ANXIETY OF THE COTTON PLANTER. 379 CHAPTER LIII. A FEW WORDS ABOUT COTTON. Above THE best cotton lands in the States lie between 31° and 36° north latitude. Below 31° the climate is too moist, causing the plant to run too much to stalk, and the fibre to rot. 36° the season is too short and too cold. The most fertile tracts In for the cultivation of cotton are the great river bottoms. the Mississippi Valley, twice or even three or four times as much may be raised to the acre as in Northern Alabama or Middle Tennessee. But in the Valley there is danger from floods and the army worm, by which sometimes entire crops are swept away. On the uplands there is danger from drought. The life of the planter is one of care and uncertainty. It requires almost as extensive organization to run a large plantation as a factory. You never know, until the crop is picked, whether you are going to get fifty or five hundred pounds to the acre. Anxiety begins at planting-time. The weather may be too wet; it may be too dry; and the question eagerly asked is, "Will you have a stand?" If the "stand" is favorable, that is, if the plants come up well, and get a good start, you still watch the weather, lest they may not have drink enough, or the levees, lest they may have too much. Look out also for the destructive, insects: kindle fires in your fields. to poison with smoke the moths that lay the eggs; and scatter corn to call the birds, that they may feed upon the newlyhatched worms. Perhaps, when the cotton is just ready to come out, a storm of rain and wind beats it down into the mud. Then, when the crop is harvested, it is liable to be burned; and you must think of your insurance. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, there is great fasċina tion in the culture, the possibility of clearing in one season from a good plantation fifty or a hundred thousand dollars, causing you to take cheerfully all risks. The plausible figures dazzle you; and to the Northern man the novelty of the life in prospect for a year or two is itself an inducement. You think little of the danger to health from the miasmas of the swamps; or to property, from the midnight torch of an enemy; or to life, from the ill-timed recreation of some bushwhacking neighbor. And you are quite insensible to what the Southern planter deems the greatest of all risks that beset your crop, that some day your freedmen will desert, and leave it to destruction. I found many Northern planters in the upland districts of Alabama and Tennessee, where lands are cheaper, plantations smaller, and the risks less, than in the Mississippi Valley. But the latter region proved the greater attraction to adventurous capital. Men from the Middle States and the great West were everywhere, buying and leasing plantations, hiring freedmen, and setting thousands of ploughs in motion. From experienced cotton-growers I obtained various estimates of the cost and probable profits of a crop the present year. They usually differed little as to items of expense, but sometimes very widely as to profits, according to each man's conjectures regarding freedmen's willingness to work, and the price of cotton next fall, which one would place as low as fifteen cents, and another as high as fifty. The annexed statement, furnished by the Southern Land Agency at Vicksburg, is probably as good as any: "SIR:-The following is an estimate of the expense and cash capital required to cultivate 500 acres of cotton land within the scope of our agency, for the year 1866. 25 mules @ $150.· $3,750 100 3 lumber wagons @ $75 225 120 barrels of corn meal @ $6 (about 1 lb. per ration) 84 barrels pork @ $35 (about 3 lb. per ration) 250 gallons molasses @ $0.75 (about gallon per ra tion each). 5 barrels salt @ $3, for stock and hands $900 720 2,940 187 15 Wages of 60 hands for 10 months @ $15 per month. 9,000 Value of the articles on hand at the end of the year: wear. Amount paid for cotton-seed, which is replaced from the crop. Leaving total expenditure during the year... a portion of the crop may be disposed of say 381 1,000 Last quarter's expenditures for supplies, wages, &c. .... 4,940 $8,273 $16,769 "From which calculation we see that the actual cash capital re quired is $16,769, or about $33 per acre, and the actual expense about $42 per acre. But as men's financial abilities differ materially, we think it quite possible to cultivate land with smaller capital. Many are hiring men, agreeing to pay but a small portion of their wages monthly, and the balance at the end of the year; while others save the use of capital by procuring supplies on a short credit, or by allowing a portion of the crop for rent. "The average crop on alluvial land is full one bale per acre; on second bottom or table lands, about 3 bale, and on uplands bale. "Clothing and extra supplies furnished to hands are usually charged against their wages. “This calculation is considered by the most experienced cottongrowers in the country a fair and liberal estimate; and from it you may estimate the profit on any sized tract, as the difference in the amount of land tilled will not materially change the figures. "Very respectfully," etc. Here the cost of some articles is placed too low. Two hundred dollars each for mules would be nearer the actual price. The cotton-seed to be replaced by the crop should also be thrown out of the consideration if you expect to close up business at the end of the year, for although seed this season brought one dollar and upwards, it has no merchantable value in ordinary times. This you will take into account if intending to undertake a plantation next year. But suppose we call the total expenditure for this year twenty-four thousand dollars. And suppose a full crop is produced, five hundred acres yielding an equal number of bales. Taking twenty-five cents a pound as a safe estimate, you have for each bale (of five hundred pounds) $125; for five hundred bales, $62,500. From this gross amount deduct the total expenditure, and you have remaining $38,500. If you go to the uplands where less cotton is produced, you employ fewer hands, and have less rent to pay, perhaps not more than four or five dollars for good land. Should cotton be as low as twenty cents, you have still a fair margin for profits; and should it be as high as fifty, as many confidently maintain it will be, the resulting figures are sufficiently exciting. In 1850 Mississippi produced 484,292 bales, of 400 pounds each; in 1860, more than twice that quantity. The present year, notwithstanding the scarcity of labor and the number of unprotected and desolated plantations, there is a prospect of two thirds of an average crop,· say half a million bales. The freedmen are working well; and cotton is cultivated to the neglect of almost everything else. If we have a good cotton season, there will be a large yield. If there is a small yield, the price will be proportionately high. So that in either case the crop raised in Mississippi this year bids fair to produce forty or fifty million dollars. THE DAVIS PLANTATIONS. 383 CHAPTER LIV. DAVIS'S BEND.-GRAND GULF.-NATCHEZ. DESCENDING the Mississippi, the first point of interest you pass is Davis's Bend, the former home of the President of the Confederacy. A curve of the river encircles a pear-shaped peninsula twenty-eight miles in circumference, with a cut-off across the neck seven hundred yards in length, converting it into an island. There is a story told of a man who, setting out to walk on the levee to Natchez, from Mr. Joe Davis's plantation, which adjoins that of his brother Jeff, unwittingly made the circuit of this island, and did not discover his mistake until he found himself at night on the spot from which he had started in the morning. About a mile from the river stands the Jeff Davis Mansion, with its wide verandas and pleasant shade-trees. The plantation comprises a thousand acres of tillable land, now used as a Home Farm for colored paupers, under the superintendence of a sub-commissioner of the Bureau. Here are congregated the old, the orphaned, the infirm, and many whose energies of body and mind were prematurely worn out under the system which the Confederacy was designed to glorify and perpetuate. Here you find the incompetent and thriftless. Some have little garden-spots, on which they worked last season until their vegetables were ripe, when they stopped work and went to eating the vegetables. The government cultivates cotton with their labor; and once, at a critical period, it was necessary to commence ejecting them from their quarters in order to compel them to work to keep the grass down. The freedmen on the other plantations of the island repre |