The expenses included 4,629
barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages and
miscellaneous supplies.
[Footnote 16: _Harper's Magasine_, VII, 758, 759 (November, 1853);
Valcour Aime, _Plantation Diary_ (New Orleans, 1878), partly reprinted in
_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 214, 230.]
[Footnote 17: According to the MS. returns of the U.S. census of 1850
Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteen
years old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, another
insane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerable
number of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands.]
In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting fresh
canes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons had
recently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cutting
cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and
repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn
planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the
crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the
roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the
coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of
the grinding season which began in late October.
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