'Well, you do, that's a fact; but go to Madam and get a pair; and you, June, you've been a decent nigger, you can ask for a dress for Rosey. How is little June?'
'Mighty pore, massa; de ma'am war dar lass night and dis mornin', and she reckun'd he's gwine to gwo sartain.'
'Sorry to hear that,' said the Colonel. I'll go and see him. Don't feel badly, June,' he continued, for the tears welled up to the eyes of the black man as he spoke of his child; 'we all must die.'
'I knows dat, massa, but it am hard to hab em gwo.'
'Yes, it is, June, but we may save him.'
'Ef you cud, massa! Oh, ef you cud!' and the poor darky covered his face with his great hands and sobbed like a child.
We rode on to another 'still,' and there dismounting, the Colonel explained to me the process of gathering and manufacturing turpentine. The trees are 'boxed' and 'tapped' early in the year, while the frost is still in the ground. 'Boxing' is the process of scooping a cavity in the trunk of the tree by means of a peculiarly shaped axe, made for the purpose; 'tapping' is scarifying the rind of the wood above the boxes. This is never done until the trees have [pg 190] been worked one season, but it is then repeated year after year, till on many plantations they present the marks of twenty and frequently thirty annual 'tappings,' and are often denuded of bark for a distance of thirty feet from the ground. The necessity for this annual tapping arises from the fact that the scar on the trunk heals at the end of a season, and the sap will no longer run from it; a fresh wound is therefore made each spring. The sap flows down the scarified surface and collects in the boxes, which are emptied six or eight times in a year, according to the length of the season. This is the process of 'dipping,' and it is done with a tin or iron vessel constructed to fit the cavity in the tree.
The turpentine gathered from the newly boxed or virgin tree is very valuable, on account of its producing a peculiarly clear and white rosin, which is used in the manufacture of the finer kinds of soap, and by 'Rosin the Bow,' and commands, ordinarily, nearly five times the price of the common article. When barreled, the turpentine is frequently sent to market in its crude state, but more often is distilled on the plantation, the gatherers generally possessing means sufficient to own a still.
In the process of distilling, the crude turpentine is 'dumped' into the boiler through an opening in the top,—the same as that on which we saw Junius composedly seated,—water is then poured upon it, the aperture made tight by screwing down the cover and packing it with clay, a fire built underneath, and when the heat reaches several hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the process of manufacture begins. The volatile and more valuable part of the turpentine, by the action of the heat, rises as vapor, then condensing flows off through a pipe in the top of the still, and comes out spirits of turpentine, while the heavier portion finds vent at a lower aperture, and comes out rosin.
No article of commerce is so liable to waste and leakage as turpentine. The spirits can only be preserved in tin cans, or in thoroughly seasoned oak barrels, made tight by a coating of glue on the inner side. Though the material for these barrels exists at the South in luxuriant abundance, they are all procured from the North, and the closing of the Southern ports has now entirely cut off the supply; for while the turpentine farmer may improvise coopers, he can by no process give the oak timber the seasoning which is needed to render the barrel spirit-tight. Hence it is certain that a large portion of the last crop of turpentine must have gone to waste. When it is remembered that the one State of North Carolina exports annually nearly twenty millions in value of this product, and employs fully three-fourths of its negroes in its production, it will be seen how dearly the South is paying for the mad freak of secession. Putting out of view his actual loss of produce, how does the turpentine farmer feed and employ his negroes? and, pressed as these blacks inevitably are by both hunger and idleness, those prolific breeders of sedition, what will keep them quiet?