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Updated: May 16, 2025
The gray dawn of the morning dimly lighted up a field of cotton, the negro quarters on the horizon line; dotted here and there, bending over the bolls, were groups of negroes, singly and in pairs, filling their bags; in the foreground walked two young negro girls, the foremost a dark mulatto the whole story of Southern slavery written in every line of her patient, uncomplaining face.
It is believed for certain, that Cope will embark at Aberdeen. "I hope the meal was with you this day, thirty-five bolls, for it was at Invar last night. It shall be my study to have more meal with you on Monday night, for you must distribute a peck a man; and cost what it will, there must be frocks made to each man to contain a peck or two for the men to have always with them.
"It's a lucky thing for her that all the men she thought she cared about were gentlemen. You must have noticed yourself how little yesterday means to her, how less than nothing tomorrow means, until it becomes today." "Well," I said, "it all bolls down to this, that after many vicissitudes, she found her Paradise at last."
The year had been, for the river-plantations, exceptionally favorable for cotton-growing. On the Horton place especially "the stand" had been pronounced perfect, there being scarcely a gap, scarcely a stalk missing from the mile-long rows of the broad fields. Then, the rainfall had not been so profuse as to develop foliage at the bolls' expense, as was too frequently the case on the river.
All that dark earth heaved in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its birth pains.
In the rich alluvium of the Mississippi the cotton will tower beyond the reach of the tallest "picker," and a single plant will contain hundreds of perfect "bolls;" in the neighboring "piney-woods" it lifts its humble head scarcely above the knee, and is proportionably meager in its produce of fruit.
"There you are, Sandy!" he would call, "doing no trade as usual; you'll not have sold a parcel of pins or a bolt of tape to-day, I suppose. Where am I to get my rent, I wonder, next Martinmas?" The merchant would remonstrate. "I've done very well to-day, Captain," he would say. "I have six bolls of meal and seven yards of wincey going up the glen in the Salachary cart."
When Travis left it was still early and Alice walked with him to the big gate. The moon shone dimly and the cool, pure light lay over everything like the first mist of frost in November. Beyond, in the field, where it struck into the open cotton bolls, it turned them into December snow-banks.
The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by the failure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and the necessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint for market. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture within a strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.
I drink plenty of milk, and often eat a piece of dry meat. Lately I reaped nearly two bolls of wheat from two hatfuls which I sowed. This is of great help to me. I shall soon have plenty of Indian corn, cabbages, melons, and potatoes. Water is scarce. I have sown wheat a second time on trial. I live chiefly now on bread and milk.
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