In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his summer plans.  The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205 bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair’s town house; the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them.  The sheep, he continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite of care and feeding; but “the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been as obedient as I could wish.”

One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent source of trouble.  Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among her fellows had led him to apply a “moderate correction,” whereupon she had further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison.  Cain could then only unbosom himself to Telfair:  “I will give you a full history of my belief of Darkey, to wit:  I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad as any in the whole world.  I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have ever been acquainted with.  In every respect I believe she has been more injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell for....  I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant.  I can not hope for the better any longer.”

The factor’s record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair.  The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of increase.  Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three hundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fine weather of 1841.  In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, dated November 20.  Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kept eight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed had substantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now white with a crop in danger of ruin from storms.  “My hands,” he said, “have picked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kind of pride in making a good crop.”  A gin of sixty saws newly installed had proved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operation with shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly.  This pressure, in addition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering of the corn crop.  The corn would prove adequate for the plantation’s need, and the fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast.  The winter cloth supply