they got sturgeon, weighing more than one hundred pounds.

We intended to put out a trot line and catch a sturgeon that I might
get some oil. It is said that the oil from a sturgeon is a sure cure
for rheumatism in the joints, but it rained so much, keeping us busy
adjusting our traps, that we did not get any time to get the bait and
put out the trot line. So I did not get to see one of those large
fellows.

Mr. Ford pointed out corn and cotton fields where the corn and cotton
was still ungathered and told me that he had trot lines set out all
through these fields last spring and caught hundreds of pounds of
fish--it hardly seemed possible as the water was then fifteen of
twenty feet below the banks of these fields. But in December when it
began raining nearly every day, and the water rose so suddenly that I
was obliged to leave many of my traps where I had set them around
ponds and banks of streams and in the swamps, I could then readily
see that it was perfectly possible for the fish to get out into the
corn and cotton fields to feed.

The rainy season set in nearly a month earlier this season than
usual, causing the rivers and streams to rise so as to flood the
whole bottoms (it is called the tide by the people in Alabama).

I will not give my views of the country and conditions in northern
Alabama--it would not look well; it is sufficient to say that the
greater part of the land is owned in large tracts by a few men and
leased out at from $3.00 to $4.00 per acre. Corn and Cotton are the
main crops. Any land lying above the overflowing sections requires
heavy fertilizing in order to make a crop. The fertilizer is the
commercial sort, and all the crop will sell for is put onto the land
in the way of fertilizers. These lands are mostly leased to colored
people--in fact, I was told that the landlords did not care to lease
to white men.

The poor white man in northern Alabama is worse off than the colored
man, for he is looked upon as neither white nor black. In this
section the population is largely of the colored class. All of the
landlords have a store, so as to furnish their tenants with goods of
an inferior quality at exorbitant prices.

There is no good water to be found in that part of Alabama. The water
that the people use is something fearful--of course the wealthy class
have cisterns. The soil is mostly red clay, and terrible to get about
in when the least damp. The roads are only names for roads.

So