he purchases of woolen clothing and
waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather;
but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious
occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen
and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record
they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were
highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from
a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and
1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was
overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until
1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter
period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking
a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a
boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the
apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro,
$5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a
newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new
incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount
Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial
as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total
$69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of
Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of
the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that
disorders continued under Page's successor.[35]

[Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair
MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.]

Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields
showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia,
belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to
sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade.
While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the
expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for
distribution among the owners.[36]

[Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation
and Frontier_, I, 150-165.]

The system of rice production was such that p