and crumbling to pieces. But, to enable them to strike the
cured tobacco, they must wait for what is there called a season,
that is rainy or moist weather, when the plants will better bear
handling, for in dry weather the leaves would all crumble to pieces
in the attempt. By this means a tobacco house may be filled two,
three, or four times in the year. Every night the negroes are sent
to the tobacco house to strip, that is to pull off the leaves from
the stalk, and tie them up in hands or bundles. This is also their
daily occupation in rainy weather. In stripping, they are careful to
throw away all the ground leaves and faulty tobacco, binding up none
but what is merchantable. The hands or bundles thus tied up are also
laid in what are called a bulk, and covered with the refuse tobacco
or straw to preserve their moisture. After this, the tobacco is
carefully packed in hogsheads, and pressed down with a large beam
laid over it, on the ends of which prodigious weights are suspended,
the other end being inserted with a mortice in a tree, close to
which the hogshead is placed. This vast pressure is continued for
some days, and then the cask is filled up again with tobacco until
it will contain no more, after which it is headed up and carried to
the pubic warehouses for inspection. At these warehouses two skilful
planters constantly attend, and receive a salary from the public for
that purpose. They are sworn to inspect with honesty, care, and
impartiality, all the tobacco that comes to the warehouse, and none
is allowed to be shipped that is not regularly inspected. The head
of the cask is taken off, and the tobacco is opened by means of
large, long iron wedges, and great labour, in such places as the
inspectors direct. After this strict attentive examination, if they
find it good and merchantable, it is replaced in the cask, weighed
at the public scales, the weight of the tobacco and of the cask also
cut in the wood on the cask, stowed away in the public warehouses,
and a note given to the proprietor, which he disposes of to the
merchant, and he neither sees nor has any trouble with his tobacco
more. The weight of each hogshead must be 950 lbs. nett, exclusive
of the cask--for less a note will not be given. Under the name of a
crop hogshead, however, the general weight is from 1,000 to 1,20