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 — suspended 
pieces of timber, a kind of hanging floor or platform is 
constructed, upon which weights are designed to act as ina 
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 beso 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, I 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 Stillwill’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 heaps of 
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