cheap jewelry, some candy and other incidentals and no money. Foolish expenditures alone, according to the belief of the planters, prevent the Negroes from owning the entire land in a generation. I would not give the impression that there are no Negro land owners in this region. Thousands of acres have been purchased and are held by them, but we are speaking of average families. Some curious customs prevail. The planters generally pay the Negroes in cash for their cotton seed and this money the blacks consider as something peculiarly theirs, not to be used for any debts they may have. Although the prices for goods advanced are higher than cash prices, the Negroes will often, when spring comes, insist that they be advanced, so have the goods charged even at the higher prices, even though they have the cash on hand. This great over-appreciation of present goods is a drawback to their progress. In this district I found little dissatisfaction among the Negro farmers. They felt that their opportunities were good. Those who come from the hills can scarce believe their eyes at the crops produced and constantly ask when the cotton plants are going to turn yellow and droop. That there is little migration back to the hills is good evidence of the relative standing of the two districts in their eyes. Wages for day labor range from 60 to 75 cents, but the extra labor imported for cotton picking makes over double this. THE SUGAR REGION. South of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the alluvial district is largely given over to the growing of sugar cane with occasional fields of rice. The district under cultivation stretches back from the river a couple of miles or so to the edge of the woods beyond which at present there is no tillable ground, though drainage will gradually push back the line of the forest. These sugar lands are valued highly, $100 or so an acre, and the capital invested in the great sugar houses is enormous. Probably nowhere in agricultural pursuits is there a more thorough system of bookkeeping than on these plantations. This land is cultivated by hired hands, who work immediately under the eye of overseers. Nowhere is the land let out in small lots to tenants. Conditions are radically different from those prevailing in the cotton regions. The work season, it is claimed, begins on the first day of January and ends on the 31st of December, and every day between when the weather permits work in the fields there is work to be done. =CABINS ON SUGAR PLANTATION.=