Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/243

Rh had lost all that I could have earned for my own benefit, had I been on the plantation. I had now become so well acquainted with the rules of the plantation and the customs of the country where I lived, that I experienced less distress than I did at my first coming to the South.

We now received a shad every Sunday evening with our peck of corn. The fish were those that I had caught in the spring, and were tolerably preserved. In addition to all this, each one of the hands now received a pint of vinegar every week. This vinegar was a great comfort to me. As the weather became hot, I gathered lettuce and other salads, from my garden in the woods; which, with the vinegar and bread, furnished me many a cheerful meal. The vinegar had been furnished to us by our master, more out of regard to our health than to our comfort, but it greatly promoted both.

The affairs of the plantation now went on quietly, until after the cotton had been ploughed and hoed the first time, after replanting. The working of the cotton crop is not disagreeable labor — no more so than the culture of corn — but we were called upon to perform a kind of labor, than which none can be more toilsome to the body or dangerous to the health.

I have elsewhere informed the reader that my master was a cultivator of rice as well as of cotton.