At the present time all indications point to a successful season. Riding over many of the plantations, I have seen the negroes at work breaking up the ground or planting the seed, and everywhere found them laboring diligently, and even showing a manly emulation in their tasks. Yet it would be unreasonable to expect too much where so many obstacles beset the way. As one of the new planters writes: 'For success in an experiment of free hired labor among ignorant blacks just emancipated, conditions of peace and quiet are absolutely necessary. However, the difficulties in our way are purely natural workings, and merely show that black is more nearly white than is usually allowed.' Perhaps the greatest of these obstacles is the vicinity of the camps at Beaufort and Hilton Head, which tempts the freedmen to leave their regular employments and obtain an easy livelihood by the sale of eggs, chickens, fish, oysters, &c. Such markets affect the blacks on the plantations just as the California fever affected the laboring men of the North a few years ago; and it is a matter of surprise and congratulation that the presence of the soldiers has not produced a greater demoralization among the negroes than we find to be the case. Five of the plantations were bought by the freedmen themselves, who are now carrying them on as independent cultivators. Everywhere the freedmen, on hearing that the lands were to be sold, were eager to buy, and it was found in many cases that they had saved considerable sums of money from their earnings of the previous year. This almost universal desire of the negroes to become landowners, is a complete refutation of the charge that sudden emancipation from forced labor opens the door for the return of the blacks to barbarism.