SOLON ROBINSON, 1849 297 



there, as is sometimes told us by rascally runaway ne- 

 groes and their aiders and abettors, I should answer, only 

 once, and that was in this manner — spending a few days 

 with a gentleman in Washington, near Natchez, who was 

 himself from that island where the experiment is so often 

 tried, how great an amount of human life can be sus- 

 tained upon the smallest amount of the cheapest food, 

 and where it is considered economy to have everything 

 eaten that is possibly eatable; I suppose he was practic- 

 ing in Mississippi upon the same principle; for I ob- 

 served, one morning, a negro engaged over a large kettle 

 of boiling cotton seed and corn, cabbage stumps and tur- 

 nips, cutting up and putting into the kettle a litter of 

 pigs that had been overlaid by the mother and killed the 

 night before ; on inquiring what he was making soup for, 

 he sery honestly told me it was to feed them young 

 blacks, that I had just been looking at. Whether he 

 would have dared to aver the truth, if his master had 

 been present, is not for me to say; or whether cotton 

 seed soup, thickened with dead pigs, is a wholesome diet, 

 that would be relished by young negroes, I am unable to 

 say; as the young blacks for whom this unsavory dish 

 was destined, did not speak our language, or I should cer- 

 tainly have asked them the question; but, unfortunately 

 for me and the abolition cause generally, these blacks 

 belonged to the Berkshire family, and only answered me 

 with a grunt. 



But I do seriously say, that I did not see or hear of 

 one place where the negroes were not well fed ; and I did 

 not see a ragged gang of negroes in the South ; and I 

 could only hear of one plantation where the negroes were 

 overworked or unjustly flogged, and on that plantation 

 the master was a drunken, abusive wretch, as heartily 

 despised by his neighbors as he was hated by his negroes, 

 and were it not for the consequences to themselves if they 

 should rise upon and pull him limb from limb, his brother 

 planters would rejoice that he had met the fate that 

 cruelty to slaves, they are free to say, justly merits. 



