After breakfast a walk to the cotton-houses would be in order, for the successful planter is he who trusts nothing to the overseer which can have his personal supervision, and he must excuse himself to such of his guests as prefer a cigar by the library fire to an hour spent in observing the details of plantation work.  In the days of which I write horse-power was preferred to steam, and negro-power to both; and few planters of the fine black-seed cotton could be convinced that any “power-gin” could be invented which would not injure the long, silky “staple” or fibre of the lint.  The old-time “foot-gins” were used exclusively, and the gin-house was a place of curious interest to all visitors.  In one end of the long room was the huge pile of seed-cotton which was to pass through the rollers as the first step toward its preparation for the market.  How simply does a sudden stroke of inventive genius solve a problem which wise men have regarded as insoluble!  Not much more than a century ago a commission of practical English savans discouraged the cultivation of a textile fabric which “might be useful but for the impossibility of clearing it of the seeds!” But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down before cotton.  Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer.  Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one ever-moving foot upon the treadle-board, feeding the seed-cotton from a large bag to the greedy rollers, which seize it and pass the lint in fleecy rolls into another bag prepared for it, while the seed, like shirt-buttons touched by the afore-mentioned wringer, rolls off from the hither side to form a pile upon the floor.  Thence it will be carted to the seed-house to be rotted into manure for the next crop, there being no better fertilizer for cotton than a compost of which it forms the base.  A portion of it, however, will be reserved to be boiled with cow-peas and fed to the milch-cattle, no food being superior to its rich, oily kernel in milk-producing qualities.  The negro mothers use it largely in decoction as a substitute for cocoa, and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and nutritious beverage.  The “green-seed” or short-staple variety is far inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky, cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that “you can pick the lint out of it.”  The ginned cotton is carried to the platforms, where it is “specked” by the women—­leaves, dirt and other impurities being picked out by hand—­and spread out to dry and bleach in the sun; thence we follow it to the “moting-room,” where it is thoroughly and finally overhauled, every minute particle of dirt