CHAPTER IV. OCCUPATIONS AND SPORTS.

IT IS NOT MY INTENTION to describe in this letter the ordinary work of a plantation, but only the occupations and amusements of the younger members of the planter’s household.

Many of these were shared by the boys and girls of the family in their earlier years. These were, first, the almost daily visits to the cotton houses, where it was a pleasure to help the little slaves in beating up with switches the snowy cotton, as it lay upon the elevated scaffolding, airing in the winter’s sunshine; or to take hold of the crank of the whipper, which, with its long revolving shaft, with numerous radiating spokes, separated the dust and trash from the cotton; and then to stand by the ginner and watch him, or be permitted for a few minutes ourselves to feed the grooved hickory rollers, as they draw in the fleecy cotton and divide the lint from the seed; or to supervise the packer, as suspended in his distended bag from the upper floor, with many a grunt, he, with his heavy pestle, forces the lint into the bale. Then what joy it was, in the keen winter’s air, to perch upon the long beam outside, and travel miles and miles in a circle, ever-repeating itself, permitted as a special favor, for which a plate from the dinner table was exacted and willingly promised, and paid ourselves to drive the team.

At another time the barn-yard would be the special attraction, with its long parallel stacks of sheaves of golden rice. The dirt floor is beaten hard and swept clean, and the sheaves arranged upon it side by side; and now the stalwart laborers, with their hickory flails, beat off the heads of grain from the yellow straw; the obliging servants make for us children, or, if sufficiently skillful, we make ourselves, lighter flails, and, with our slighter blows, emulate in fun the heavier strokes of the men. And now the grain and broken straw are taken in baskets up the steps of the lofty winnowing house, which stands, stilt-like, upon its four upright posts; and as the grain and beaten straw are forced through a grated hole in the floor, the wind (faithfully whistled for) comes and carries off the chaff, and the round mound of rice steadily grows beneath. The rhythmical beat of the numerous flails is accompanied by a recitative and improvised song of endless proportions, led by one musical voice, all joining in the chorus, and can be heard a mile away, “The joy of the harvest,” of which a Hebrew prophet speaks.

A spell of cold weather sets in, and now the well fattened hogs must be killed, dressed, and cured. We look on in the frosty air of the early morn, interested spectators, as the porkers are each dispatched by one dexterous blow of the axe, and then immersed in a cask of hot water to take off the hair, and aid in the trying up of the fat into lard and “cracklings,” and, nothing loth, assist in the discussion at the family table of the spare-ribs and sausages; then there are horses to be ridden, and the difficult art acquired of keeping one’s equilibrium upon the perilous edge of a frisky steed; then there are evening walks with our sisters up the long oak-lined avenue, and rambles through the encircling woods in pursuit of the black sloes and yellow haws and other winter berries. And then in early spring the cattle, turned out to graze in the fields and forests in the mild Southern winters, are to be hunted up and penned, and the young calves marked and branded; the latter operation performed by the cowherds, and the former furnishing ample field for the exercise of our newly-acquired horsemanship.

As we grow older, our sisters and us boys begin to separate in our pursuits for the most part. Now comes the savage age, the period of traps and bows and arrows; and many is the sparrow and robin brought home to our admiring sisters as trophies of our woodcraft and skillful marksmanship. From the Indian’s implements, we are at last promoted to more civilized weapons, and actually (oh! height of a country boy’s ambition!) own horse, saddle and bridle, dog and gun. Many now is the gray squirrel, and long-eared rabbit, and gentle-eyed dove, and plump partridge that falls under our new weapon. And, grown more ambitious, bird-shot is exchanged for duck and turkey-shot; and with my “man Friday” or boy “Dick” as inseparable companion, we are off for the rice-fields. In those days the teal and English ducks, as we called them, abounded in the two rice swamps between which the plantation was situated; and occasionally a flock of wild geese, to my intense excitement, settled down among them.

When frightened from their feeding-grounds by the passing of a wagon over the causeway bridges, or the sound of a gun, the water fowl took flight for a few minutes, to circle around and then to return, the noise of their wings was like that of a mighty rushing wind. The settlement of the Northern lakes, their breeding places even before I was grown, perceptibly diminished their numbers. Well do I remember the day when two fortunate successive shots brought me nine fat ducks, five of which I shouldered, leaving four for my faithful companion; and it was no light task to get them home. But I felt proud as Julius Cæsar decreed by the Roman Senate a triumph, and coming home from the war of Gaul or of Britain, when I passed the groups of servants about the cotton-houses and listened to their admiring comments. To secure these trophies I did not scruple, with my little comrade, to crush, barefooted and barelegged, a whole day through the thin ice which crusted the broad, overflowed rice fields, and suffered no harm. I was never tyrannical, as Southern boys generally were not, but sometimes a little positive and threatening in making Dick divest himself of pants, that he might cross some deep canal, which his young master did not care, with his rolled-up trousers, to attempt, to get his dead birds. Later on, duck and turkey-shot gave way to buckshot; but of that I will not now write, because it would take me into manhood.

Often I made adventurous voyages in the lake-like rice fields in my bateau, with its extemporized sail, and prudently provisioned with sweet potatoes roasted in a fire built on shore. Coffin shaped, when it was building in the street of “the quarters,” the servants, as they came in from their work, with concern depicted in their faces, would ask, “Who is dead?” leading some of the family to predict that it would prove my coffin, which prediction, like many others as human, has proven false.

Then, when the dog-wood flower whitened the forests, came the spring fishing, Our rice fields were drained by wide, deep canals, stocked with various kinds of fresh water fish-trouts, mud-fish, cats, eels, chubs, perch (I give our names without vouching for their correctness). “Golden’s drain” ("dreen” my black companions termed it,) was the canal oftenest visited, and with best results. I can remember to this day the very appearance of the different places where we broke our way through the sea myrtles to get the water’s edge; and some positions inconveniently near the holes in the bank of two big alligators, male and female, which we had named.

Later in the season, as the waters became low, our negro men and boys “churned“ for fish-a sport in which I sometimes shared. The operation was this: A flour barrel was taken, both ends knocked out, and the hoops secured; then a half-dozen boys and men, thus provided, would range themselves across a canal, and moving in concert, would each bring his barrel at intervals down to the bottom. The moment a fish was covered, its presence was betrayed by its beating against the staves in its efforts to escape; when the fisherman instantly covered his barrel with his breast, and with his hands speedily capturing it, threw it to the little negroes on the dam, who quickly strung it upon stripped branches of the sea myrtle tree. How they managed to handle the cat fish, with its sharp and poisonous spines, I cannot imagine; perhaps their horny hands were impervious to them, as they were to the live coals of fire which I have often seen them transfer with naked fingers from hearth to pipe; sometimes (an experience of which I have a lively personal recollection) a moccasin was covered, and then there was a rush to the shore, minus barrel.

As the rice fields later in the spring dried up in the heat, they left exposed the holes of the alligators-an animal which, more frequently than we liked, fed on uncured bacon, and occasionally docked, without improving her beauty, the tail of some thirsty cow. And now a long, lithe, slender pole is cut, its larger end furnished with a stout iron hook, and a negro man wading up to his waist in the water, feels with it until he touches the living occupant, when with a dexterous turn he fastens the hook under the alligator’s foreleg, and now commences the tug of war! He is by main force dragged (in which operation other willing hands join) to the land, the pole allowed to turn with his revolutions as he comes to the shore, hissing like a goose. By a well-aimed blow of the axe, his head, with its formidable armature of teeth, is severed from its dangerous muscle, and his almost equally formidable weapon, his sweeping tail, is paralyzed. Sometimes, when unable to find the saurian, the pole is withdrawn; there are marks of teeth in startling proximity to the portion grasped by human hands! Well do I remember that, when somewhat callow, I would occasionally...