His capacity, physically, is equal to the white; but this
cannot be bought, or he persuaded to exert it of himself, and is given
only through punishment, or the fear of it. The removal of restraint is
to him a license to laziness; and the hope of reward, or the cravings
of nature, will only induce him to labor sufficiently to supply these
for immediate and limited relief.
Stock of every kind except horses was left to find a support in the
forest, and at that time, when their range was unlimited, they found it
in abundance. Increasing wants stimulated the cultivation of a market
crop to supply them, and indigo and tobacco were first resorted to.
Tobacco was the principal staple, and the method of its transportation
was extraordinary. As at the present day in Kentucky, it was pressed
into very large hogsheads. Upon these were pinned large wooden felloes,
forming the circle of a wheel around the hogshead at either end, and in
the centre of each head a large pin was inserted. Upon these pins were
attached shafts or thills, as to a cart, and to these teams, and thus
the hogshead was rolled along rough roads and through streams for
sometimes ninety miles to Augusta, for a market.
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