The traveller was said to be a Methodist preacher, but gave no indication of it, except that he said grace before meat, and used the Hebrew word for Sunday. He was, however, a man of superior intelligence to the others, who were ignorant and stupid, though friendly and communicative. He asked me “what a good nigger man could be bought for in New York;” he didn’t seem surprised, or make any further inquiry, when I told him we had no slaves there. Some asked me much about crops, and when I told them that my crops of wheat for six years had averaged twenty-eight bushels, and that I had once reaped forty from a single acre, they were amazed beyond expression, and anxious to know how I “put it in.” I described the process minutely, which astonished them still more; and one man said he had often thought they might get more wheat if they put it in differently; he had thought that perhaps more wheat would grow if more seed were sown, but he never tried it. The general practice, they told me, was to sow wheat on ground from which they had taken maize, without removing the maize stumps, or ploughing it at all; they sowed three pecks of wheat to the acre, and then ploughed it in—that was all. They used the cradle, but had never heard of reaping machines; the crop was from five to ten bushels an acre; ten bushels was extraordinary, six was not thought bad. Of cotton, the ordinary crop was five hundred pounds to the acre, or from one to two bales to a hand. Of maize, usually from ten to twenty bushels to the acre; last year not over ten; this year they thought it would be twenty-five on the best land.
The general admiration of Jude brought up the topic of negro dogs again, and the clergyman told a story of a man who hunted niggers near where he lived. He was out once with another man, when after a long search, they found the dogs barking up a big cottonwood tree. They examined the tree closely without finding any negro, and concluded that the dogs must have been foiled, and they were about to go away, when Mr. ——, from some distance off, thought he saw a negro’s leg very high up in the tree, where the leaves and moss were thick enough to hide a man lying on the top of a limb with his feet against the trunk. He called out, as if he really saw a man, telling him to come down, but nothing stirred. He sent for an axe, and called out again, saying he would cut the tree to the ground if he didn’t come down. There was no reply. He then cut half through the tree on one side, and was beginning on the other, when the negro halloed out that if he would stop he would come down. He stopped cutting, and the negro descended to the lowest limb, which was still far from the ground, and asked the hunter to take away his dogs, and promise they shouldn’t tear him. But the hunter swore he’d make no conditions with him after having been made to cut the tree almost down.
The negro said no more, but retained his position until the tree was nearly cut in two. When it began to totter, he slid down the trunk, the dogs springing upon him as soon as he was within their reach. He fought them hard, and got hold of one by the ear; that made them fiercer, and they tore him till the hunter was afraid they’d kill him, and stopped them.
“Are dogs allowed to tear the negroes when they catch them?”
“When the hunters come up they always call them off, unless the nigger fights. If the nigger fights ’em that makes ’em mad, and they let ’em tear him good,” said the clergyman.
There were two or three young women present, and the young men were sparking with them in the house, sitting on the beds for want of sofas, the chairs being all in use outside; the rest of the company sat on the gallery most of the time, but there was little conversation. It was twice remarked to me, “Sunday’s a dull day—nothing to do.”
As the Methodist and I were reading after dinner, I noticed that two or three were persuading the others to go with them somewhere, and I asked where they purposed to go. They said they wanted to go over the mountain to hunt a bull.
“To shoot him?”
“Oh, no, it’s a working bull; they got his mate yesterday. There ain’t but one pair of cattle in this neighbourhood, and they do all the hauling for nine families.” They belonged, together with their waggon, to one man, and the rest borrowed of him. They wanted them this week to cart in their oats. The stray bull was driven in toward night, yoked with another to a waggon, and one of the women, with her family, got into the waggon and was carried home. The bulls were fractious and had to be led by one man, while another urged them forward with a cudgel.
Last night by the way a neighbour came into the house of Uncle Abram’s master, and in the course of conversation about crops, said that on Sunday he went over to John Brown’s to get him to come out and help him at his harvesting. He found four others there for the same purpose, but John said he didn’t feel well, and he reckoned he couldn’t work. He offered him a dollar and a half a day to cradle for him; but when he tried to persuade him, John spoke out plainly and said, “he’d be d—d if he was going to work anyhow;” so he said to the others, “Come, boys, we may as well go; you can’t make a lazy man work when he’s determined he won’t.” He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John came running across his cotton patch, where he was ploughing. He didn’t speak a word to him, but cut along over to his neighbour’s house, and told him that he had shot two deer, and wanted his hounds to catch ’em, promising to give him half the venison if he succeeded. He did catch one of them, and kept his promise.