ly let them to those who will give
the highest wages for them, irrespective of their mode of treatment;
and those who hire them, will of course try to get the greatest
possible amount of work performed, with the least possible expense.
Women are seen bringing their infants into the field to their work,
and leading others who are not old enough to stay at the cabins with
safety. When they get there, they must set them down in the dirt and
go to work. Sometimes they are left to cry until they fall asleep.
Others are left at home, shut up in their huts. Now, is it not
barbarous, that the mother, with her child of children around her,
half starved, must be whipped at night if she does not perform her
task? But so it is. Some who have very young ones, fix a little sack,
and place the infants on their backs, and work. One reason, I presume
is, that they will not cry so much when they can hear their mother's
voice. Another is, the mothers fear that the poisonous vipers and
snakes will bite them. Truly, I never knew any place where the land is
so infested with all kinds of the most venomous snakes, as in the low
lands round about Savannah. The moccasin snakes, so called, and water
rattle-snakes--the bites of both of which are as poisonous as our
upland rattlesnakes at the north,--are found in myriads about the
stagnant waters and swamps of the South. The females, in order to
secure their infants from these poisonous snakes, do, as I have said,
often work with their infants on their backs. Females are sometimes
called to take the hardest part of the work. On some brick yards where
I have been, the women have been selected as the _moulders_ of brick,
instead of the men.

II. THE FOOD OF THE SLAVES.

It was a general custom, wherever I have been, for the masters to give
each of his slaves, male and female, _one peck of corn per week_ for
their food. This at fifty cents per bushel, which was all that it was
worth when I was there, would amount to twelve and a half cents per
week for board per head.

It cost me upon an average, when at the south, one dollar per day for
board. The price of fourteen bushels of corn per week. This would make
my board equal in amount to the board of _forty-six slaves!_ This is
all that good or bad masters allow their slaves round about Savannah
on the plantations. One peck of gourd-seed corn is to be measured out
to each slave once every week. One man with whom I labored, however,
being desirous to