146 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 

 Agricultural Tour South and West. — No. 4. 



[New York America7i Agriculturist, 8:117-19; Apr., 1849'] 



[Written January 12, 1849, covering December 9-15, 



1848^] 



Between Woodville and Bayou Sarah, 24 miles, is 

 a railroad that would be of vast benefit to the cotton 

 planters, if the company had learned the secret connected 

 with low freights. Short crops and low prices of cotton, 

 combined with the fact of several planters in the hill 

 lands between Woodville and Bayou Sarah, having been 

 very successful in the cultivation of cane the past season 

 or two, is creating considerable excitement about making 

 sugar in a region that it would have been considered only 

 a few years since, madness to talk about. It is said that 

 Dr. Wilcox,^ eight miles from Bayou Sarah, makes this 

 year 400 hhds. of sugar upon a place that has not lately 

 yielded over 150 bales of cotton; and that his neighbor, 

 Mr. Fort,* is making two hogsheads to the acre from land 

 that only afforded half a bale. [It is to be remembered 

 that a hhd. of sugar is 1,000 lbs. and a bale of cotton is 

 400 lbs.] It is also known that Mr. Ruffin Barrow,^ Dr. 



'Reprinted in part in The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil, 2:7 

 (July, 1849). 



" This article is placed here to conform to the itinerary of Robin- 

 son's tour through Louisiana. 



" Dr. W. Wilcox, owner of Oak Grove sugar plantation in West 

 Feliciana Parish, near Bayou Sara Landing (St. Francisville), but 

 not fronting on the Mississippi River. A user of improved sugar 

 equipment, although not one of the larger sugar producers. 

 Champomier, P. A., Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in Louisi- 

 atia (New Orleans, annual, beginning with 1849) ; map of Planta- 

 tions on the Mississippi River from Natchez to New Orleans 

 (1858) ; "Directory of the Planters of Louisiana and Mississippi," 

 in Cohen's New Orleans Directory, 1855, p. 360. 



* William J. Fort, operator of Catalpa and Magnolia sugar plan- 

 tations. The latter fronted on the Mississippi. Fort had a sugar 

 house on each plantation, used modern equipment, and was one 

 of the largest sugar planters in the state. Champomier, op. cit.; 

 map of Playitations on the Mississippi River; "Directory of the 

 Planters of Louisiana and Mississippi," op cit., 329. 



' Ruffin Barrow is said to have had, in 1830, a plantation of 

 twelve thousand acres, nearly equally divided between cotton and 



