places it with nine or ten other plants on a stick, which is thrust
through the angle formed by the two halves of the plant separated from
each other except at one end. It is deposited with the rest in an open
ox-cart and transported to the barn. In the barn poles have been
arranged in tiers from bottom to top to support the sticks; and when the
building is full of tobacco the laborer in charge ignites the logs that
fill parallel trenches in the dirt floor, and a high rate of temperature
is soon produced, and is maintained for several days, during which a
watch is kept to replenish the flames and prevent a conflagration. As
soon as the tobacco has changed from a deep green to a light brown, it
is removed on a wet day to the general barn. The same process of curing
is going on in many barns on the same plantation, and occasionally one
is burned down; for the tobacco is very inflammable, a stray spark from
below being sufficient to set the whole on fire.

The principal work of the autumn is the gathering of the ripe corn. A
band of men go ahead and pull the ears from the stalks and throw them at
intervals of thirty yards into loose piles and another band following
behind them at a distance pick the ears up and pitch them into the
ox-carts, which, when fully loaded, return to the granary, around which
the corn is soon massed in long and high rows. When the whole crop has
been got in, a moonlight night is selected for stripping off the shucks;
and this is a gay occasion with the negroes, for they are allowed as
much whiskey as they can carry under their belts. The leading clown
among them is deputed to mount the pile and sing, while the rest sit
below and work. As he ends each verse, they reply in a chorus that can
be heard miles away through the clear, still, frosty air. Their songs
are the ancient ditties of the plantation, and are humorous or pathetic
in sound rather than in sense. And yet even to an educated ear they have
a certain interest, like everything, however trivial, connected with