Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/282

280 We passed this winter in clearing land, after we had secured the crops of cotton and corn, and nothing happened on our plantation to disturb the usual monotony of the life of a slave, except that in the month of January, my master informed me that he intended to go to Savannah for the purpose of purchasing groceries, and such other supplies as might be required on the plantation, in the following season; and that he intended to take down a load of cotton with our wagon and team, and that I must prepare to be the driver. This intelligence was not disagreeable to me, as the trip to Savannah would, in the first place, release me for a short time from the tyranny of my mistress, and in the second, would give me an opportunity of seeing a great deal of strange country. I derived a third advantage, in after times, from this journey, but which did not enter into my estimate of this affair, at that time.

My master had not yet erected a cotton-gin on his place — the land not being his own — and we hauled our cotton, in the seed, nearly three miles to be ginned, for which we had to give one-fourth to the owner of the gin.

When the time of my departure came, I loaded my wagon with ten bales of cotton, and set out with the same team of six mules that I had driven from South Carolina. Nothing of moment happened to me until