SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 137 



has been already profitably sent in flat boats from Green 

 River, Kentucky, to New Orleans. 



Profitable Culture of Havana Tobacco in Mississippi. — 

 Mr. R. Y, Rogers, who lives among those interminable 

 and almost inaccessible hills back of Vicksburg, raised 

 on one eighth of an acre, the last season, a crop of to- 

 bacco, which, although only once cut, has brought him 

 $121, cash, leaving nine hundred cigars on hand and to- 

 bacco enough, except wrappers, to make three thousand 

 more. The cigars readily bring him $20 a thousand. Mr. 

 R. is a small farmer and market gardener, and a gentle- 

 man of great enterprise, whose income from the amount 

 invested, I presume is a greater percentage than any cot- 

 ton planter in the state. In company with friend Rogers, 

 we took saddle horses and rode over to Dr. George 

 Smith's plantation, as the inconceivable unevenness of 

 the surface, prevented our travelling in a carriage. It 

 would utterly surprise any one from the most hilly region 

 of New England, to see the steep side hills here in culti- 

 vation. The plowing is done on the "level system," and 

 the crop often has to be carried down by hand, as no cart 

 can be driven up and down or round about, except as is 

 sometimes done by attaching a rope to a stake on top of 

 the hill, which prevents the cart from upsetting as it 

 circles round, keeping the rope taught. We found on Dr. 

 Smith's place a sample of economy often seen in other 

 places besides Mississippi. He had about one hundred 

 hogs, which, by dogs and traps, had been caught from 

 the woods and shut up in square rail pens, eight to fifteen 

 in a pen, to be fattened. I do not think that when killed 

 they will average 100 lbs. each. The corn is shelled and 

 boiled, and fed in troughs. The bottoms of the pens are 

 rails— no shelter nor bed — wood, water, and corn, hauled 

 half a mile. Now this corn, is worth 40 to 50 cts. a bushel 

 in Vicksburg, and six miles to haul. The pork will be 

 worth from 3 to 5 cts. Query — which would be the best 

 economy, to shoot the hogs and sell the corn and buy pork, 

 or feed it, with the hope of making it of such hogs — many 



