COTTON CULTURE. 41 



The clothing becomes wet, and the frame chilled in the 

 raw, morning air. But, soon after sunrise, the temperature 

 begins to rise rapidly, and by ten o'clock the thermometer 

 may stand between seventy and eighty degrees. This 

 degree of heat continues for several hours, but declines 

 very fast at sunset, so as to be as low as forty by the time 

 the stars appear. The cotton field will naturally be situated 

 on the lowest lands, and at night the malarious air falls, 

 so as to make them the most unwholesome of any in the 

 vicinity. The effect of exposing laborers daily to such 

 vicissitudes can easily be imagined. 



About nine o'clock in the morning, one and another of 

 a gang of laborers would come out of the field, sick with 

 a violent chill. This would be followed by a high fever, 

 and the hand kept from earning anything for three or four 

 days, and often a week. 



There is no time in the year when the cotton grower 

 can so ill afford to have his force diminished, as in the 

 picking season. Labor is then everywhere in demand. 

 Good pickers can always command high wages, and every- 

 body that can work is then occupied. 



Let the planter remember that an ounce of prevention 

 is worth a pound of cure. Coffee is the most agreeable 

 preventive of miasmatic disease, and quinine the most 

 effective. In picking time, every plantation on low lands 

 should be supplied with both, and should use the former 

 with liberality, and the latter in moderation. 



Let the pickers have the sunlight upon them the whole 

 time of their being at work. Kindle a fire at the baskets 

 before they go out, set on a big pot or kettle of coffee, and 

 have it boiling before sunrise. Give each hand a half pint 

 of it, and with it a hard cracker, a roast potato, or a piece 

 of bread. Then, at eight, provide breakfast. Let the 

 work be brisk till nearly sunset, pausing only for dinner, 

 and manage to have the day's picking weighed and stored 



