United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The day wore on, the land grew level, and the clearings more frequent. Stretches of stacked corn appeared like tented plains, brown and silent encampments of the autumn; and tobacco-houses rose from the fields whence the weed had been cut. Blue smoke hung in wreaths above the high roofs, for it was firing-time.
He places the stalk between two battens, so that it sticks out horizontally from the frame; thus each leaf hangs independently from the stalk; and the racks or frames are so arranged that all the leaves on all the stalks have a separate access to the air. The tobacco-houses are frame buildings, 100 x 60 feet, with usually four rows of racks, and two gangways for working.
The tobacco-houses are kept at a temperature of about 70 degrees; and late in the fall, to cure a late second or third crop, they sometimes use a stove to maintain a proper heat in the house, for the tobacco must not lie in the pile without heating. When it has had its first sweat, it is hung up on racks; and here Mr. Culp's process is peculiar.
"Piling" appears to be the most delicate part of the cure, and they have often to work all night to save tobacco that threatens to overheat. Mr. Culp thinks the dryness of the climate no disadvantage. I was told that they find it useful sometimes to sprinkle the floors of the tobacco-houses.
Besides these dwellings, there were barns, stables, store-houses, and tobacco-houses; blacksmiths' shops, wheelwrights' shops, coopers' shops all objects of interest; but, above all, there stood the grandest building my eyes had then ever beheld, called, by every one on the plantation, the "Great House." This was occupied by Col. Lloyd and his family. They occupied it; I enjoyed it.
It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand tobacco-houses."
Word Of The Day