RESISTANCE TO DAMPNESS. 465 



the end of the prize beam or lever ; and loose planks or slabs 

 of about five or six feet long being laid upon these suspended 

 pieces of timber, a kind of hanging floor or platform is 

 constructed, upon which weights are designed to act as in a 

 scale. A pile of large stones are then carted to the place, 

 and a sufficient number of these are occasionally placed upon 

 this hanging platform, until the lever has obtained precisely 

 the power which the crop master wishes to give it by this 

 regulating medium. 



" The prizing or packing by the old planters must have been 

 a tedious affair, and far different from the quick work made 

 by the screw-press now owned by all well to-do planters. 

 The size of the hogsheads containing the tobacco was regu- 

 lated by law to the standard of four feet six inches in length, 

 but the shape of the cask varied according to the fancy of 

 the cooper, or roughness of his work. At this period (a 

 century ago), the tobacco hogshead was made most generally 

 of white oaK ; but Spanish oak, and red oak, were sometimes 

 used, when the usual kind could not be so readily commanded. 

 Now the hogsheads are made of pine, but are nearly as rough 

 as those made by the colonial growers. 



" Tobacco, if well packed, and prized duly, will resist the 

 water for a surprising length of time. An instance is recorded 

 in strong proof of this, which occurred at Kingsland upon 

 James river in Virginia, where tobacco, which had been 

 carried off by the great land floods in 1771, was found in a 

 large raft of drift wood in which it had lodged when the 

 warehouses at Richmond were swept away by the overflowing 

 of the freshets ; an inundation which had happened about 

 twenty years before this cask was found." 



Tatham gives the following account of a similar instance : 



" On the sixth of October, 1782, 1 myself was one of a party 

 who were shipwrecked upon the coast of New Jersey, in 

 America, on board the brigantine Maria, Captain McAulay, 

 from Richmond in Virginia, and laden with tobacco. Several 

 hogsheads, which were saved from the wreck were brought 

 round to Still will's landing upon Great Egg harbor; and 

 amongst them some which had lost the headings of the cask, 

 and the hoops and staves, were so much shattered by the beat- 

 ing of the surf, that it was not thought worth while to land 

 them, and they were just tumbled out of the lighter upon the 

 beach, and left to remain where the tide constantly flowed 

 over them for several weeks, so that the outside was com- 

 pletely rotten, and they had the appearance of heapa of 

 30 



