A Yankee Scholar in Coastal South Carolina by James Robert Hester

Author:James Robert Hester [Hester, James Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Entertainment, Music, International, History, Americas, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781611174977
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2015-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Monday, March 21, 9 P.M.

We were very lucky in having the only good day for more than a week for our excursion. Yesterday was dull, and to-day a cold rain-storm. Mr. Folsom went to Beaufort to-day on Wind, and came back on a fine prancing white horse, which has been neglected and abused, so that he is now in poor condition. He used to belong to the rebel Gen. Drayton. Mr. Gannett’s horse belonged to Gen. Ames; Mr. Wells has a new horse which was Gen. Stevenson’s;234 and Charley has bought a grey horse of Limus. So gradually the various houses are getting supplied.

There has been a good deal of sickness in Dick’s family, and to relieve Dick, we have had Thomas do his indoor work. We miss Dick’s grin and chuckle, and his stories, but it is a very pleasant change to have a bright, light-stepping and quick-witted boy in place of a clumsy man. Ann (Dick’s wife) has to give up the washing for the present, so last week Dido did it, and to-day I rode over to Cherry Hill to get Minda (wife of Tony, a very nice cook and washerwoman) to do our washing for the present. Nelly carried me very well. The jasmines are now in their perfection, and I gathered some pretty blossoms and leaves from trees, and rode a few rods out of my way for some violets that I saw when I went to McTureous a fortnight ago to-day. In the “Hill” field, I found Isaac and Paris ploughing with Caesar and Tamar. I described the listing before. This whole field is now listed, and the next process is to run a plough lengthwise between the new beds,—twice, so as to turn a furrow each way, the idea being to throw the earth of the old bed wholly upon the new beds. The next process is banking, of which I saw a small specimen at Cherry Hill. The earth thus loosened by the plough is hauled up upon the beds so as to make high, well rounded ridges alternating with quite deep furrows. Of course this process uses the same earth over again every time the land is planted. The plough only scratches the surface, and the subsoil is never touched—the old beds are simply divided and transferred to the old alleys to form new beds. It seems as if subsoil ploughing would certainly turn up something worth using. Still it is necessary to be careful in experimenting, and I suppose that these superintendents do wisely in simply following the old system for the present, meanwhile experimenting on a small scale—as Mr. F. is going to do at Cherry Hill.

Mr. Dennett told of somebody on Port Royal Id. who came down with fine subsoil ploughs and turned up a sort of red sand in which nothing whatever would grow, thus ruining his land for the present. I rode beyond the quarters, to see where the new house would probably be put; for Mr.

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