The most jovial operation of the year to the hands is the wheat-harvest in June; but the introduction of the mechanical reaper has taken away something of its peculiar character.  Much of the grain, however, is still cut down with the cradle.  The strongest negro always leads the dozen or more mowers, and thus incites his fellows to keep closely in his wake.  As they move along, they sing, and the sound, sonorous and not unmelodious, is echoed far and wide among the hills.  Behind them follows a band of men and women, who gather the grain into shocks or tie it in bundles.

After the harvest is over, the time of the laborers is given up entirely to the tobacco, which has now grown to a fair size.  Their first task is to “sucker” it,—­that is, cut away the shoots that spring up at the intersection of each leaf and the stalk, and which if left to grow would absorb half the strength of the plant.  They also examine the leaves very carefully, to destroy the eggs and young of the tobacco-fly.  Day after day they go over the same fields, finding newly-laid eggs and newly-hatched young where only twelve hours before they brushed their counterparts off to be trampled under foot.  As the tobacco ripens, it becomes brittle to the touch and is covered with dark yellow spots, and when this appearance is still further developed the time for cutting has arrived, which generally is in the first month of autumn, and always before frost, which is as fatal to this as to every other weed.  The plant is now about three feet in height, with eight or nine large leaves, the stalk having been broken off at the top in the second stage of its growth.  On the appointed day a dozen or more men with coarse knives split the stalk of each plant straight down its middle to within half a foot of the ground.  They then strike the plant from the hill and lay it on one side.  The leaves soon shrink under the rays of the sun and fall.  One of the laborers who follow the cutters then takes it up and places it with nine or ten other plants on a stick, which is thrust through the angle formed by the two halves of the plant separated from each other except at one end.  It is deposited with the rest in an open ox-cart and transported to the barn.  In the barn poles have been arranged in tiers from bottom to top to support the sticks; and when the building is full of tobacco the laborer in charge ignites the logs that fill parallel trenches in the dirt floor, and a high rate of temperature is soon produced, and is maintained for several days, during which a watch is kept to replenish the flames and prevent a conflagration.  As soon as the tobacco has changed from a deep green to a light brown, it is removed on a wet day to the general barn.  The same process of curing is going on in many barns on the same plantation, and occasionally one is burned down; for the tobacco is very inflammable, a stray spark from below being sufficient to set the whole on fire.