breed than found in our parts,
and certainly are, for it would be dangerous with us to hitch one to a
plow and start him on a row through a cornfield, for he would likely
jump the fence before he reached the other end.

The rows of corn here are usually six feet apart, with a row of negro
beans between. If one man can tend eight acres he thinks he is doing
good business; the corn is hardly ever plowed, it being worked with the
hoe for the most part.

The women work in the field as well as the men, they being used to it.
They will not believe us when we tell them that our women do not work
in the field. When an acre of ground yields twelve bushels of corn it
is thought to be a fine crop. They gape with wonder when we tell them
we break our ground with two horses, plow our corn with a plow on which
we can ride; that one man can tend forty acres and raise forty bushels
to the acre. When we tell them about our reapers, our vast fields of
wheat, oats, etc., etc., they gape, and wonder what we do with it all.
If we tell them about our large prairies, rich soil and productive
land, they wonder why they had not heard of that before.

Their principal diet is corn bread, meat and negro beans. These nigger
beans, by the way, are not so bad, just the thing for the soldier; many
farmers raise them altogether, so to speak. It is a common thing to see
cribs of these beans as you pass through the country; it takes them so
short a time to cook, which adapts them to our use. Corn and beans are
not their only productions, for they sometimes grow a little wheat,
oats, tobacco and cotton. Many reap their grain with the sickle, not
having known the existence of the cradle. There are no reapers to be
seen, or if at all, but seldom.

As a people, they have no enterprise; they live only to eat, and even
that is done in a poor, unhandy style.

There are a great many turpentine, rosin and tar factories in "the
sunny land of Dixie." There are vast tracts of land here, covered with
dense forests of pine, that can be put to no other use than the
production of these things. In North Carolina these factories are most
numerous. They are built on small streams of water, and for miles
around the trees are hewn on two sides; the turpentine running out,
gums on the tree where it is hewn. On our march we burned many of these
factories; they made a grand, huge smoke, most sublime.

It is impossible for a person who has not seen the like to form a
prop