and sometimes four ears, is topped to admit the
ripening sun, the pea-vine twines itself around the trunk with a
profusion of leaf and tendril that supplies the planter with the most
desirable fodder for his mules in "rolling-time," which is their season
of trial. Besides this, the corn-blades are culled and cured. These are
the best meals of the Southern race-horse, and constitute nutritious hay
without dust....

As we ride through the wagon-roads,--of which there are not less than
thirty miles in this confederation of four plantations held together by
the purse and the life of our host,--the unwavering exactitude of the
rows of cane, which run without deviation at right angles with the river
down to the cane-brake, two miles off, proves that the negro would be a
formidable rival in a ploughing-match. The cane has been "laid by;" that
is, it requires no more labor, and will soon "lap," or close up, though
the rows are seven feet apart. It feathers like a palm top: a stalk
which was cut measured six feet, although from the ridges it was but
waist-high. On dissecting it near the root we find five nascent joints
not a quarter of an inch apart. In a few weeks more these will shoot up
like a spy-glass pulled out to its focus....

In the rear of this great plantation there are eighteen thousand
additional acres of cane-brake which are being slowly reclaimed.... We
extended our ride into this jungle, on the borders of which, in the
unfinished clearing, I saw plantations of "negro corn," the sable
cultivators of which seem to have disregarded the symmetry practised in
the fields of their master, who allows them from Saturday noon until
Monday's cockcrow for the care of their private interests....

Corn, chicken, and eggs are, from time immemorial, the perquisites of
the negro, who has the monopoly of the two last-named articles in all
well-ordered Louisiana plantations. Indeed, the white man cannot compete
with them in raising poultry, and our host was evidently delighted when
one of his negroes, who had brought a dozen Muscovy ducks to the
mansion, refused to sell them to him except for cash. "But, Louis, won't
you trust me? Am I not good for three dollars?" "Good enough, massa; but
dis nigger want de money to buy flour and coffee for him young family.
Folks at Donaldsonville will trust massa,--won't trust nigger." The
money was paid, and, as the negro left us, his master observed, with a
sly, humorous twinkle, "That fellow