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SUGAR-PLANTATIONS. 



of about two feet and a half broad, and six feet 

 in length, is fixed upon two ■wheels of solid tim- 

 ber, with a moveable axle-tree ; a pole is likewise 

 fixed to the cart. These vehicles are always 

 drawn by four oxen or more, and as they are 

 narrow, and the roads upon which they must 

 travel are bad, they are continually overturning. 

 The negroes who drive the carts have generally 

 some indulgences, with which their fellow-slaves 

 are not favoured, from the greater labour which 

 this business requires, and from the continual 

 difficulty and danger to which they are exposed, 

 owing to the overturning of the carts and the un- 

 rulinessof the oxen. In the whole management 

 of the concerns of a plantation, the want of me- 

 chanical assistance to decrease the labour of the 

 workmen must strike every person who is in the 

 habit of seeing them, and of paying any attention 

 to the subject. I will mention one instance ; 

 when bricks or tiles are to be removed from one 

 place to another, the whole gang of negroes be- 

 longing to the estate is employed in carrying 

 them ; each man takes three or ^erhaps four 

 bricks or tiles upon his head, and marches off 

 gently and quietly ; he lays them down where he 

 is desired so to do, and again returns for three 

 or four more. Thus thirty persons sometimes 

 pass the whole day in doing the same quantity 

 of work that two men with wheel-barrows would 

 have performed with equal ease in the same 

 space of time. 



