up, and there is a large quantity of uncultivated land for pasture, so that the only cost connected with cattle is ten or fifteen dollars purchase money. An open pen, called the "cuppen," in this mild climate serves in place of cowstables. On the opposite side from the lot, the house is flanked by the garden, surrounded by what is known as a "wattle" fence. This fence is made of split pine boards, "wattled" around three horizontal rails, fastened to posts, the first at the ground and the others respectively two and four feet above. Inseparable from this garden is a patch of "collord greens." The negroes think "collord greens, biled with plenty fat meat, hard to beat," when you are considering table delicacies. The only other noteworthy feature in connection with this home is the 'possum dog, who is the first to greet your approach. You will know him by the leanness of his body, the fierceness of his bark, and the rapidity of his retreat.

The labor of the farm is performed by the man, who usually does the plowing, and his wife and children, who do the hoeing, under his direction. Whenever they have heavy work to do they call on their neighbors, and receive willing aid. Their crops are principally corn and cotton, but they have patches of such things as potatoes, melons, and sorghum-cane, from which they make their sirup. They plant whatever they please, and their landlord interferes only far enough to see that sufficient cotton is made to pay the rent, which is seven hundred and fifty pounds of lint-cotton to each one-horse farm. The usual quantity of land planted is between twenty-five and thirty acres, about half of which is in cotton and the rest in corn and patches. An industrious man will raise three times the amount of his rent-cotton, besides making a full supply of corn, sirup, and other provisions, while really good farming would require about five times the rent to be raised in addition to the supply of provisions. Candor compels the admission that only a few tenants reach this standard of good farming; the others work sufficiently well to pay their rent, and make money enough to buy their clothes and spend at Christmas, and let the rainy days of the future take care of themselves. It is a point of honor with them to pay their rent, even if they find it necessary to mistake whose cotton they pay it with.

A GEORGIA PLANTATION AS IT IS IN 1881.

• Negroes who lived on this plantation when slaves. There is one misfortune which, to our Georgia tenant, dwarfs all others, and this comes when his mule dies. Thanks to mulish endurance, this does not often happen, but when it does, the owner invariably expresses himself "broke up." He has to buy another on time, and work hard and live close the next year in order to pay for him, or else make his crop with a steer. An enterprising colored man will buy the mule, but I have frequently known tenants to resort to the steer. Whenever they get into trouble of this kind, they remind their landlord in pathetic terms that he is their old master, and generally get off with the payment of half the rent.

The slight supervision which is exercised over these tenants may surprise those ignorant of how completely the relations between the races at the South have changed. Mr. Barrow lives on his plantation, and yet there are some of his tenants' farms which he does not visit as often as once a month, and this, too, because they do not need over

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meat food. They generally have to buy some meat during the year, however, for which they pay in the fall.

The land of this plantation is rich, and the tenants are, perhaps, better off than in some other places, but an industrious negro will pay good rent for land and make money for himself almost anywhere in Middle Georgia.

The last census showed three white and one hundred and sixty-two colored people on this plantation. I mention this to show that there must be many children among our country negroes. The adage, "poor folks for children," finds no exception here. There is one woman on the place who has three babies, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and fine children they are, too, and well cared for in spite of the number. It was commonly thought that the negroes, when freed, would care very little for their children, and would let them die for want of attention, but experience has proved this surmise unfounded. On the contrary, I suppose they take as good care of them as do the same class of people anywhere.

It will be seen by reference to plot of the place "as it is," that one corner has been cut off, and a church and school-house built on it. This has been given to them so long as they use it for church and school purposes. The church building is forty by fifty feet, and is a frame house, the Lord's house being here, if not elsewhere, better than the people's. They have a membership of about two hundred, from the plantation and the country around, which is in charge of the Rev. Derry Merton, a colored man, who preaches there twice a month. He has had charge of this church nine or ten years, and has other churches under his care. For its support, the male members pay fifty cents and the females twenty-five cents per annum. In addition to their regular church services, they have a Sunday-school, with a membership of one hundred and fifty or more, which has a regular superintendent, one of the tenants on the place. They use regular lesson-papers and singing-books, and especially delight in singing. I believe, generally speaking, negroes in the country are Baptists; at any rate, those on this place are. To go under the water is far more necessary to salvation, in their eyes, than anything else. There is a great tendency among them to become preachers, which, I fear, is induced as much by the desire to display their oratorical powers as by excess of piety. Once a year, during August, there is a big

meeting at Spring Hill church. From far and near friends come in, and all the houses of all the members are thrown open. They kill their pigs, kids, lambs, chickens, everything, by wholesale, and for three or four days they do little else but preach, sing, and eat. Fortunately their meeting comes at a time when very little work is to be done, so that the crops do not suffer. This August meeting, and the necessity of going under the water, are the bulwarks of their church.

Too great praise cannot be bestowed upon the earnestness which all negroes feel on the subject of education. Very soon after they were freed, these hands manifested a desire to establish a school, and Mr. Barrow gave them a site upon which they promptly built a school-house, and they have employed a teacher ever since. Free schools in Georgia last only about three months, but the negroes cheerfully pay their teacher the remainder of the year themselves. Quite a number who were grown when freed have since learned to read and write, and they all send their children. It is a strange fact that, even while they desire their children to be educated, many of them have a great prejudice against the profession of teaching.

An old colored woman said to one of my sisters: "I tell you what, Miss Sallie, of all the lazy, good-for-nothin' trades, this here sittin' down in a cheer all day, with a book in your hand, hearing chillen say lessons, is the laziest." The latest romance of the plantation was the elopement of the schoolteacher and the daughter of one of the old foremen. "Mr. Map" (so-called, I suppose, on account of his knowledge of geography) won the heart of "Ben's Mary," and sued for her hand. Very much to his surprise, the father not only refused, but it is said declared his intention of giving them both a good whipping the first time he caught them together, adding his opinion of the laziness and worthlessness of the suitor. As the old man would most likely have carried his threat into execution, the young couple had nothing left but a separation or an elopement. I think there was nothing against Map, except his occupation, and as he supported his wife, the old man soon relented and allowed them to return to the neighborhood.

I have thus briefly given some facts connected with the farm life of the colored people in Georgia. If I have made my descriptions true to life, they fit any place in this portion of the State, mutatis mutandis. They all live nearly the same way.

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sionally one is found who wishes to have more of this world's goods; such buy land and pay for it as they did for their mules, and work the same crops as these I have written about. As a people they are happy; they have become suited to their new estate, and it to them. I do not know of a single negro who has swelled the number of the "exodus." That they have improved, and continue to improve, seems beyond

controversy. The one man on this plantation who, as a slave, gave most trouble, so much, in fact, that he was almost beyond control of the overseer, was Lem Bryant. Since he has been freed, he has grown honest, quiet, and industrious; he educates his children and pays his debts. Mr. BarroW asked him, one day, what had changed him so. "Ah, master!" he replied, "I'm free now; I have to do right."

A BOLD LEAPER.

ONE reason, doubtless, why squirrels are so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is that if they miss their hold the fall will not hurt them. Every species of treesquirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,—at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height. The so-called flying-squirrel does this the most perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps into the air, and sails down the steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of the next as lightly as a bird. But other squirrels know the same trick, only their coat-skirts are not so broad. One day my dog treed a red squirrel, in a tall hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near he took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I came on, he boldly leaped into the air, spread himself out upon it, and, with a quick, tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended quite slowly and landed upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great speed and escaped the dog in another tree.

A recent American traveler in Mexico gives a still more striking instance of this power of squirrels partially to neutralize the force of gravity when leaping or falling through the air. Some boys had caught a Mexican black squirrel, nearly as large as a cat. It had escaped from them once, and, when pursued, had taken a leap of sixty feet, from the top of a pine-tree down upon the roof of a house, without injury. This feat had led the grandmother of one of the boys to declare that the squirrel was bewitched, and the boys proposed to put the matter to

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further test by throwing the squirrel down a precipice six hundred feet high. Our traveler interfered, to see that the squirrel had fair play. The prisoner was conveyed in a pillow-slip to the edge of the cliff, and the slip opened, so that he might have his choice whether to remain a captive or to take the leap. He looked down the awful abyss, and then back and sidewise,—his eyes glistening, his form crouching. Seeing no escape in any other direction, "he took a flying leap into space, and fluttered rather than fell into the abyss below. His legs began to work like those of a swimming poodle-dog, but quicker and quicker, while his tail, slightly elevated, spread out like a feather fan. A rabbit of the same weight would have made the trip in about twelve seconds; the squirrel protracted it for more than half a minute," and "landed on a ledge of limestone, where we could see him plainly squat on his hind legs and smooth his ruffled plumage, after which he made for the creek with a flourish of his tail, took a good drink, and scampered away into the willow thicket."

The story at first blush seems incredible, but I have no doubt our red squirrel would have made the leap safely; then why not the great black squirrel, since its parachute would be proportionately large ?

The tails of the squirrels are broad and long and flat, not short and small like those of gophers, chipmunks, weasels, and other ground rodents, and when they leap or fall through the air the tail is arched and rapidly vibrates. A squirrel's tail, therefore, is something more than ornament, something more than a flag: it not only aids him in flying, but it serves as a cloak, which he wraps about him when he sleeps. Thus some animals put their tails to various uses, while others seem to have no use for them