"Why don't you stay and work at the levee?" Ben asked one of them; "you can earn a dollar a day at it."
"I'm a brick mason," he replied. "I can not do levee work. Neither can you, as you'll find out if you stop and try it."
"But is there no other work save leveeing in the country?" asked Ben.
"Oh, yes; there's cotton picking. Lots of the bums work all winter at it. They get from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a quarter a hundred, and can earn from one to two dollars a day. But the living is beastly! The southern people mean well enough, but they have no idea how a laboring man is treated up north, and they use you just the same as they do the niggers; give you rations—a peck of corn meal, five pounds of salt pork and a pound of salt a week. You take this and cook it the best way you can, and sleep in the cotton pen, or any where you please—that's your lookout. Working for the niggers, a man gets treated a great deal better than he does working for the white people. The niggers feed you better and they are surer pay."
"What!" cried Ben; "Do the colored people employ white men?"
"Do they? Well I should say. Thousands of 'em every winter. A good many of the blacks own land and are well fixed, while nearly all of them that don't own no land of their own, work land on shares."
Ben shortly found a clean spot on the deck and lying down took a much needed sleep.
It was early morning, and still dark, when they disembarked at the camp. The men were all up, however, and as he passed through one of the sheds he had an opportunity for investigating the mysteries of a levee camp. There was not much to see. A long line of rough board bunks, two tier high, were ranged on both sides of the shanty, that was supposed to accommodate four hundred men. That was all. No other furniture, no other necessaries or comfort. Ben thought it a close approach to a stable. Which indeed it was, only the animals cared for were human. While looking about him a bell rang, at sound of which there was a general cry of "Jiggers! Jiggers!" and a rush by the four hundred for the outside, where they surged in impatience about a man mounted on a barrel, who was dealing out whiskey to them in a small tin cup. This was the "Jigger boss," and four of these cupfuls of the liquor were a man's daily rations.
After all had received their jiggers, the cry of "grub pile! grub pile!" was taken up by the crowd, and a rush made for a long line of tables standing under another shed. These were loaded with tin plates and pannikins, iron forks and knives, stacks of snowy wheat bread, (for the levees have as fine bread as there is in the country) juvenile mountains of smoking "salt-horse," and immense platters of the fruit known as the "spud laurel," while great pots of a dirty brown liquid, facetiously termed "coffee" were liberally scattered about. This constituted breakfast. Our hero ate heartily, aided in his gastronomic efforts by a number of tallow dips stuck in their own grease along the tables at intervals, and which were continually being knocked over by the banqueters as they passed along the food. The repast finished Ben went with the crowd to the levee, just as it became light enough to see to work. There he became proprietor of a shovel and wheelbarrow, and was stationed in a line with twelve others; similar squads occupying the levee-line for a distance of half a mile. Scarce had he thrown three shovels full of dirt into his vehicle, when a shrill little voice piped out, "up all!" and the line began to wheel their barrows up a steep incline of planks, on to the broad "dump" that constituted the levee they were building.
"Oye, ye little dyvil, yez is at it airly!" shouted one.