SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 131 



improved implements and machinery that would be of 

 vast benefit to them. Many of them continue to use 

 plows that would now be a great curiosity among eastern 

 plowmen. Dr. Philips has done much toward getting im- 

 proved plows introduced among cotton growers. His sys- 

 tem of cultivation, too, shows his neighbors whose land is 

 wearing out, while his is improving, that such a soil as 

 this judiciously managed should never wear out. 



It is a truth that his crop of cow peas which he has 

 often written about in the pages of the Agriculturist, 

 appear to me sufficient to give the land a good coat of 

 manure. The bulk of this crop must be beyond belief, to 

 those who have never seen the like. My next letter I hope 

 will be from the sugar plantations of Louisiana, provided 

 it ever stops raining, so that I can get there. 



Solon Robinson. 



"Log Hall," Hinds Co., Miss.,'\ 

 November 22d, 1848. [ 



The Pumpkin Dance and Moonlight Race. 



One of the Western Border Tales. 



By Solon Robinson, Esq. 



IDaily Cincinnati Gazette, December 2, 1848] 



[November ?, 1848] 



In traveling through this queer world of ours, one 

 not only meets with strange bed-fellows — (vide, the 

 account of a certain Illinois Judge, making his first elec- 

 tioneering tour) — but strange fellows meet us, who ap- 

 parently never go to bed. 



I met with a lot of these the other day — or rather 

 night — in a certain town, in the southers part of Illinois, 

 and as it can positively have no bearing upon the election 

 now, perhaps you would like to have it to use for "chink- 

 ing" in among the election returns. 



I don't know how it is, exactly, whether it is in conse- 

 quence of the sovereigns of southern Illinois drinking so 

 much whisky, that General Cass gets so many votes in 



