Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/398

Rh earth on which it has nourished itself. Clay-eaters is the name given to these miserable people. No one knows whence they come, and scarcely how they exist, but they and the people called “Sandhill people,” poor whites who live in the barren, sandy tracts of the Southern States, are found in great numbers here. The Sandhill people are commonly as immoral as they are ignorant, for, as by the law of the States it is forbidden to teach the negro slaves to read and write, and in consequence there would be no support for schools, where half the population consists of slaves, and the country in consequence is thinly inhabited; therefore the indigent white people in the country villages are without schools, and very nearly without any instruction at all. Besides which these people have no feeling for the honour of labour and the power of activity. The first thing which a white man does when he has acquired a little money is to buy a slave, either male or female; and the slave must work for the whole family. The poor slave-holder prides himself on doing nothing, and letting the whole work be done by the slave. Slave-labour is generally careless labour, and all the more so under a lazy master. The family is not benefited by it. If the master and mistress are famished, the slaves are famished also, and all become miserable together. But again to the clay-eaters.

Mr. G. and his family were a good specimen of this class of people. They lived in the depths of a wood quite away from any road. It was a hot and sultry day, and it was sultry in the wood. The poison-oak (a kind of dwarf oak, said to be extremely poisonous), grew thickly on all sides in the sand. Deep in the wood we found a newly built shed, which had been roofed in for the poor family by some benevolent persons. Here lived the husband and wife, with five or six children. They had a roof over their heads, but that was all; I saw no kind of furniture whatever, not even a fire-place, and door