TOBACCO MARKETS. 337 



bright golden brown, and nearly two feet in length, was 

 carefully preserved for show on the parlor-mantel of the 

 planter who raised it. 



" After tying, the bundles are placed in bulk, and when 

 again ' in order,' are * prized ' or packed into the hogsheads, 

 no smoothly -planed and iron-hooped cask, by the way, but 

 huge pine structures very roughly made. The old machine 

 for prizing was a primitive affair, the upright beam through 

 which ran another at right angles, turning slightly on a pivot, 

 heavily weighted at one end, and used as a lever for com- 

 pressing the brown mass into the hogsheads. Now, most 

 well-to-do planters own a tobacco straightener and screw- 

 press, inventions which materially lessen the manual labor 

 of preparing the crop for market. Each hogshead is branded 

 with the name of the owner, and thus shipped to his com- 

 mission-merchant, when the hogshead is i broken ' by tear- 

 ing off a stave, thus exposing the strata of the bulk to view. 

 Of late years some planters have been guilty of ' nesting,' or 

 placing prime leaf around the outer part and an inferior 

 article in the center of the hogshead. 



" At a tobacco mart in Southside, occurred perhaps the 

 only instance of negro-selling since the establishment of the 

 Freedman's Bureau. At every town is a huge platform scale 

 for weighing wagon and load, deducting the weight of the 

 former from the united weight of both to find the quantity 

 of tobacco offered for sale. A small planter has brought a 

 lot of loose tobacco to market, which, being sold, was weighed 

 in this manner, and for which the purchaser was about to 

 pay, when a bystander quietly remarked, 'You forgot to 

 weigh the nigger.' An explanation followed, and the 

 tobacco, re-weighed, was found short 158 Ibs., or the exact 

 weight of the colored driver, who had, unobserved, been 

 standing on the scales behind the cart while the first weigh- 

 ing took place. 



" Thirty years or more ago before the Danville and 

 Southside Railroads were built the tobacco was principally 

 carried to market on flat-boats, and the refrain to a favorite 

 negro song was : 



" ' Oh, I'm gwine down to Town ! 

 An' I'm gwine down to Town ! 

 Tm gwine down to Richmond Town 

 To cayr my 'bacca down !' 



" Then all along the rivers, at every landing, was a tobacco 

 warehouse, the ruins of some of which may still be seen. 



