he other end of the plantation, under the
eye of the overseer. These negro settlements merit a paragraph of
description.

Their huts were of wood, separate, and standing in little gardens, in
which each family enjoyed the privilege of cultivating patches of corn,
sweet potatoes, and such vegetables as they chose, a street of about a
hundred feet wide dividing the houses. Midway, under the shade of a
magnificent liveoak, whose branches were mournful with the funereal moss
(always suggestive to my fancy of the 'little old woman,' whose
employment in the nursery legend is 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the
sky,' having executed her task in a slovenly manner), was a simple
apparatus for grinding corn, consisting of two heavy circular stones,
placed horizontally in a rude frame under a shed, to be worked by manual
power, by upright wooden handles. This served as a mill for the entire
negro population.

Entering their huts, you were first conscious of a large brick
fireplace, in which a fire was almost constantly burning, though it
scarcely lit up the generally dark interior, always much, more
picturesque than comfortable, for negroes have little if any notion of
ventilation, and can hardly be too warm: they will kindle great blazing
fires to lie down by or to heat their food, in the open fields in
summer. A few roughly fashioned seats and tables, and a ladder
staircase, leading upward to an attic or cockloft, completes the
inventory of the interior.

We had passed the inhabitants of these huts, at work in the fields,
under the direction of the overseer, a strong, spare man, in a suit of
homespun, who rode about among them on horseback, carrying in his hand a
cowhide whip, which he had exhibited to me with a smile, and the remark
that 'that was the thing the Yankees made so much noise about.' It was a
sufficient instrument of punishment, I thought and said, adding that I
trusted he found infrequent occasion for the exercise of it.

'Well, they're a pretty well behaved lot generally,' he answered, with
that peculiar accent derived from almost exclusive association with
negroes common throughout the South; 'but sometimes it 'pears as if the
devil had got in among 'em, and I has to lay on all round. A nigger will
be a nigger, you know.'

The subjects of this ethical remark were rather raggedly dressed, the
men in coarse jackets and trousers, the women in soiled and burnt gowns
of indefinite color, generally reefed up about t