STOCK.
Of those estates which I have seen, I think that the average number of negroes sent to daily labour in the field does not reach forty for each; for although there may be upon a plantation this number of males and females of a proper age for working, still some of them will always be sick or employed upon errands, not directly conducive to the advancement of the regular work. An estate which possesses forty able negroes, males and females, an equal number of oxen[165], and the same of horses, can be very well worked; and if the lands are good, that is, if there is a fair proportion of low and high lands fit for the culture of the sugar-cane, such an estate ought to produce a number of chests of sugar of fifteen hundred weight each, equal to that of the able slaves. I speak of forty slaves being sufficient, because some descriptions of work are oftentimes performed by freemen; thus, for instance, the sugar boilers, the person who clays the sugar, the distiller, the cartmen, and even some others are very frequently free. Only a very small proportion of the sugar will be muscavado, if the business is conducted with any degree of management. I have heard it said by many planters that the melasses will pay almost every expence; and that if rum is made, the proceeds of the melasses are rendered fully equal to the usual yearly expenditure.
The negroes may be valued at 32l. each; oxen at 3l. each; and horses at the same; but by management the two last may be obtained at lower prices. A sugar plantation of the first class, with suitable buildings, may be reckoned as being worth from 7000l. to 8000l. and some few are valued as high as 10,000l.; but an advance of one-sixth of the price would probably be accepted, the remainder to be paid by yearly instalments. The inland plantations may be reckoned at from 3000l. to 5000l. and a few are rather higher; but a smaller advance would be required than upon the purchase of prime plantations, and the instalments would be more moderate. Plantations of the first class ought to have eighty negroes at least, and an increased number of animals, owing to their capability of employing more hands.[166]
The only carts which are used upon the plantations are very clumsily made; a flat surface or table (meza) made of thick and heavy timber, of about two feet and a half broad, and six feet in length, is fixed upon two wheels of solid timber, 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 indulgencies, 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 unruliness of the oxen. In the whole management of the concerns of a plantation, the want of mechanical 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 belonging to the estate is employed in carrying them; each man takes three or perhaps 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.