mr. Robinson’s tour.—no. 8. 
253 
bious. They are fat in summer, and live through 
winter. None hut the native, or Spanish cat-' 
tie, which are really a very fine breed, can 
stand such fare, particularly with ten musquitos to 
every spear of grass they fish up from its watery 
bed. The soil of this place is unusually light, 
hut has had the cream taken off by exhausting 
crops, without any return. Messrs. T. and W. 
purchased the place last year, of Mr. Packwood, 
the elder, at $225,000, with all on it-, ^here are 
8,000 arpents of land, 700 in cultivatioh, 450 in 
cane last year, and 575 this year, balance corn, 
&c. ; 139 slaves; 80 field hands; 55 working 
mules and horses; 50 oxen ; 20 carts ; 40 plows; 
200 cattle, and a few sheep, but no hogs ; good 
sugar house and machinery, with Relieux appara¬ 
tus of three pans capable of making 12 to 14 
hogsheads a day, or three hogsheads at a strike. 
The sugar house and machinery is valued at 
$50,000. The other buildings are good; the 
negro houses built of brick, with elevated floors, 
32 feet square, divided into four rooms, with chim¬ 
ney in the centre. There are twelve of these. 
The last crop was 700 hogsheads of clarified 
sugar, which usually sells, in hogsheads, from 5 to 
6 cents per pound. The molasses will not proba¬ 
bly exceed 20 gallons to the hogshead, if it does 
that. 
The next place below Myrtle Grove, is that of 
Col. Maunsel White, heretofore described in the 
Agriculturist, by R. L. Allen. His front fence, 
some three miles long, is made of three boards, 
whitewashed, upon posts set in a bank, upon 
which is a hedge, or rather thick row of sour 
orange trees, many of them loaded with fruit glit¬ 
tering through the handsomest foliage in the 
world. Col. White, as well as his next neighbor 
below, Robert A. Wilkinson, and, in fact, nearly all 
the large planters on this part of the coast, have to 
use draining machines. The strip and tillable 
land is very narrow, though all the back lands 
might be drained at less expense, in the aggregate, 
than is now done to drain a small portion of each 
plantation. Such a system as is in operation in 
Holland, would soon make the swamps of Louisiana 
tillable, and bring many thousands of acres of the 
finest sugar lands in the world into use, which are 
now only fit for breeding alligators, musquitos, and 
fevers. 
Mr. Wilkinson lifts his water five feet in an im¬ 
mense volume, say 1,000 gallons a minute. This 
drains 400 arpents. He has 1,000 arpents in the 
tract. 200 of which, in front, has elevation enough 
to drain by ditches, and the remainder by machin¬ 
ery. He designs to put the back lands in order 
for rice, using the same water that he lifts from 
his sugar land, to flood the rice fields, when need¬ 
ed. Mr. W. believes that all these lands could be 
drained by windmill. His father, J. B. Wilkinson, 
(son of the old General,) has lived here, on the 
adjoining place, twenty-eight years. The cane 
upon this plantation, and several others near, is as 
green as in summer. Mr. W. makes refined loaf 
sugar direct from it, by Relieux apparatus. So 
does Mr. George Johnson, the next place below T . 
Robert A. Wilkinson makes refined, (hogshead,) 
sugar by Howard’s vacuum pan; and Mr. Osgood, a 
few miles below, makes the same kind by vacuum 
pans from the Novelty Works. Mr. Osgood has 
greatly increased the product of his land by deep 
plowing, and the use of subsoil plows, abun¬ 
dant ditching, and manuring, at the rate of 100 
cart loads to the arpent, with old rotten bagasse, 
stable manure, and pea vines. Having no wood, 
except drift, he saves bagasse for fuel, or else would 
make manure of it, as he has proved its value to 
be great when fully rotted. His front fence is two 
and a half miles long, nearly all formed with a 
hedge of Yucca gloriosa, called here, “ Spanish 
bayonet,” Pete,” and several other local names. 
Although rather ragged in appearance, and inter¬ 
rupted by sundry negro paths, it is a good fence. 
Mr. O. assures me that no animal, not even a hog, 
will attempt to go through one of these paths. 
The points of the leaves are so hard and sharp, 
that everything is afraid to come near it. It needs 
topping every year, and all the tops that fall be¬ 
tween the rows are allowed to remain and grow, 
and those that fall outside must all be removed, or 
they will grow and increase the width of the hedge 
row two much. The annual trimming and growth 
of new plants every year, is the whole secret of 
keeping up these fences. When they are neglect¬ 
ed, they soon become unsightly and inefficient. 
The first setting of the hedge is very easy, as it is 
done by cuttings slightly planted in two rows, 
about two feet apart, and ten or twelve inches from 
one to the other, set opposite to the spaces of the 
opposite row. After getting large enough to trim, 
say in three or four years, the spaces all fill up with 
new plants. I think it the best hedge plant for 
this climate and soil, that I know of. Mf. O., 
however, is about to try the bois d’arc (Osage 
orange). I have no faith in his success, as it natu¬ 
rally grows to a tree. 
To show what a little energy and determination 
may accomplish, in time of trouble, I wish to state 
that Mr. Osgood has an orangery the fruit of which 
he has just sold on the trees for $550, besides mak¬ 
ing a very large reservation for himself and friends. 
But to the point. When all the orange trees were 
winter killed, in 1834-5, Mrs. Osgood, then living, 
immediately had the present orchard planted, the 
trees of which, as large as my body, and now 40 
feet high, are loaded with most delicious-looking 
fruit. There are also an abundance of lemons here, 
too. So much for the active energy of woman, and 
determination to have an orchard, notwithstanding 
the loss of one set of trees. There are many other 
places where oranges are plenty, but many others 
where there are none. But very few persons think 
of growing them for sale. 
Mr. Osgood once built a railroad through the 
centre of his plantation, which is long and narrow, 
to bring the cane to the sugar house; but, after a 
few years’ trial, he found it did not pay cost, and 
pulled it all up, except from the sugar house to the 
river bank, and from the bagasse sheds to the sugar 
house. Although these railroad experiments con¬ 
tinue to be tried by persons as sanguine in the 
belief of their advantage as was Mr. O., yet I have 
no doubt, that they will all follow suit. For the 
use of only six or eight weeks, when timber will 
not last over six or eight years, and when the cane 
has to be loaded into carts to be brought to the cars, 
however pretty the theory, the practice is not so 
