Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/328

 of their houses. The window generally consists of a square opening, which is closed with a shutter. But so also are those in the houses of the poor white people, and in Carolina there are many such to he met with. In the room one sees, nearly always, a couple of logs burning on the hearth, and the household furniture and little provision stores resemble those which are to be found in the homes of our poorest people in town and country. Here and there, however, one sees more attention paid to the house; a little ornament about it, together with well-supplied beds. Every house has a pigstye, in which there is generally a very fat pig; and many hens and chickens swarm about the garden-plot, in which they grow Indian corn, beans, and different kinds of roots. These little plots, however, do not look very well attended to. The slaves sell eggs and chickens, and every Christmas their pig also, and thus obtain a little money to buy treacle or molasses (of which they are very fond), biscuits, and other eatables. They often lay up money; and I have heard speak of slaves who possess several hundred dollars. This money they generally place out to interest in the hands of their masters, whom, when they are good, they regard as their best friends, and who really are so. All the slave-villages which I saw perfectly resemble each other, only that some of the houses are better, and others worse kept. The slaves are under the management of one or two overseers, appointed by the master, and under these there is, for each village, a driver, who wakes the slaves in the morning, or drives them to work when they are late. The driver is always a negro, and is often the most cruel and the most severe man in the whole plantation. For when the negro is unmerciful he is so in a high degree, and he is the worst torment of the negroes. Free negroes, who are possessed of slaves—and there are such—are commonly the worst