ed pork, or their equivalent in fish. The pork was
often tainted, and the fish was of the poorest quality--herrings, which
would bring very little if offered for sale in any northern market. With
their pork or fish, they had one bushel of Indian meal--unbolted--of
which quite fifteen per cent was fit only to feed pigs. With this, one
pint of salt was given; and this was the entire monthly allowance of
a full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, from morning
until night, every day in the month except Sunday, and living on a
fraction more than a quarter of a pound of meat per day, and less than
a peck of corn-meal per week. There is no kind of work that a man can do
which requires a better supply of food to prevent physical exhaustion,
than the field-work of a slave. So much for the slave's allowance of
food; now for his raiment. The yearly allowance of clothing for the
slaves on this plantation, consisted of two tow-linen shirts--such linen
as the coarsest crash towels are made of; one pair of trowsers of
the same material, for summer, and a pair of trowsers and a jacket
of woolen, most slazily put together, for winter; one pair of yarn
stockings, and one pair of shoes of the coarsest description. The
slave's entire apparel could not have cost more than eight dollars per
year. The allowance of food and clothing for the little children, was
committed to their mothers, or to the older slavewomen having the care
of them. Children who were unable to work in the field, had neither
shoes, stockings, jackets nor trowsers given them. Their clothing
consisted of two coarse tow-linen shirts--already described--per year;
and when these failed them, as they often did, they went naked until
the next allowance day. Flocks of little children from five to ten years
old, might be seen on Col. Lloyd's plantation, as destitute of clothing
as any little heathen on the west coast of Africa; and this, not merely
during the summer months, but during the frosty weather of March. The
little girls were no better off than the boys; all were nearly in a
state of nudity.{79}

As to beds to sleep on, they were known to none of the field hands;
nothing but a coarse blanket--not so good as those used in the north to
cover horses--was given them, and this only to the men and women. The
children stuck themselves in holes and corners, about the quarters;
often in the corner of the huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes
to keep them warm