The proprietors get new land cleared in this way. They first 'dead' a piece of ground in the woods adjoining the plantation: by 'deading' is meant killing the trees, by cutting a nick all round each, quite through the bark. Out of this ground each colored person has a piece as large as he can tend after his other work is done; the women have pieces in like manner. The slave works at night, cutting down the timber and clearing the ground; after it is cleared, he has it for his own use for two or three years, as may be agreed on. As these new clearings lie between the woods and the old cultivated land, the squirrels and raccoons first come at the crops on them, and thus those on the planter's land are saved from much waste. When the negro has had the land for the specified time, and it has become fit for the plough, the master takes it, and he is removed to another new piece. It is no uncommon thing for the land to be taken from him before the time is out, if it has sooner become fit for the plough. When the crop is gathered, the master comes to see how much there is of it; he then gives the negro an order to sell that quantity; without that order, no storekeeper dare buy it. The slave lays out the money in something tidy to go to meeting in, and something to take to his wife. The evidence of a black man, or of ever so many black men, stands for nothing against that of one white; in consequence of it the free negroes are liable to great cruelties. They have had their dwellings entered, their bedding and furniture destroyed, and themselves, their wives and children, beaten; some have even been taken, with their wives, into the woods, and tied up, flogged, and left there. There is nothing which a white man may not do against a black one, if he only takes care that no other white man can give evidence against him. A law has lately been passed in New Orleans prohibiting any free colored person from going there. The coasting packets of the ports on the Atlantic commonly have colored cooks. When a vessel goes from New York or Boston to a port in the slaveholding states, the black cook is usually put in jail till the vessel sails again. No colored person can travel without a pass. If he cannot show it, he may be flogged by any body; in such a case he often is seized and flogged by the patrols. All through the slave states there are patrols; they are so numerous that they cannot be easily escaped.