Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/89

 such as would be likely to increase in value on his hands. He had been obliged to spend but little money, being able to live and provide most of the food and clothing for his family and his people, by the production of his farm. He made a little cotton, which he had to send some distance to be ginned and baled, and then waggoned it seventy miles to a market; also raised some wheat, which he turned into flour at a neighbouring mill, and sent to the same market. This transfer engaged much of the winter labour of his man-slaves.

I said that I supposed the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as it progressed east, would shorten the distance to which it would be necessary to draw his cotton, and so be of much service to him. He did not know that. He did not know as he should ever use it. He expected they would charge pretty high for carrying cotton, and his niggers hadn't any thing else to do. It did not really cost him anything now to send it to Memphis, because he had to board the niggers and the cattle anyhow, and they did not want much more on the road than they did at home.

He made a large crop of corn, which, however, was mainly consumed by his own force, and he killed annually about one hundred and fifty hogs, the bacon of which was all consumed in his own family and by his people, or sold to passing travellers. In the fall, a great many drovers and slave-dealers passed over the road with their stock, and they frequently camped against this house, so as to buy corn and bacon of him. This they cooked themselves.

There were sometimes two hundred negroes brought along together, going South. He didn't always have bacon to spare for them, though he killed one hundred and fifty swine. They were generally bad characters, and had been sold for fault by their owners. Some of the slave-dealers were high-minded, honourable men, he thought; "high-toned gentlemen, as ever he saw, some of 'em, was."