New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1855-06-06

| other plantations ii is almost universally dug
up with the hoe-the same clumsy tool used in
| the West Indies a hundred years ago. The
grain likewise is thrashed and winnowed by ma
chinery driven by steam, and not as upon most
plantations beat out with sticks and famed in
the wind. Yet upon this enlightened spot a
visitor from whom we have these details found
two hundred stalwart men and women in one
gang, directed by an enlightened overseer,
goaded by negro drivers, overlooked by an ex-
governor Of the intellectual State of South
Carolina, engaged in repairing breach Of some
hundred feet in length of one Of the leyees or
mud dams which surround each division of the
field to regulate the flow of water The field
was eighty rods square. The breach was on one
side and the dirt to repair it directly opposite,
on the other side of the square OF course it
was just double the distance around the bank as
across the level between which was too soft for
wheels. To get this dirt to the place, an Irish
man, even if he had MT as much intelligence as
slave, or his owner, or his overseer, would
have laid down plank runway and put on a
dozen wheelbarrows. A Yankee, with his labor
saving inventive genius-as similar work was
constantly to be done on the plantation-would
have had a movable railway and set of dirt-cars
BY which he would beat the Irishman and his
barrOws.
But how did Southern intelligence repair
the breach Each enc of the two hundred stout
men and women was furnished with a wooden
tray or wicker basket, holding about peck,
which lie scooped full of dirt with his hands,
setting it upon his head and marching half mile
at pace solemn and slow, in order to empty it
into the yawning gulf. The reader may imagine
how fast it was filed up. Forty trips day
would probably be full estimate, which would
make ten bushels to a man, or two thousand
bushels for the gang Of two hundred.
On the same plantation, too, rice straw is
burned for fuel under the steam-engine, be-
cause the hands have no time to get wood
On neiglbOring cotton plantation the Gin
"tellgent owner" died few years ago, and
appraisers went to make an inventory of the
stock and farming tools. The stock as ap-
praised consisted Of about one hundred negro
men, women and children, three cows, twenty
swine, and five dogs. The farming tools con-
sisted of hoe to each field hand and no other
utensil of any description; not a wheeled yehi-
Gle, except an old coach, which had been bleach
. ing for years in the sun, there on the place,
or ever had been. The negroes were the only
beasts of burden They carried fuel and food
upon their heads. They carried the cotton from
the field to the Clubhouse, and when it was
bagged, they carried it to the boat slung upon
poles, and poled or padded the boat to Charles
ton. Our informant has been upon numerous
large rice and cotton plantations where plow
was never used, and where the crop of immense
rice fields was carried to the stacky upon ne
groes heads, and thrashed upon the ground with
sticks, the straw being carried off as the grain
was beat out. Everything is done by just such
wasteful system-and this, too, at the very
doors Of CharlestOn-though respectable jour
nal in that city harps upon the intelligence of
those who superintend these workingmen and
wCmen
There is no loss from dissipation, for the
- slave is not permitted to be dissipated," says
Tie Charleston Standard. Except, we add, when
lie can get liquor, which he will do upon every
possible occasion, because his master sets him
the example of drinking.
Standard, loss of power to labor among slaves
for want of sufficient food. The general rations
for field hands out of South Carolina are 81 lbs
of clear bacon and IL pecks Of corn meal, with
vegetables in their season, per week. But the
following are the rations of some of the best
planters around Charleston, as noted in the
memoranda of our informant; we indicate them
by numerals, not caring to give the owners
names:
"No. l. Owns 3 300 acres; cultivaes 600 acres of
rice, leo acres of conn., 90 sweet potatoes &c
oats-trery acre rih hoes. 200 slaves-l2O field
hands. Rations-from October to February /:
Sweet potatoes exclusively, bushel week After
the potatoes are gore, peck of conn., or peck of
broken rice. Never gives meat as ration Has made
5000 bushels of rice year. and corn and potatoes
enough to feed the people.
mo. 2. Owns 300 acres; cuItivates 26O acres of
rice 90 Of corn, "a acres Of potatoes and small
crop of oats crop Of rice, 900 bushels Owns 10
saves Rations per week: bushel of potatoes in the
season. afierward 10 quarts of corn meal or quarts
broken rice and quarts COW peas. Gives once week
in Summer small ration of fresh beef pork, mutton
goat meat, or salt fish. Buys 90 barrels of fish and
barrels of molasses year. Raises everything else
the place.
No. 3. Owns 1900 acres; cultivates 500 in
rice 500 in corn, oats and potatoes 700 slaves
Average sales of rice s25 600 year. Ratons per
week half bushel OF potatoes, six quarts of meal
or broken rice, and soup about once week. Negroes
have "task-work' and may grow something for them
selves 10 eat or sell in the over time
No. a. Cultivses ls3 acres Sea-Island cotton, 1903
Of corn 40 Of potatoes and little sugar
care Gotten averages 100 lbs per and that re-