TRAPPING IN ALABAMA. 289 



We intended to put out a trot line and catch a sturgeon that 

 I might get some oil. It is said that the oil from a sturgeon is 

 a sure cure for rheumatism in the joints, but it rained so much, 

 keeping us busy adjusting our traps, that we did not get any time 

 to get the bait and put out the trot line. So I did not get to see 

 one of those large fellows. 



Mr. Ford pointed out corn and cotton fields where the corn 

 and cotton was still ungathered and told me that he had trot lines 

 set out all through these fields last spring and caught hundreds 

 of pounds of fish it hardly seemed possible as the water was then 

 fifteen of twenty feet below the banks of these fields. But in 

 December when it began raining nearly every day, and the water 

 rose so suddenly that I was obliged to leave many of my traps 

 where I had set them around ponds and banks of streams and in 

 the swamps, I could then readily see that it was perfectly possible 

 for the fish to get out into the corn and cotton fields to feed. 



The rainy season set in nearly a month earlier, this season 

 than usual, causing the rivers and streams to rise so as to flood 

 the whole bottoms (it is called the tide by the people in Alabama). 



I will not give my views of the country and conditions in 

 northern Alabama it would not look well; it is sufficient to say 

 that the greater part of the land is owned in large tracts by a 

 few men and leased out at from $3.00 to $4.00 per acre. Corn and 

 Cotton are the main crops. Any land lying above the overflowing 

 sections requires heavy fertilizing in order to make a crop. The 

 fertilizer is the commercial sort, and all the crop will sell for is 

 put onto the land in the way of fertilizers. These lands are mostly 

 leased to colored people in fact, I was told that the landlords did 

 not care to lease to white men. 



The poor white man in northern Alabama is worse off than 

 the colored man, for he is looked upon as neither white nor black. 

 In this section the population is largely of the colored class. All 

 of the landlords have a store, so as to furnish their tenants with 

 goods of an inferior quality at exorbitant prices. 



There is no good water to be found in that part of Alabama. 

 The water that the people use is something fearful of course the 

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