A VIRGINIA PLANTATION. 319 



business. He said there was a general prejudice against 

 tobacco, in all the tide water regions of the State, because it 

 was through the culture of tobacco that the once fertile soil 

 had been impoverished ; but he did not believe that, at the 

 present value of negroes, their -labor could be applied to the 

 culture of grain with any profit, except under peculiarly 

 favorable circumstances. JPossibly the use of guano might 

 make wheat a paying crop, but he still doubted. He had 

 not used it, himself. Tobacco required fresh land, and was 

 rapidly exhausting, but it returned more money, for the 

 labor used upon it, than anything else ; enough more, in his 

 opinion to pay for the wearing out of the land. If he was 

 well paid for it, he did not know why he should not wear 

 out his land. His tobacco-fields were nearly all in a distant 

 and lower part of his plantation; land which had been 

 neglected before his time, in a great measure, because it had 

 been sometimes flooded, and was, much of the year, too wet 

 for cultivation. He was draining and clearing it, and it now 

 brought good crops. He had had an Irish gang draining for 

 him, by contract. He thought a negro could do twice as 

 much work in a day as an Irishman. He had not stood over 

 them and seen them at work, but judged entirely from the 

 amount they accomplished: he thought a good gang of 

 negroes would have got on twice as fast. He was sure they 

 must have ' trifled ' a great deal, or they would have accom- 

 plished more than they had. He complained much of their 

 sprees and quarrels. I asked why he should employ Irish- 

 men, in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 

 ' It's dangerous work, (unhealthy !) and a negro's life is too 

 valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies it's a considerable 

 loss, you know.' He afterwards said that his negroes never 

 worked so hard as to tire themselves always were lively, 

 and ready to go off on a frolic at night. He did not think 

 they ever did half a fair day's work. They could not be 

 made to work hard : they never would lay out their strength 

 freely, and it was impossible to make them do it. This is 

 just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work 

 they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting 

 strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for 

 their own use at night, perhaps. 



" Mr. W. also said that he cultivated only the coarser and 

 lower-priced sorts of tobacco, because the finer sorts required 

 more pains-taking and discretion than it was possible to make 

 a large gang of negroes use. ' You can make a nigger work,' 

 Le said, < but you cannot make him think.' " 



