Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/115

Rh loft was occupied by the blades and tops of the corn. About a quarter of a mile from the dwelling house were the huts or cabins of the plantation slaves, standing in rows. There were thirty-eight of them, generally about sixteen feet square, and provided with pine floors. In these cabins were two hundred and fifty people, of all ages, sexes and sizes. A short distance from the cabins was the house of the overseer. In one corner of his garden stood a corn-crib and a provision-house. A little way off stood the house containing the cotton-gin. There was no smoke-house, nor any place for curing meat, and while I was on this plantation no food was ever salted for the use of the slaves.

I went out into the garden, and after sundown my old master sent me to the overseer's house. He was just coming in from the field, followed by a great number of black people. He asked me my name, and calling a middle-aged man, who was passing us at some distance, told him he must take me to live with him. I followed my new friend to his cabin, which was the shelter of his wife and five children. Their only furniture consisted of a few blocks of wood for seats; a short bench, made of a pine board, which served as a table; and a small bed in one corner, composed of a mat, made of common rushes, spread upon some corn husks, pulled and split into fine pieces, and kept together by a narrow slip of wood, confined to the