At the time of which I now speak, the rice was ripe, and ready to be
gathered. On Monday morning, after our feast, the overseer took the
whole of us to the rice field, to enter upon the harvest of this crop.
The field lay in a piece of low ground, near the river, and in such a
position that it could be flooded by the water of the stream, in wet
seasons. The rice is planted in drills, or rows, and grows more like
oats than any of the other grain known in the north.
The water is sometimes let in to the rice fields, and drawn off again,
several times, according to the state of the weather. Watering and
weeding the rice is considered one of the most unhealthy occupations on
a southern plantation, as the people are obliged to live for several
weeks in the mud and water, subject to all the unwholesome vapors that
arise from stagnant pools, under the rays of a summer sun, as well as
the chilly autumnal dews of night. At the time we came to cut this rice,
the field was quite dry; and after we had reaped and bound it, we
hauled it upon wagons, to a piece of hard ground, where we made a
threshing floor, and threshed it. In some places, they tread out the
rice, with mules or horses, as they tread wheat in Maryland; but this
renders the grain dusty, and is injurious to its sale.
After getting in the rice, we were occupied for some time in clearing
and ditching swampy land, preparatory to a more extended culture of rice
the next year; and about the first of August, twenty or thirty of the
people, principally women and children, were employed for two weeks in
making cider, of apples which grew in an orchard of nearly two hundred
trees, that stood on a part of the estate. After the cider was made, a
barrel of it was one day brought to the field, and distributed amongst
us; but this gratuity was not repeated. The cider that was made by the
people was converted into brandy, at a still in the corner of the
orchard.
I often obtained cider to drink, at the still, which was sheltered from
the weather by a shed, of boards and slabs. We were not permitted to go
into the orchard at pleasure; but as long as the apples continued, we
were allowed the privilege of sending five or six persons every evening,
for the purpose of bringing apples to the quarter, for our common use;
and by taking large baskets, and filling them well, we generally
contrived to get as many as we could consume.
When the peaches ripened, they were guarded with more rigor--peach
brandy being an article which is nowhere more highly prized than in
South Carolina. There were on the plantation more than a thousand peach
trees, growing on poor sandy fields, which were no longer worth the
expense of cultivation. The best peaches grow upon the poorest
sand-hills.
We were allowed to take three bushels of peaches every day, for the use
of the quarter; but we could, and did eat at least three times that
quantity, for we stole at night that which was not given us by day. I
confess that I took part in these thefts, and I do not feel that I
committed any wrong, against either God or man, by my participation in
the common danger that we ran, for we well knew the consequences that
would have followed detection.
After the feast at laying by the corn and cotton, we had no meat for
several weeks; and it is my opinion that our master lost money by the
economy he practised at this season of the year.
I now entered upon a new scene of life. My true value had not yet been
ascertained by my present owner; and whether I was to hold the rank of a
first or second rate hand, could only be determined by an experience of
my ability to pick cotton.
I had ascertained that at the hoe, the spade, the sickle, or the flail,
I was a full match for the best hands on the plantation; but soon
discovered when we came to cotton picking I was not equal to a boy of
fifteen. I worked hard the first day, but when evening came, and our
cotton was weighed, I had only thirty-eight pounds, and was vexed to see
that two young men, about my own age, had, one fifty-eight, and the
other fifty-nine pounds. This was our first day's work, and the overseer
had not yet settled the amount of a day's picking. It was necessary for
him to ascertain, by the experience of a few days, how much the best
hands could pick in a day, before he established the standard of the
season. I hung down my head, and felt very much ashamed of myself when I
found that my cotton was so far behind that of many, even of the women,
who had heretofore regarded me as the strongest and most powerful man of
the whole gang.
I had exerted myself to-day to the utmost of my power; and as the
picking of cotton seemed to be so very simple a business, I felt
apprehensive that I should never be able to improve myself, so far as to
become even a second rate hand. In this posture of affairs, I looked
forward to something still more painful than the loss of character which
I must sustain, both with my fellows and my master; for I knew that the
lash of the overseer would soon become familiar with my back, if I did
not perform as much work as any of the other young men.
I expected indeed that it would go hard with me even now, and stood by
with feelings of despondence and terror, whilst the other people were
getting their cotton weighed. When it was all weighed, the overseer came
to me where I stood, and told me to show him my hands. When I had done
this, and he had looked at them, he observed--"You have a pair of good
hands--you will make a good picker." This faint praise of the overseer
revived my spirits greatly, and I went home with a lighter heart than I
had expected to possess, before the termination of cotton-picking.
When I came to get my cotton weighed, on the evening of the second day,
I was rejoiced to find that I had forty-six pounds, although I had not
worked harder than I did the first day. On the third evening I had
fifty-two pounds; and before the end of the week, there were only three
hands in the field--two men and a young woman--who could pick more
cotton in a day than I could.
On the Monday morning of the second week, when we went to the field, the
overseer told us that he fixed the day's work at fifty pounds; and that
all those who picked more than that, would be paid a cent a pound for
the overplus. Twenty-five pounds was assigned as the daily task of the
old people, as well as a number of boys and girls, whilst some of the
women, who had children, were required to pick forty pounds, and several
children had ten pounds each as their task.
Picking of cotton may almost be reckoned among the arts. A man who has
arrived at the age of twenty-five before he sees a cotton field, will
never, in the language of the overseer, become _a crack picker_.
By great industry and vigilance, I was able, at the end of a month, to
return every evening a few pounds over the daily rate, for which I
received my pay; but the business of picking cotton was a fatiguing
labor to me, and one to which I never became reconciled, for the reason
that in every other kind of work I was called a first rate hand, whilst
in cotton picking I was hardly regarded as a _prime hand_.