Taking a by-path which led through the forest in the rear of the mansion, we soon reached a small stream, and, following its course for a short distance, came upon a turpentine distillery, which the Colonel explained to me was one of three that prepared the product of his plantation for market, and provided for his family of nearly three hundred souls.
It was enclosed, or rather roofed, by a rude structure of rough boards, which was open at the sides, and sustained on a number of pine poles about thirty feet in height, and bore a strong resemblance to the usual covering of a New England haystack.
Three stout negro men, divested of all clothing excepting a pair of coarse gray trowsers and a red shirt—it was a raw, cold, wintry day—and with cotton bandannas bound about their heads, were "tending the still." The foreman stood on a raised platform level with its top, but as we approached very quietly seated himself on a turpentine barrel which a moment before he had rolled over the mouth of the boiler. Another negro was below, feeding the fire with "light wood," and a third was tending the trough by which the liquid rosin found its way into the semicircle of rough barrels intended for its reception.
"Hello, Junius, what in creation are you doing there?" asked the Colonel, as we approached, of the negro on the turpentine barrel.
"Holein' her down, Cunnel; de ole ting got a mine to blow up dis mornin'; I'se got dis barrl up har to hole her down."
"Why, you everlasting nigger, if the top leaks you'll be blown to eternity in half a second."
"Reckon not, massa; be barrl and me kin hole her. We'll take de risk."
"Perhaps you will," said the Colonel, laughing, "but I wont. Nigger property isn't of much account, but you're too good a darky, June, to be sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine."
"Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way."
"Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of you." (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a whip; though the whip is generally thought to redden, not whiten, the negro.)