e all stout, healthy and happy-looking, and in answer to
my comments on their appearance, the native said that the negroes on the
turpentine farms are always stronger and longer-lived, than those on the
rice and cotton-fields. Unless carried off by the fevers incident to the
climate, they generally reach a good old age, while the rice-negro
seldom lives to be over forty, and the cotton-slave very rarely attains
sixty. Cotton-growing, however, my host thought, is not, in itself, much
more unhealthy than turpentine-gathering, though cotton-hands work in
the sun, while the turpentine slaves labor altogether in the shade.
"But," he said, "the' work 'em harder nor we does, an' doan't feed 'em
so well. We give our'n meat and whiskey ev'ry day, but them articles is
skarse 'mong th' cotton blacks, an' th' rice niggers never get 'em
excep' ter Chris'mas time, an' thet cums but onst a yar."

"Do you think the white could labor as well as the black, on the rice
and cotton-fields?" I asked.

"Yas, an' better--better onywhar; but, in coorse, 'tain't natur' fur
black nor white ter stand long a workin' in th' mud and water up ter
thar knees; sech work wud kill off th' very devil arter a while. But th'
white kin stand it longer nor the black, and its' 'cordin' ter reason
that he shud; fur, I reckon, stranger, that the sperit and pluck uv a
man hev a durned sight ter du with work. They'll hole a man up when he's
clean down, an' how kin we expec' thet the pore nig', who's nary a thing
ter work fur, an' who's been kept under an' 'bused ever sense Adam was a
young un'--how kin we expec' he'll work like men thet own 'emselfs, an'
whose faders hev been free ever sense creation? I reckon that the
parient has a heap ter du with makin' th' chile. He puts the sperit
inter 'im: doan't we see it in hosses an' critters an' sech like? It
mayn't crap eout ter onst, but it's shore ter in th' long run, and
thet's th' why th' black hain't no smarter nor he is. He's been a-ground
down an' kept under fur so long thet it'll take more'n 'un gin'ration
ter bring him up. 'Tain't his fault thet he's no more sperit, an'
p'raps 'tain't ourn--thet is, them on us as uses 'em right--but it war
the fault uv yer fader an' mine--yer fader stole 'em, and mine bought
'em, an' the' both made cattle uv 'em."

"But I had supposed the black was better fitted by nature for hard
labor, in a hot climate, than the white?"

"Wal, he arn't, an' I knows it. Th' d----d parsons a