110 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



bushel of corn a week is allowed each head, for 5-6 

 weeks. The amount of corn made determines the 

 number of hogs to be fed. Fattened hogs reach 3 to 

 500 pounds' weight. Live hogs sell at 3-3^ Spanish 

 dollars the hundred. Nowhere on the whole continent 

 is the breeding of swine so considerable or so profit- 

 able as in North Carolina. Besides what is consumed 

 in .the country, salted, exported, and lost in the woods, 

 there are annually 10-12000 head driven to South 

 Carolina or to Virginia. The North Carolinians there- 

 fore should not look a-skance, if their neighbors rally 

 them for being pork-makers, for when the talk gets on 

 their swine-breeding they themselves use the expres- 

 sion, ' We make pork.' But in these circumstances, a 

 hog costing them next to nothing except for what goes 

 into the fattening, the North Carolinians can send their 

 salted hog-meat to market at a third or a half cheaper 

 than their neighbors in the northern states where 

 harder winters and more restricted pasturage make the 

 maintenance dearer. On the other hand, there is a 

 difference in the quality, for the bacon of the Carolina 

 hogs is softer and does not keep so well. But it is not 

 very long since this part of the cattle trade has been 

 much followed and doubtless it will be found to their 

 interest to make betterments. 



Such a quantity of neat cattle, horses, and hogs 

 ranging about in the woods, many get from under the 

 eye of the owners, are either not marked, or run off 

 and are chased by predatory beasts into regions where 

 the marks are not known, or multiply in unsettled 

 parts of the country. All such cattle are called wild, 

 and are no man's property except his on whose land 

 they are found. But in certain parts there is a ' woods- 



