can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospital
and many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were still
standing. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolate
chimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant but
now ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself.

[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's
Review_, IX, 201-203.]

The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated
as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr.
X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the
quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and
plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken
yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and
disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life
was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations
enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number
of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the
youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and
those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house.
Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing
about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking
old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a
baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other
plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was
a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a
very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions,
tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before
it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of
the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was
superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him
with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master
explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared
with the white children, had received special training to promote their
sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further
observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend