118 
AGRICULTURAL TOUR SOUTH AND WEST.—“NO. 4, 
northward, and I have no doubt that most of the 
cotton plantations below Natchez, will in a few 
years more afford twice as much sugar in value as 
they now do cotton. True, the amount of money 
required to make the change is great—of that here¬ 
after. On the evening I left Woodville, I spent 
the night upon one of the oldest American planta¬ 
tions in this part of Louisiana, owned by General 
McAustin, an Irishman, but has resided upon this 
place, Springfield, one mile south of the state line 
on the road from Woodville to Jackson, La., up¬ 
wards of forty-five years, and has made a cotton crop 
every year, though some of the earliest ones were 
ginned by his own and one negro’s fingers, while 
sitting over a log-cabin fire of a winter evening. 
But, in 1809, he sold a crop of considerable size at 
32 \ cents a pound! This “gave me a lift,” re¬ 
marked the General, “ by which I was enabled to 
begin to go ahead.” He is now a hale old man of 
77, was a great friend of General Jackson, but a small 
one to some of those that have since pretended to fol¬ 
low the steps of that “ illustrious predecessor.” His 
reminiscences of the early settlement of this coun¬ 
try are highly interesting, but space will not permit 
me to insert them here. Speaking of coco grass, 
he says he has seen it grow up through a pile of cot¬ 
ton seed, several feet thick, that was purposely put 
upon a patch of it to smother it. He says that “old 
field, black seed grass,” will crowd out Bermuda 
grass in two or three years. The land here, though 
still hilly, is far less so than that I have passed 
over, and much better watered with springs and 
creeks. 
General M. says he has kept sheep many years, 
and that they do well. The wool, originally fine, 
continues the same, only shorter. He has some 
very good horses of his own raising; having in 
his younger days been considerably engaged in 
rearing—he loves a good horse. He cultivates at 
the home plantation, (having two others,) about 
1,000 acres, with sixty hands, and 'averages 300 
bales of cotton—5 bales to the hand, which aver¬ 
ages perhaps $20 the bale. This is certainly not a 
very profitable income upon the value of land, 
stock, machinery, slaves, &c., particularly, as upon 
a large, old plantation like this, not more than 
one half of the negroes are ever counted as field 
hands, and estimating the plantation at the very low 
figure of $50,000 and one half of the proceeds of 
the crop is at once taken up for interest at 6 per 
cent. Then there is the wages of one or more 
overseers ; a large bill for new implements, bag¬ 
ging, rope, &c., and half a pound of pork to fill every 
negro’s mouth, every day he lives, besides the im¬ 
mense clothing bill and family expenses to be paid 
out of the proceeds of the annual crops. It may 
be argued that while cotton is so low, at least, the 
full supply of meat ought to be raised on the place. 
So it had if it can. But with all the studied econ¬ 
omy and forethought of such men as Dr. Philips, 
it cannot always be done, and with men of far less 
calculation, the matter presents a host of difficul¬ 
ties unknown to northern farmers. “ Well, if you 
can’t raise pork, why not feed your negroes on 
beef,” exclaims the northerner. Simply because it 
would raise a revolt, sooner than all the whip lashes 
ever braided in Massachusetts. Fat pork and corn 
bread is the natural aliment of a negro. Deprive 
him of these and he is miserable. Give him his 
regular allowance, (3$ lbs. clear pork, and lh pecks 
corn meal per week/) and the negro enjoys more of 
“ heaven on earth,” than falls to the lot of any 
other class of human beings within my knowledge. 
On the day I left General McAustin’s, I dined 
with Wm. G. Johnson, whom many of my readers 
will recognize as an old and very intelligent cotton 
planter. Finding he could not continue to clothe 
and feed a large number of negroes, many of whom 
had grown old with their master, he has abandoned 
cotton altogether and suffered a large and once fine 
plantation to fall to decay, and wear the weeds of 
desolation ; using it only as a stock farm, and home 
for himself and old servants, while he has put all 
the able hands upon a sugar plantation, owned in 
company with his son-in-law, Wm. B. Walker, at 
Bayou Mauchac. There are several other aban¬ 
doned plantations in Mr. Johnson’s neighborhood, 
where buildings and fences are tumbling in ruins, 
and beautiful gardens grown up in briars and 
bushes, and large fields covered with broom sedge, 
the whole making a scene of desolation that is 
painful to pass by. And these things are not only 
here—they are more or less to be seen all through 
the cotton region. For the truth is, cotton cannot 
be grown at the present prices. Mr. Johnson thinks 
that sugar can be made at 3 cts. a pound better than 
cotton at six; and that anywhere within the limits 
of sugar growing, the same hands and lands, will 
average, one year with another, one hogshead of 
sugar for every bale of cotton. 
A few miles south of Jackson, on the Baton- 
Rouge road, I crossed the Clinton and Port-Hudson 
Railroad, in a stateof dilapidation. Why is it that 
no enterprise of this kind succeeds in this region % 
Dining with General Carter, I learned that his 
brother, on the adjoining place, made this year from 
four and a quarter acres of cane, (nearly one fourth 
of an acre of which was waste ground, in conse¬ 
quence of a pond,) seventeen and two thirds hogs¬ 
heads of sugar. The character of the soil is 
clayey upland, rather flat; original growth, dak, 
magnolia, gum, poplar, &c., and has been cleared 
and in cotton about twelve years, this being the 
first crop of cane. Another neighbor made 42 
hhds. from 12^ acres—certainly very encouraging 
to hill-land planters, and I hope the same success 
may continue to attend them. Though it is con¬ 
tended by many that these old cotton plantations, 
after some of the first crops of cane, will “ run 
out.” But I cannot believe that a soil almost bot¬ 
tomless, if properly cultivated, can ever fail. And 
I will show in some of my subsequent letters, by 
indisputable facts, that the subsoil plow is all that 
is needed to renovate land that has “run out,” any¬ 
where upon this vast and inexhaustible bed of allu¬ 
vion. 
Immediately after leaving General Carter’s, we 
enter “ the plains,” a very level tract of land some 
dozen miles across, of a whitish clay, with fre¬ 
quent openings, called “ prairie,” however unlike 
they look to those I live upon, and judging from 
the appearance of the few scattered settlements 
along the road, the land affords a poor return for 
the cultivation bestowed upon it. Though I have 
no doubt that all this great uncultivated tract, lying 
along this road, much of it still in heavy forest, mostly 
