Lease at $10 per acre $15,000 Cost of 100 mules, at $200, (best mules are required for 20,000 these heavy lands) Wages of 150 negroes, at $15 per month 27,000 Cost of supporting them, say $7 per month 12,600 Cotton seed and incidentals 10,000 ——————— Total expenditures $84,600 RECEIPTS. 1,500 bales, at 25c. per pound $150,000 Deduct expenditures 84,600 ——————— Net receipts $65,400 With all deductions from such estimates, and all omissions, it was still manifest that, giving the two essentials of a bale to the acre and twenty-five cents per pound for it, and there could be little doubt about the lucrative results to be reasonably expected from free-labor cotton growing. It was noticeable that planters from the Mississippi Valley, from the Red River country, and from Texas, were all much more hopeful of free negro labor than Georgians and Alabamians had been. Few apprehensions were expressed as to the labor question, and the only want concerning which much was said was the want of capital. * * * * * General Beauregard had become the President of the railroad connecting New Orleans with the capital of the State of Mississippi. He may be an admirable man for the post, but his road was a very bad one. Between New Orleans and Jackson, one saw little to admire in the pine flats that lined the railroad for nearly its whole length. “The rossum heels live in thar,” a newsboy on the train informed me. Lands are cheap, and dear at the cheap rates. There are but few places where a Northern man in his senses would be disposed to make investments with a view to cultivating cotton. For anything else the land is generally regarded as worthless. Scarcely a postmaster was yet to be found along the route. The mails were handed out by the route-agents to any one who happened to be standing about the station, and they were delivered or not, as was convenient. Nobody could be got to take the offices, because nobody was able to take the oath. It had been proposed, by some wise person, to remedy the difficulty by appointing women. That would be “jumping from the frying-pan into the fire,” indeed. Where the men were Rebels, after the Mississippi pattern of earnestness, some new word must be discovered to define the extent of the hatred the women bore to the Yankee Government. Such mild titles as “Rebel,” failed to meet the case. * * * * *