re hands than Cherry Hill, but they are younger. The driver
here is an extremely nice person, hardly energetic enough, I should
think, for the old system, but a very quiet, gentlemanly man,
perfectly frank and open in his manner, and a little superior in his
conversation to those by whom he is surrounded. He is much respected
in the dark community. It is to his bounty that I owe several huge
watermelons which I have brought home for our table, besides several
partial favors of the same kind, enjoyed under his own roof.

To these people I was to deliver one month's rations of hard bread. It
comes in fifty-pound boxes; and as a day's ration is three quarters of
a pound, and there are thirty-one days in August, it requires but a
simple calculation to determine that each person entitled to a full
ration should receive twenty-three and one quarter pounds, and that,
one child being reckoned one sixth of a grown person (monstrous, you
will say, when eating is concerned,--but such is law), one box must be
delivered to every two grown-persons-and-one-child. Having the people
together, I took the opportunity to enquire of them the number of
tasks of cow-pease, slip-potatoes, etc., they had planted, likewise
the amount of cotton they had hoed, "since Mr. Palmer took the last
account." It will be a great job making up the next pay-roll. I hope
the people won't lie worse than usual. If they do, if the drivers
should fail me, especially,--if, as will probably happen, their own
accounts, added up, do not tally within several tasks with my count of
the whole, and if at the same time I shall be required to make out the
whole roll in two days, and both my horses should have sore backs at
once--you can imagine what a comfortable, easy time I shall have of
it.

From Mulberry Hill, after looking at some doubtful cotton in the field
with the driver, Paris, and finally setting it down as not properly
hoed, I proceeded to the next plantation, Alvirah Fripp's, commonly
called the Hope Place. It is the largest, the most distant, and, in
many respects, the toughest plantation I have. There are a great many
men of twenty-five to forty, "tough-nuts" many of them, and all
looking so much alike that it is impossible to remember the name that
belongs to any one face, though all their names and all their faces
are familiar enough. I can see that it is a great drawback to my
obtaining their confidence to have to ask one and another, as I ask,
"how man