ces, some of them
traveling a hundred miles or more to secure a few days' or weeks'
work. Almost every farmer or woodsman living anywhere in the region of
the marshes turns out with his entire family; and the families of all
the laboring men and mechanics of the surrounding towns and cities
join in the general hegira to the bogs, and help to harvest the fruit.
Those living within a few miles go out in the morning and return home
at night, taking their noon-day meal with them, while those from a
distance take provisions and bedding with them and camp in the
buildings provided for that purpose by the marsh owners, doing their
own cooking on the stoves and with the fuel furnished them.

The wages vary from fifty cents to a dollar a bushel, owing to the
abundance or scarcity of the fruit. A good picker will gather from
three to four bushels a day where the yield is light, and five to six
bushels where it is good. The most money is made by families numbering
from half a dozen to a dozen members. Every chick and child in such
families over six years old is required to turn out and help swell the
revenue of the little household, and the frugal father often pockets
ten to twenty dollars a day as the fruits of the combined labors. The
pickers wade into the grass, weeds, and vines, however wet with dew or
rain, or however deeply flooded underneath, making not the slightest
effort to keep even their feet dry, and after an hour's work in the
morning are almost as wet as if they had swum a river. Many of them
wade in barefooted, others wearing low cowhide shoes, and their feet,
at least, are necessarily wet all day long. In many cases their bodies
are thinly clad, and they must inevitably suffer in frosty mornings
and evenings and on the raw, cold, rainy days that are frequent in the
autumn months in this latitude; yet they go about their work singing,
shouting, and jabbering as merrily as a party of comfortably clad
school children at play. How any of them avoid colds, rheumatism, and
a dozen other diseases is a mystery; and yet it is rarely that one of
them is ill from the effects of this exposure. As many as 3000 or 4000
pickers are sometimes employed on a single marsh when there is a heavy
crop, and an army of such ragamuffins as get together for this
purpose, scattered over a bog in confusion and disorder, presents a
strange and picturesque appearance.

Indians are not usually as good pickers as white people, but in the
spars