On each division of the plantation there is a settlement where the negroes live with their families.  The houses of the “quarters,” as the settlement is called, are large weather-boarded cabins.  In each there is a spacious room below and a cramped garret above, which is used both as a bedroom and a lumber-room, while the apartment on the first floor is chamber, kitchen, and parlor in one, and there most of the inmates, children as well as adults, sleep at night.  The furniture is of a very durable but rude character, consisting of a bed, several cots, tables and cupboards, and half a dozen or more rough chairs of domestic manufacture, while a few pictures, cut from illuminated Sunday books or from illustrated papers, adorn the whitewashed walls.  The brick fire-place is so wide and open that the fire not only warms the room, but lights it up so well that no candle or lamp is needed.  The negroes are always kept supplied with wood, and they use it with extravagance on cold nights, when they often stretch themselves at full length on the hearth-stone and sleep as calmly in the fierce glare as in the summer shade, or nap and nod in their chairs until day, only rising from time to time to throw on another log to revive the declining flames.  They like to gossip and relate tales under its comfortable influence, and it is associated in their minds with the most pleasing side of their lives.  Those who can read con over the texts of their well-worn Bibles in its light, while those who have a mechanical turn, as, for instance, for weaving willow or white-oak baskets or making fish-traps or chairs, take advantage of its illumination to carry on their work.

Each householder has his garden, either in front or behind his dwelling, according to the greater fertility of the soil, and here he raises every variety of vegetable in profusion:  sweet and Irish potatoes, tomatoes, beets, peas, onions, cabbages, and melons grow there in sufficient abundance to supply many tables.  Of these, cabbage is most valued, for it can be stored away for consumption in winter, and is as fresh at that season as when it is first cut.  Around the houses peach-trees of a very common variety have been planted, and these bear fruit even when the buds of rarer varieties elsewhere have been nipped, both because they are more hardy and because they are near enough to be protected by the cloud of smoke that is always issuing from the chimneys.  Every householder is allowed to fatten two hogs of his own, the sty, for fear of thieves, being erected in such close proximity to his dwelling that the odor is most offensive with the wind in a certain quarter, and, one would think, most unwholesome; but his family do not seem to suffer either in health or in comfort.  Every cabin has its hen-house, from which an abundant supply of eggs is drawn, which find a ready sale at the plantation store; and in spring the chickens are a source of considerable income to the negroes.  Their fare