This farm of Mr. W.'s[2] is kept with about forty negroes. Mr. W.,
nearly sixty, is the only white man on it. He seems to have been wiser
in the beginning than most others, and curtailed his cotton to make room
for rye, rice, and corn. There is a large vegetable-garden and orchard;
he has bought plenty of stock for beef and mutton, and laid in a large
supply of sugar. He must also have plenty of ammunition, for a man is
kept hunting and supplies the table with delicious wild turkeys and
other game. There is abundance of milk and butter, hives for honey, and
no end of pigs. Chickens seem to be kept like game in parks, for I never
see any, but the hunter shoots them, and eggs are plentiful. We have
chicken for breakfast, dinner, and supper, fried, stewed, broiled, and
in soup, and there is a family of ten. Luckily I never tire of it. They
make starch out of corn-meal by washing the meal repeatedly, pouring off
the water, and drying the sediment. Truly the uses of corn in the
Confederacy are varied. It makes coffee, beer, whisky, starch, cake,
bread. The only privations here are the lack of coffee, tea, salt,
matches, and good candles. Mr. W. is now having the dirt floor of his
smoke-house dug up and boiling from it the salt that has dripped into it
for years. To-day Mrs. W. made tea out of dried blackberry leaves, but
no one liked it. The beds, made out of equal parts of cotton and
corn-shucks, are the most elastic I ever slept in. The servants are
dressed in gray homespun. Hester, the chambermaid, has a gray gown so
pretty that I covet one like it. Mrs. W. is now arranging dyes for the
thread to be woven into dresses for herself and the girls. Sometimes her
hands are a curiosity.

[Footnote 2: On this plantation, and in this domestic circle, I myself
afterward sojourned, and from them enlisted in the army. The initials
are fictitious, but the description is perfect.--G.W.C.]