sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine.'

'Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't
blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way.'

'Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of
you.' (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a switch;
though the switch is generally thought to _redden_, not _whiten_, the
darky.)

The negro did not seem at all alarmed, for he showed his ivories in a
broad grin as he replied, 'Jess as you say, massa; you'se de boss in dis
shanty.'

Directing the fire to be raked out, and the still to stand unused until
it was repaired, the Colonel turned his horse to go, when he observed
that the third negro was shoeless, and his feet chapped and swollen with
the cold. 'Jake,' he said, 'where are your shoes?'

'Wored out, massa.'

'Worn out! Why haven't you been to me?'

''Cause, massa, I know'd you'd jaw; you tole me I wears 'em out mighty
fass.'

'Well, you do, that's a fact; but go to Madam and get a pair; and you,
June, you've been a decent nigger, you can ask for a dress for Rosey.
How is little June?'

'Mighty pore, massa; de ma'am war dar lass night and dis mornin', and
she reckun'd he's gwine to gwo sartain.'

'Sorry to hear that,' said the Colonel. I'll go and see him. Don't feel
badly, June,' he continued, for the tears welled up to the eyes of the
black man as he spoke of his child; 'we all must die.'

'I knows dat, massa, but it am hard to hab em gwo.'

'Yes, it is, June, but we may save him.'

'Ef you cud, massa! Oh, ef you cud!' and the poor darky covered his face
with his great hands and sobbed like a child.

We rode on to another 'still,' and there dismounting, the Colonel
explained to me the process of gathering and manufacturing turpentine.
The trees are 'boxed' and 'tapped' early in the year, while the frost is
still in the ground. 'Boxing' is the process of scooping a cavity in the
trunk of the tree by means of a peculiarly shaped axe, made for the
purpose; 'tapping' is scarifying the rind of the wood above the boxes.
This is never done until the trees have been worked one season, but it
is then repeated year after year, till on many plantations they present
the marks of twenty and frequently thirty annual 'tappings,' and are
often denuded of bark for a distance of thirty feet from the ground. The
necessity for this annual tapping arises from the fact that the scar on
the trunk heals at the end