"But, my dear boy," said the gentleman, "a white man can't work in the swamp, and you have no money to hire negroes with."
"Did any white man ever try it?" asked Bob.
"Not that I ever heard of."
"Besides," said Bob, "we're not white men; we're only white boys, and we won't be very white either, after we've been at work a few months."
After a good deal of explanation and discussion, Major Singer consented to let the boys try their plan, though he had no confidence in it.
"I'll do this," he said. "You may go into the swamp, cut and sell all the wood you can to steamboats when they come up, and cultivate all the land you choose to grub, without any charge for rent. I'll give you a mule and a cart, and enough bacon and meal to last you for a month or two. By that time you'll be tired of the experiment, and you can return the mule and cart on your way home."
Bob asked for the privilege of paying for the mule and cart out of the proceeds of his first crop, and, laughing, the Major consented, naming one hundred dollars as the price.
Five days later the boys ate their supper of bacon and ash-cake on a log on the banks of the Tallahatchee River. It was a lonely, desolate swamp region, and the log on which they sat was twelve miles distant from the nearest human habitation. They were a trifle lonely there in the wild woods, but they had a camp fire and courage, and those go a long way.
The next day they set to work and built a hut to live in, with a rude bunk for a bed. Then Bob "prospected." Much of the land about them had once been cultivated, and there were no trees of any considerable size upon the parts which had been fields; but the growth of cane and brush-wood was appalling.
"Never mind," said Bob. "It is only September now, and we'll get a few acres cleared by spring. Our first work must be to cut a big pile of wood to sell to the steamboats when they come up; if we don't, we can't buy ploughs or food for our farming operations."