Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/690

670 plow were in common use, but vary in shape to suit the convenience of the planters, who adapt themselves to the natural features of the surface and character of the soil. If the place to he planted is forest, whether heavy or of only a few years' growth, the laborers, with bill-hooks for the undergrowth and axes for the trees, begin clearing it from one side, felling the trees and undergrowth toward the open space, and leaving stumps of any height that may make the work of clearing easier. No effort is made to pile the brush in heaps. This work is done in the dry season, and the brush is allowed to lie for several months, until the approach of the rainy season, when the whole, being thoroughly dried by long exposure to the rays of a very hot sun, is set on fire. The want of arrangement of the branches permits the burning of all the leaves and of the small limbs, twigs, etc., but the larger branches and the trunks of the fallen trees are only blackened by the passing fire. A more desolate sight than one of these "new grounds" can not be imagined. Sometimes a few of the half-burned pieces are piled together and set on fire, but usually they are allowed to lie where they happen to have fallen. The soil is now ready for the seed. The laborers go over the field with large, heavy hoes, and with powerful blows open holes to receive the seeds at intervals more or less irregular. The cotton seeds are planted in these holes, and with the foot or hand covered with a little earth. The spaces between the hills are generally supposed to be from five to eight palms, according to the fertility of the soil. Sometimes rows are attempted in a rude, rambling way, and in such cases the hills are about six palms apart in one direction and eight in the other, according as the stumps and logs and half-consumed limbs may permit.

The planting season varies in different localities according to the time when the rains generally set in. Most of it is done in the months of February and March, though planting-time may vary a month or two either way, according to the season and the nature of the ground, low, rich soil generally being planted later than the dry uplands. Difference is also made with the kind of cotton, the tree cotton generally being planted a month or two earlier than the herbaceous. Sometimes other things are planted between the rows of cotton, such as beans, rice, or corn.

Shortly after the planting the season of rains sets in,and cotton, weeds, sprouts, and all come up and grow with a vigor and rapidity only to be seen in the tropics. When the cotton is about to be choked out by useless vegetation, the hoes are sent to chop it out—an operation that is performed two or three times, or as often as circumstances are supposed to require it, during the year. The amount of cleaning required by a field depends upon the richness of the soil and upon the length and character of the