The toil, like all
farm toil, is monotonous, and here there are little machinery
and few tools to relieve its burdensome drudgery. But with all
this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a
day when fresh air is scarce.
The land on the whole is still fertile, despite long abuse.
For nine or ten months in succession the crops will come if
asked: garden vegetables in April, grain in May, melons in
June and July, hay in August, sweet potatoes in September,
and cotton from then to Christmas. And yet on two-thirds of
the land there is but one crop, and that leaves the toilers in
debt. Why is this?
Away down the Baysan road, where the broad flat fields
are flanked by great oak forests, is a plantation; many thou-
sands of acres it used to run, here and there, and beyond the
great wood. Thirteen hundred human beings here obeyed the
call of one,--were his in body, and largely in soul. One of
them lives there yet,--a short, stocky man, his dull-brown
face seamed and drawn, and his tightly curled hair gray-
white. The crops? Just tolerable, he said; just tolerable. Get-
ting on? No--he wasn't getting on at all.
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