owned by masters who keep them on purpose to hire out—­and they usually let them to those who will give the highest wages for them, irrespective of their mode of treatment; and those who hire them, will of course try to get the greatest possible amount of work performed, with the least possible expense.  Women are seen bringing their infants into the field to their work, and leading others who are not old enough to stay at the cabins with safety.  When they get there, they must set them down in the dirt and go to work.  Sometimes they are left to cry until they fall asleep.  Others are left at home, shut up in their huts.  Now, is it not barbarous, that the mother, with her child of children around her, half starved, must be whipped at night if she does not perform her task?  But so it is.  Some who have very young ones, fix a little sack, and place the infants on their backs, and work.  One reason, I presume is, that they will not cry so much when they can hear their mother’s voice.  Another is, the mothers fear that the poisonous vipers and snakes will bite them.  Truly, I never knew any place where the land is so infested with all kinds of the most venomous snakes, as in the low lands round about Savannah.  The moccasin snakes, so called, and water rattle-snakes—­the bites of both of which are as poisonous as our upland rattlesnakes at the north,—­are found in myriads about the stagnant waters and swamps of the South.  The females, in order to secure their infants from these poisonous snakes, do, as I have said, often work with their infants on their backs.  Females are sometimes called to take the hardest part of the work.  On some brick yards where I have been, the women have been selected as the moulders of brick, instead of the men.

II.  THE FOOD OF THE SLAVES.

It was a general custom, wherever I have been, for the masters to give each of his slaves, male and female, one peck of corn per week for their food.  This at fifty cents per bushel, which was all that it was worth when I was there, would amount to twelve and a half cents per week for board per head.

It cost me upon an average, when at the south, one dollar per day for board.  The price of fourteen bushels of corn per week.  This would make my board equal in amount to the board of forty-six slaves! This is all that good or bad masters allow their slaves round about Savannah on the plantations.  One peck of gourd-seed corn is to be measured out to each slave once every week.  One man with whom I labored, however, being desirous to get all the work out of his hands he could, before I left, (about fifty in number,) bought for them every week, or twice a week, a beef’s head from market.  With this, they made a soup in a large iron kettle, around which the hands came at meal-time, and dipping out the soup, would mix it with their hommony, and eat it as though it were a feast.  This man permitted his slaves to eat twice a day while I was doing a