The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-08-22
PIneappIes of the FIorIda Keys.
From Harper's Weekly.


The pineapple field is traversed at in
tervais by narrow roads. whose cleaning
Wilderness is painful to the eye, and are
so strewn with loose rocks as to make
one ache in anticipation at the thought
of walking in them. Yet, If it be cutting
season, even as the visitor hesitates before
attempting to traverse these rugged trails,
he may see coming toward him a process
sion of coal-black negroes, walking in
Single file easily and without hesitation,
though each bears on his head an immense
burden of pineapples in mat baskets wo-
ven of palmetto. These baskets are soft
of texture, very tough, and somewhat fun
nel-shaped, being larger at the bottom
than at the top. The average burden to
be "toted" out in one of them by each
man is four or five dozen "pines," or from
200 to $50 pounds. If the visitor happens
to be on Elliots Key, he may chance to
meet a file of ''toters," headed by Black
Caesar, a gigantic specimen of human
ebony, who maintains his reputation as
the strongest man of the pineapple keys
by posing on his head a burden of ten
dozen pines" having a weight of nearly
500 pounds. When it is remembered that
this weight is not merely lifted into posi-
ton and held there for a short space
but is borne for long distances over the
toughest of rocky roads in breathless trop-
ical heat several times an hour for many
comes a marvellous exhibition of human
strength and endurance.
The "toters" are clad in heavy bro
gans, canvas trousers, and undershirts,
with an occasional bit of added color in
shape of a scarlet sash, but all are bare
headed, barearmed and barebreasted.
Their burdens are deposited at the pack
lighthouses if the pines" are to be Grated
for shipment by rail- or in lat-bottomed
buff-bowed lighters If the fruit is to
be laden in bulk on board the awning
shaded vessels lying at anchor half a
mile off shore
Back in the field the cutters" burly
Bahama negroes wear heavy shoes, en-
tire suits of canvas, and stout gloves to
protect their hands from the poisonous
spines with which pineapple leaves are
armed from tip to base. Injured as these
sons of the tropics are to the singing of
insects they are often obliged to further
protect themselves with head-coverings
of netting for cutting season is also mos
quito season, and disturbance of the
plants drives out these winged pests in
binding, suffocating myriads, whose hum
ming is like that of the wind through
taut rigging. In such dense clouds do
they appear, and so bloodthirsty are they
that they would soon do to death man or
beast unprotected from their Venomous
attack. When they are at their worst no
white man dares enter the field, and even
the thicker-skinned negroes, provided
with every protection, will not do so IN
til or 10 O'clock in the morning.
when the sun, high and hot has some
what abated the nuisance by driving the
insects to the shade OF Foliage. At such
times work is again suspended at 4 or 5
O'Clock. in the afternoon, when the suns
heat begins 10 wane, and the stalwart
hands, exhausted, not with labor, but by
incessant warfare, beat a retreat to their
houses on the beach. These they first fill
with a dense smudge from sfow-burning
fires, and then Theoretically close until
the following morning.