. Two of them
are down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has been
attending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It is
very hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it from
Friday." A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads:
"Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all the
servants examined before they leave Savannah."

In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his
summer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205
bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from
which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair's town house;
the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought
good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was
embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and
oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for
cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, he
continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite
of care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and
they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been
as obedient as I could wish."

One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent
source of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among
her fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction," whereupon she had
further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could then
only unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of my
belief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad
as any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have
ever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been more
injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell
for.... I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that
she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can not
hope for the better any longer."

The factor's record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair.
The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number
of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of
increase. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three
hun