CULTURE AND CURING IN VIRGINIA. 



193 



Captain John Smith describes the soil of tidewater Virginia as he saw it in 1G07 : " The vesture of the earth in 

 most places doth manifestly prove the nature of the soyle to be lusty and very rich." 



The culture of tobacco rapidly spread as the colonists built houses and cleared lands, the tobacco-patch often 

 taking precedence of the corn-field, and its production being carried to such an excess as seriously to threaten 

 subsistence of the colonists, the colonial legislatures of Virginia and Maryland passed sumptuary laws that 

 " every person planting one acre of tobacco shall plant and tend two acres of corn ". As tobacco grows better on 

 new soil than corn or other crops, it was the first to utilize the fresh cleared land. New soil produces a finer and 

 better flavored article than old land ; therefore thousands of acres of forest were annually cleared. Thus extensive 

 areas in Virginia and Maryland were early denuded of forest growth, and the continued cultivation of tobacco 

 for many years on the same lauds without manure greatly impoverished the soil ; for a Virginian never thinks of 

 reinstating or manuring his laud with economy until he can find no more new land to exhaust or wear out" 

 (William Tatham, Historical Essay on the Culture of Tobacco : London, 1800). 



Tobacco raised on cow-penned laud was considered of only second quality, and was sold accordingly. Tatham 

 states that tobacco at first was cultivated continuously for twenty years on the same land, and describes the spots 

 selected for seed-beds as those preferred at the present day u rich, moist, fine soils, with sunny exposure." The 

 " fly " was a trouble then, as now ; and the remedy then practiced was " to sow mustard around the border of the 

 plant-bed, and as the fly prefers the mustard to the tobacco plants the latter will escape injury ". But of late years 

 this irrepressible insect takes more kindly to the tender tobacco plants, and planters find it hard work to coax or 

 to drive them off. 



The primitive mode of harvesting tobacco in Virginia was " to pull the leaves from the stalks as they ripen 

 and hang them on cords, to be dried in the sun and air" (Rev. Hugh Jones, Present State of Virginia, 1724). In 

 after time they split the stalks and hung the plants astraddle of sticks, as is now generally practiced in Virginia. 



The early planters cured their crops mostly in the sun and air. " In March or April the tobacco was conveyed 

 to the storehouse and dried with fire. * * * Salt was used in passing tobacco through the sweat." In time 

 " smoke was considered a prime agent in keeping tobacco sound. * * * Small, smothered fires were used, 

 made of bark and rotten wood". The fires were increased from year to year until log fires were built in three rows 

 upon the barn floors, which dried out the green tobacco in from three to five days. The firing process prevailed 

 generally in both Virginia and Maryland, and was kept up for a long series of years. Maryland finally abandoned 

 it; but iu the dark shipping district of Virginia it is still the mode practiced, except that less fire is now used than 

 formerly. 



After the close of the war of 1S12-'14 the demand for colored tobacco for export caused a change in the process 

 of curing in both Virginia and Maryland. After being cut and hung upon sticks, the tobacco was either placed 

 upon scaffolds in the sun to yellow and then housed, or it remained several days in the house, without fire, until it 

 had yellowed sufficiently to receive the heat without curing dark. Many planters in the two states learned to cure 

 a beautiful piebald or spangled leaf, which commanded high prices in Richmond and in Baltimore. In the former 

 city it was called "piebald"; in the latter, "spangled." 



Open wood fires constituted the only mode of curing by artificial heat until about the year 1828 or 1829, when 

 flues were first used in Virginia, Dr. Davis G. Tuck, of Halifax county, being the originator of the flue constructed 

 inside the barn, for which he obtained a patent. This plan, however, was adopted by but few planters, and soon 

 fell into disuse. 



About this time began the use of charcoal as fuel for curing tobacco, enterprising planters in Halifax and 

 Pittsylvania counties, Virginia, and in Caswell cotinty, North Carolina, being among the first to substitute it for 

 wood. The results were such as to induce others to adopt the new process, and thus it spread from farm to farm 

 throughout neighborhoods, and afterward from state to state, until it has extended over a wide area of the tobacco 

 belt. 



Meanwhile improvements were made upon flues, mainly since 1865, which justified their substitution for charcoal 

 open fires in the yellow tobacco belt of Virginia and North Carolina. Charcoal is 

 now but little used. Flues are constructed either of brick, stone, or mud walls, or 

 by digging ditches in the floor of the barn, and some are wholly of iron, furnaces 

 and pipes, and these are generally patented. 



A diagram of a cheap, efficient, and durable flue is given in Plate I, showing the 

 ground plan of a tobacco barn 20 by 20 feet and the arrangement of the flues therein- 

 Plate II shows the elevation. 



To construct flues on the plan given, it is first necessary to cut out two or three 

 logs from the end of the barn ; then build the walls of the flues 12 or 13 inches 

 distant from the sills or walls of the barn, as at EEEE, in Plate I, and projecting 

 outside the walls at A A 18 inches. Build the walls of flues 18 inches apart, and 

 18 to 20 inches in height at the openings A A, decreasing iu height as they run back ij 

 to 14 inches at CC. Put in sheet-iron pipes at CC, 10 or 12 inches in diameter, 

 equidistant from the flues and from each other, and carry them through the body 

 of the barn, out at DD, with the ends elevated at D D 3 feet higher than at CC. The flues should be arched with 



787 



PLATE I. 



