As we walk about over the fields the children of the planter tell us many stories of the Negro workmen, what fun-loving creatures they are, and how fond they are of good things to eat. Water melons please them especially and a group of “darkies” is never so happy as when they can sit around a pile of the juicy melons and feast to their hearts’ content. In many of the Negro cabins there is sure to be some one who plays the banjo, to whose music big folks and little dance merrily when the day’s work is over. Once the Negroes were the slaves of the white planters, but they are now free and support themselves like other workmen.
Our little southern friends ask us if we have ever seen ’possums, as the black people call the animals. After everyone on the plantation has gone to sleep, then the cunning opossum steals from his home in the woods to pay a visit to the hen-house. He springs up and seizes one after another of the fowls on the roost, whose blood he sucks till no more is left in their bodies.
The Negroes are very fond of a ’possum hunt. Soon after dark they arm themselves with clubs and axes and go into the woods with a few dogs to scent the game, carrying torches to light the way. The axes are used to chop down the trees where the animals climb to get out of the way of the hunters.
A mother opossum with her little ones is a queer sight. The babies are scarcely larger than mice and they hang on to their mother’s body by winding their own tiny tails around her larger one. The Negroes go on ’coon hunts too, for they can sell the skins, while the meat is nearly as delicious as that of the opossum. Raccoons have long bushy tails and belong to the bear family, though they are much smaller. They catch birds in the trees, sucking their blood and eating the eggs whenever they find them. They like green corn, too, which they steal at night as it is growing in the fields.
Our little friends go with us to the stables and show us their ponies, telling us of the lovely morning rides we may have through the country if we will stay with them for a few days. But we must bid them good-by and travel to the busy towns of the east where many of the people work in factories and stores and have little time to spend in the beautiful outdoor world. Before we leave the sunny south we would like to take a peep at a rice plantation in the low marshy country, and to watch the men gathering tobacco leaves and hanging them to dry in large sheds, but the northern train is waiting and we cannot linger.
Among the Factories.
The children of a factory town often know little of the free, happy days that a farm gives to its boys and girls. Long rows of houses where the workmen live, and large brick buildings where the machines are noisily running from Monday morning till Saturday night—these are what a person sees on every hand.
The country settled by the Pilgrims and Puritans, and much more east of the Appalachian Mountains has such poor and stony soil that it is not good for farms. In such places we find the manufacturing towns where the cotton raised in the south and the wool from the sheep of the western plains are made into cloth for millions of people in the United States. Here also are large tanneries where the hides of cattle are prepared for harnesses, shoes, bags and many other things for which leather is used. In New England there are many factories where thousands of boots and shoes are made for the boys and girls of America.
Fishing.
Long ago, before the days of the factories, many ships sailed away from New England ports after whales in the Arctic waters. Now-a-days whale-bone is still valuable, but the oil is not needed so much as in the old times before gas and electricity came into use, so that whaling is not so common. But many men are still busy fishing for herring, halibut and cod, which are plentiful in the waters along the northeast coast and off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Many a boy living on the coast goes on fishing trips with his father and becomes so fond of the free life of the sea that he decides to be a sailor for the rest of his life.