orrors.

After battle, when the clash of arms has ceased, is when the soldier's
sympathy is tried. The solicitations of the maimed and dying raise a
feeling of commiseration in the most obdurate heart; and still this
feeling is of but short duration and of a mild character.

FARMING IN THE SOUTH.

Farming in the Southern States is carried on in a very simple and
seeming ignorant style. One could not refrain from laughing at their
oddity in agricultural pursuits. They are a great many years behind the
North in this respect, as well as in many others.

The whites and negroes are so sluggish, indolent and careless in their
habits that their works are a fair prototype of themselves. There is a
difference between a farm and a plantation, though they are carried on
in nearly the same style; the main difference is that the one is gotten
up on a larger scale than the other. What is usually called a farm is
owned by a poor white man--while the plantation is owned by a wealthy
planter, with his hundreds of negroes. The farm is known by its small
area, by its improvements and its little old log house with its
appendages; the plantation, by its vast area, its stately mansion and
numerous negro shanties. The improvements are usually very poor, with
but few conveniences. On every plantation you will see a cotton press
and gin house, with the stable under the latter. The cotton press is
the first thing you get your eyes on when you approach a plantation,
and then the gin house next. And as for the farms or little
plantations, you scarcely know anything about them until you have them
suddenly spread before your view. There is hardly ever anything
external to warn one of their presence.

It is, as it were, a swath mown in the deep pine forest--the labor of a
poor ignorant being, who, like the parrot, can talk and palaver with
simple unmeaningness, but ignorant of the world beyond a radius of ten
miles. The people, for the most part, break up their ground with one
horse or ox, as the case may be, their plows being suited to the
purpose.

This small plow is made after the fashion of our large two-horse
breaking plows, and is, as we are wont to say, right or left handed.
Some farmers are too poor to afford a horse or mule; in this case they
work an ox as if he were a horse, hitch him to the plow and drive him
with ropes attached to his horns with as much precision as a horse or
mule.

The oxen here may be of a more docile