, but are sent loose, and sold without the trouble
of prizing, in the nearest market-town.

"Shades imperceptible to a novice, serve to determine the
value of the leaf. As it varies in color, texture, and
length, so fluctuates its market price, and at least half
the battle lies in the manner in which the crop has been
handled in curing. From the mountainous counties of
South-western Virginia, Franklin, Henry, and Patrick, comes
all the rarest and the most valuable tobacco, 'fancy
wrappers' but these crops are smaller in proportion to those
raised along the lowlands of the rivers. This tobacco is
much lighter in color, much softer in texture, than the
ordinary staple, and is frequently as soft and fine as silk.
Some years ago a bonnet made of this tobacco was exhibited
at the Border Agricultural Fair, and had somewhat the
appearance of brown silk. Only one such plant have I ever
seen grown in Southside, and that, a bright golden brown,
and nearly two feet in length, was carefully preserved for
show on the parlor-mantel of the planter who raised it.

"After tying, the bundles are placed in bulk, and when again
'in order,' are 'prized' or packed into the hogsheads,--no
smoothly-planed and iron-hooped cask, by the way, but huge
pine structures very roughly made. The old machine for
prizing was a primitive affair, the upright beam through
which ran another at right angles, turning slightly on a
pivot, heavily weighted at one end, and used as a lever for
compressing the brown mass into the hogsheads. Now, most
well-to-do planters own a tobacco straightener and
screw-press, inventions which materially lessen the manual
labor of preparing the crop for market. Each hogshead is
branded with the name of the owner, and thus shipped to his
commission-merchant, when the hogshead is 'broken' by
tearing off a stave, thus exposing the strata of the bulk to
view. Of late years some planters have been guilty of
'nesting,' or placing prime leaf around the outer part and
an inferior article in the center of the hogshead.

"At a tobacco mart in Southside, occurred perhaps the only
instance of negro-selling since the establishment of the
Freedman's Bureau. At every town is a huge platform scale
for weighing wagon and load, deducting the weight of