80 RuTA Baga culture. [Part I. 



day, was completed by about^jwo o'clock. Welland justly 

 did Moses order, that the ox should not be muzzled 

 while he was treading out the corn ; for, surely, no ani- 

 mials are so useful, so docile, so gentle as these, while 

 they require at our hands so little care and labour in 

 return ! 



108. Now, it will be observed, that the turnips here 

 spoken of, were put up when the ground and the tur- 

 nips were frozen. Yet they have kept perfectly sound 

 and good ; and I am preparing to plant some of them 

 for seed. I am now writing on the 10^/t of April. I 

 send off these turnips to mai'ket every week. The tops 

 and tails and offal I give to the pigs, to the ewes and 

 lambs, and to a cow, and to working oxen, which all 

 feed together upon this offal flung out about the barn- 

 yard, or on the grass ground in the orchard. Before 

 they have done, they leave not a morsel. But, o{ feed- 

 ing I shall speak by and by. 



109. The other crop of turnips, I mean those'which 

 were transplanted, as mentioned in paragraphs 72 and 

 73, and which, owing to their being planted so late in 

 the summer, kept on growing most luxuriantly till the 

 very hard frosts came. 



110. We were now got on to the 17th of December; 

 and I had cabbages to put up. Saturday, Sunday, and 

 Monday, the 21st and 22nd and 23rd, we had a very 

 hard frost, as the reader, if he live on this island, will 

 well remember. There came a thaw afterwards, and 

 the transplanted turnips were put up like the others ; 

 but this hard frost had pierced them too deeply, espe- 

 cially as they were in so tender and luxuriant a state. 

 Many of these we find rotted near the neck ; and, upon 

 the whole, they have suffered a loss of about one half 

 An acre, left to take their chance in the field, turned 

 out, like most of the games of hazard, a total loss. They 

 were all rotted. 



111. This loss arose wholly from my want of sufli- 

 cient experience. 1 was anxious to neglect no neces- 

 sary precaution ; and I was fully impressed, as I always 

 am, with the advantages of being early. But, early in 

 December, I lost a week at New York ; and, though 

 1 worried my neighbours half to death to get at a knoy- 



