"Here, besides your white overseers, you have your black _drivers_;--an odious animal, almost peculiar to the far south. It is horrible to see one slave following another at his work, with a cow-skin dangling at his arm, and occasionally tying him up and flogging him when he does not get through his two tasks a day. These tasks I believe are two acres of land, which they are required to hoe without much discrimination, or regard to age, sex, health, or condition; now I have seen stout active fellows get through their two tasks by one o'clock, while another poor, stunted, bilious creature toiled the whole day at the same portion of labour. Another abomination here, and even known in some parts of Virginia, is that the females are required to work in the field, and generally to do as much as the males. This system is unworthy even of refined slave-holders. But the hardest part is to tell yet; they receive their provisions but once a week, and then, each has for seven days, either one peck of Indian corn, or three pecks of sweet potatoes, without meat, or any thing else to season this dry fare. "I will confess to you that, at first, I thought this allowance much more niggardly than I now consider it. In order to see how they lived, I went into the thickest of the quarter, on purpose to share a part of their food myself, and observe a little of their economy; I found two or three stout fellows standing at a large table, or frame, into which were fixed two grindstones, or rather one was fixed and the other revolved upon it, like two little mill-stones; the upper stone was turned by a crank, at which the two slaves seemed to work by turns. The arrangements for this labour they made among themselves. I then went into the best looking hut of the quarter, just as they had all drawn round a large kettle of small homminy, in the centre of which I was pleased to see a piece of salt fat pork about the size of a large apple. The family consisted of six persons. They had all clubbed their portions of food into a common stock. "'How often do you draw meat?' said I; they informed me that they had none except at Christmas, and that none were able to buy meat except those who finished their two tasks early in the day, and then cultivated their own little 'patches,' as they are called. I then went round the huts to see how many had meat, and was much rejoiced to find that more than three-fourths lived substantially well.