Two hogsheads to the acre are not unfrequently, and even three have been, produced upon rich lands in a good season. Estimating the sugar at seventy per cent., and the refuse, bagasse, at thirty per cent., the latter figure would give us two tons and a quarter to the acre, which opens one’s eyes to the tireless activity of nature in this semi-tropical region.
From the records of Houmas, I find that in 1857, the year of its purchase at about £300,000, it yielded a gross of $304,000, say £63,000, upon the investment.
In the rear of this great plantation there are 18,000 additional acres of cane-brake which are being slowly reclaimed, like the fields now rejoicing in crops, as fast as the furnace of the sugar-house calls for fuel. Were it desirable to accelerate the preparation of this reserve for planting, it might be put in tolerable order in three years at a cost of £15 per acre. We extended our ride into this jungle, on the borders of which, in the unfinished clearing, I saw plantations of “negro corn,” the sable cultivators of which seem to have disregarded the symmetry practiced in the fields of their master, who allows them from Saturday noon until Monday’s cockcrow for the care of their private interests, and, in addition to this, whatever hours in the week they can economize by the brisk fulfilment of their allotted tasks. Some of these patches are sown broadcast, and the corn has sprung up like Zouave tirailleurs in their most fantastic vagaries, rather than like the steady regimental drill of the cane and maize we have been traversing.
Corn, chickens, and eggs, are, from time immemorial, the perquisites of the negro, who has the monopoly of the two last-named articles in all well-ordered Louisiana plantations. Indeed, the white man cannot compete with them in raising poultry, and our host was evidently delighted when one of his negroes, who had brought a dozen Muscovy ducks to the mansion, refused to sell them to him except for cash. “But, Louis, won’t you trust me? Am I not good for three dollars?” “Good enough, massa; but dis nigger want de money to buy flour and coffee for him young family. Folks at Donaldsonville will trust massa—won’t trust nigger.” The money was paid, and, as the negro left us, his master observed with a sly, humorous twinkle: “That fellow sold forty dollars’ worth of corn last year, and all of them feed their chickens with my corn, and sell their own.”
There are three overseers at Houmas, one of whom superintends the whole plantation, and likewise looks after another estate of 8,000 acres, some twelve miles down the river, which our host added to his possessions two years since, at a cost of £150,000. In any part of the world, and in any calling, Mr. S—— (I do not know if he would like to see his name in print) would be considered an able man. Mr. S. attends to most of the practice requiring immediate attention. We visited one of these hospitals, and found half-a-dozen patients ill of fever, rheumatism and indigestion, and apparently well cared for by a couple of stout nurses. The truckle bedsteads were garnished with mosquito bars, and I was told that the hospital is a favorite resort, which its inmates leave with reluctance. The pharmaceutical department was largely supplied with a variety of medicines, quinine and preparations of sulphites of iron. “Poor drugs,” said Mr. S., “are a poor economy.”
I have mentioned engineering as one of the requisites of a competent overseer. To explain this I must observe that Houmas is esteemed very high land, and that in its cultivated breadth there is only a fall of eight feet to carry off its surplus matter. In the plantation of Governor Manning, which adjoins it, an expensive steam-draining machine is employed to relieve his fields of this incumbrance, which is effected by the revolutions of a fan-wheel some twenty feet in diameter, which laps up the water from a narrow trough into which all the drainage flows, and tosses it into an adjoining bayou.
On Governor Manning’s plantation we saw the process of clearing the primitive forest, of which 150 acres were sown in corn and cotton beneath the tall girdled trees that awaited the axe, while an equal breadth on the other side of a broad and deep canal was reluctantly yielding its tough and fibrous soil, from which the jungle had just been removed, to the ploughs of some fifty negroes, drawn by two mules each. Another season of lustration by maize or cotton, and the rank soil will be ready for the cane.
The cultivation of sugar differs from that of cotton in requiring a much larger outlay of capital. There is little required for the latter besides negroes and land, which may be bought on credit, and a year’s clothing and provisions. There is a gambling spice in the chances of a season which may bring wealth or ruin—a bale to the acre, which may produce 7d. or only 5d. per lb. In a fair year the cotton planter reckons upon ten or twelve bales to the hand, in which case the annual yield of a negro varies from £90 to £120. His enemies are drought, excessive rains, the ball-worm, and the army-worm; his best friend “a long picking season.”
There is more steadiness in the price of sugar, and a greater certainty of an average crop. But the cost of a sugar-house, with its mill, boilers, vacuum pans, centrifugal and drying apparatus, cannot be less than £10,000, and the consumption of fuel, thousands of cords of which are cut up by the “hands,” is enormous. There were cases of large fortunes earned by planting sugar with small beginnings, but these had chiefly occurred among early settlers, who had obtained their hands for a song. A creole, who recently died at the age of fifty-five, in the neighborhood, and who began with only a few thousand dollars, had amassed more than $1,000,000 in twenty-five years, and two of his sons—skilful planters—were likely to die each richer than his father.
This year the prospects of sugar are dreary enough, at least while the civil war lasts, and my host, with a certainty of 6,500 hogsheads upon his various plantations, has none of a market. In this respect cotton has the advantage of keeping longer than sugar. At last year’s prices, and with the United States protective tariff of 20 per cent. to shield him from foreign competition, his crop would have yielded him over £100,000. But all the sweet teeth of the Confederate States army can hardly “make a hole” in the 450,000 hogsheads which this year is expected to yield in Louisiana and Texas. Under the new tariff of the seceding states, the loss of protection to Louisiana alone may be stated, within bounds, at $8,000,000 per annum—which is making the planters pay pretty dear for their secession whistle.