are engaged on the plantation on the 1st of January, who contract to
remain at definite wages during the following twelve months. Whoever
leaves without consent violates a distinct agreement, under which he is
liable in the courts, if it were worth the time and expense to subject
him to the law. He is paid every month by an order on a firm of
merchants who rent a store that belongs to the owner of the plantation
and is situated on one of its divisions; and this order he can convert
into money, merchandise, or groceries, as he chooses, or he gives it up
in settlement of debts which he has previously made there in
anticipation of his wages. The credit of each man is accurately gauged,
and he is allowed to deal freely to a certain amount, but not beyond;
and this restriction puts a very wholesome check upon the natural
extravagance of his disposition.

On each division of the plantation there is a settlement where the
negroes live with their families. The houses of the "quarters," as the
settlement is called, are large weather-boarded cabins. In each there is
a spacious room below and a cramped garret above, which is used both as
a bedroom and a lumber-room, while the apartment on the first floor is
chamber, kitchen, and parlor in one, and there most of the inmates,
children as well as adults, sleep at night. The furniture is of a very
durable but rude character, consisting of a bed, several cots, tables
and cupboards, and half a dozen or more rough chairs of domestic
manufacture, while a few pictures, cut from illuminated Sunday books or
from illustrated papers, adorn the whitewashed walls. The brick
fire-place is so wide and open that the fire not only warms the room,
but lights it up so well that no candle or lamp is needed. The negroes
are always kept supplied with wood, and they use it with extravagance on
cold nights, when they often stretch themselves at full length on the
hearth-stone and sleep as calmly in the fierce glare as in the summer