RICE AND ITS CULTURE. 829 



from both, blissful ignorance and choice. Fish and game are 

 plentiful, and in these regions a heavy diet is to be indulged in 

 only at great risk. Free labor is found to be more remunerative 

 than slave, inasmuch as the idle or inefficient can be dismissed ; 

 and the rice-planter of to-day has not necessarily the care of the 

 sick nor the doctor's bills of the ante-bellum time, when the very 

 best physicians were employed. Then, again, there is the wonder- 

 ful relief from anxious care ; and the providing in every way for 

 the wants of a large plantation of negroes, great and small, was 

 no sinecure. 



The best rice-lands are on the banks of rivers, for the con- 

 venience of flooding by the opening of the tide-gates, and also of 

 conveying the grain to the mills. They must be so situated as to 

 escape the salt and brackish water, but be below the reach of fresh- 

 ets, which are often most disastrous. They are alluvial lands, 

 composed principally of decomposed vegetable matter, and when 

 dry have the appearance of soot. Good crops can be made on 

 other low lands, if so lying that they may be drained and flooded 

 at will. These plantations have been and still are valuable pos- 

 sessions. It costs no inconsiderable sum to get them in order 

 for planting, though less than formerly, as the planter of to-day 

 cultivates fewer acres. The land is regularly laid out by a com- 

 plete system of embankments and ditches, forming independent 

 fields — the size of the fields being limited by the number of hands 

 that can finish one day's necessary work of cultivation in a day, 

 usually from fourteen to twenty acres. 



The plantations are surrounded by a dam or levee, with flood- 

 gates and trunks, through which they are irrigated from the river. 

 They are divided in squares, banked in, with a large ditch near 

 the banks, which receives the water from the trunks for irriga- 

 tion through smaller ditches fifty feet apart, through which the 

 fields are also drained at ebb-tide. 



Rice Culture. — Early in the winter the water is all drawn 

 off, that the banks may be strengthened, ditches mended, and the 

 ground plowed or hoed. In warm changes the water is again 

 turned on. In March drains are cleansed, ground kept dry, clods 

 broken up, and all made smooth with harrow or hoe. In April, 

 and until about the middle of May, the grain is sown in trenches, 

 a four-inch trenching-hoe being used, running at right angles to 

 the ditches, and about sixteen inches apart. By some the fields 

 are cross-plowed, and the grain dropped at the intersections. The 

 seed is very carefully selected, and sometimes, in order to se- 

 cure only the fullest grains, the rice is thrashed by hand over a 

 log or barrel. The seed, when sown, is lightly covered, and the 

 water turned on and kept upon the field from four to six days, 

 until the grain swells and begins to sprout. If the seed is not to 



