Chap. XII. THE CLIMATE EEFUTED. 197 
in which these vegetables are grown ; — and they neither 
keep slaves nor do they employ hired negroes. If they 
are able to engage hired hands, those hands are Germans 
like themselves. 
In Western Texas, where, in certain districts, Germans 
form the greater number of the population, German farmers, 
on their own property and in good circumstances, cultivate 
the cotton by their personal labour. But there, under a 
sun as hot as it ever is in Honduras, at a short distance 
from a coast where the yellow fever rages, I have met with 
gentlemen who had been officers, professors, men of science, 
lawyers, or of similar positions in Germany, — some of whom 
had even been wealthy proprietors and used to all the 
comforts and charms of refined European life, — standing 
behind the plough ; and I have never heard them com- 
plain of this or any other agricultural occupation in the 
hot climate being injurious to health. 
In travelling through Georgia and Alabama, I became 
acquainted with a wealthy planter of Louisiana. Our con- 
versation turned upon the question of slave and free labour, 
and their relative merits, when that gentleman remarked, 
" Alabama has great resources in mineral wealth, but the 
State wants entirely a different population to turn them to 
profit. I have been a slaveholder all my lifetime ; but I 
have my eyes open." " Do you think, then," I asked him, 
" that the climate of the Carolinas, of Georgia, Alabama, 
and Louisiana, would allow negro labour to be generally 
supplanted by the free labour of white men ? " " Certainly, 
I think so," was his answer. " There are very unhealthy 
places in those States, but they are fatal to negroes also. I 
have employed Germans in occupations in which they had 
to expose themselves to the hottest sun during the whole 
day, and I found that they endured it just as well as my 
