These are the negro women at their laundry-work, knee-deep in the
stream, beating the clothes with heavy clubs. They are merry enough
when together, but not one of them will go alone for a "piggin" of
water, and if you slip up in the shadow of the old oak and throw a
stone into the spring, the entire party will rush away at the splash,
screaming with fear, convinced that the "cymbie" is after them.
Leaving the spring behind us, we pass up the long lane between two
cotton-fields of a hundred acres each, in which the blackened stalks
are still standing, as are the dried cornstalks and gray pea-vines in
the field beyond. These will remain until the early spring, when they
will be cut down and "listed in" with the hoe, for not a foot of this
rich and profitable plantation has ever been broken with the plough.
Incredible as it may appear, there is not a plough or a work-horse,
and but one old mule, upon this highly-cultivated tract of one
thousand acres. All the hauling is done by ox-teams, with three sturdy
negroes to each cart, and the heavy cotton-hoe does everything else.
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