread-bowls, troughs, old candle-boxes, little bags, and the like, in which to receive “de ’lowance.” One of the negroes chopped up the rounds of mess pork, and weighed out four pounds to each, carefully shaving off, with a knife, till the scales were exactly balanced. The meal was measured by the proprietor himself, who had a pleasant word or a joke for every applicant as she approached. Then a negro took a tin cup, and baring his brawny arm to the elbow, dipped down into the molasses barrel, bringing up cup, hand, and wrist clammy with the black, viscous fluid, which was soon daubed over clothes, barrels, and faces promiscuously.

Room was presently made for a wrinkled, white-wooled old auntie, blear-eyed, trembling, and thin-voiced. “Please, massa, can’t you gib me little piece ob meat?” and she laughed a low, oily gobble of a laugh, as though she thought her presuming to ask for it rather funny. “Why, auntie, I thought you were so old you didn’t eat any now?” “Bress ye, sah, I eats lots, an’ wen de cotton come, sah, I picks some for ye. Aint strong ’nuff to pick much, sah, but I picks little for ye, close to de house.”

“Massa” handed her a piece of meat, and filled her outstretched apron with flour; and the old woman stepped back into the crowd, her face fairly aglow. A moment afterward, one of the girls said, as she took her flour, “I wants meal dis time; had flour las’.” “You g’long!” exclaimed the old woman with unwonted animation, “if you can’t take what white folks gibs you, go widout.”

“Heah, Lucy, you don’t want none.” Thus said the sable meat-chopper to one of the women, young, and, according to negro ideas, pretty. “Jus’ trus’ me wid your’n, den. You’ll be shore I wouldn’ steal it, ef I don’ wan’ none.” “Lo’d! might jus’ ’s well frow it ’way ’t once. Take you’ meat and g’long wid you!” But the beauty stood her ground, pork in one hand, and pail of meal balanced on her head, distributing her dangerous glances around, in a manner manifestly disconcerting to more than one of her admirers.

Nothing could exceed the general good humor. “They’re always so,” said the owner. “If I had fifty more such hands I’d make a fortune this year; but they really seem to have disappeared from the country.” Still he hoped to pick up a few more as the season advanced.