Toward the close of the packing season there are jolly times on the plantation. Fox-hunting and racing are the order of the day. The Southern planter, like the "fine old English gentleman," opens house to all, and all goes "merry as a marriage bell." Sambo rubs up his old musket, and is out after the ducks, while Dinah's shining face wears an extra gloss in anticipation of the holidays. Throughout the holidays there is high festival in the negro quarters. "The shovel and the hoe" are laid down, and the fiddle is continually going. So ends the cotton season.
Shipment on the Mississippi.
The cotton, being packed, is to be sent to market. For this purpose it is "hauled," generally by oxen, to the nearest landing on the river, where the bales are rolled down the banks and stowed on board freight boats bound to New Orleans or Mobile. This process is technically called "bumping." There are certain plantations famous for the tenacious and beautiful quality of their cotton, from which the supplies for Dick & Sons' celebrated sewing-cotton mills at Glasgow are principally derived.
Delivery and Re-shipment at New Orleans.
It would be difficult to describe the scene of bustle and seeming confusion presented by the levee at New Orleans when the bulk of the new crop begins to come in. The songs and clamor of the negro stevedores, at work in the holds and on the decks of the vessels; the sharp authoritative expletives of the overseers and masters; the eager conversations of the merchants, and the preternatural activity into which the occasion seems to have spurred all the energies of Southern life, are to Northern ears and eyes at once amusing and confounding. But order reigns amidst this seeming chaos. The Mississippi boats are rapidly relieved of their bulky cargoes, and the cotton is warehoused or re-shipped, as the case may be, with marvellous celerity. Generally the shipments for the Clyde Mills, Glasgow, are among the first of the season; and the primest article in the market is always selected for Dick & Sons by the New Orleans agents of the firm.
Arrival at Glasgow.
