Note 13 — Chapter IV · THE EXCEPTIONAL LARGE PLANTERS.
Reading edition
“Fine Prospect for Hay.—While riding by a field the other day, which looked as rich and green as a New England meadow, we observed to a man sitting on the fence, ‘You have a fine prospect for hay, neighbour.’ ‘Hay! that’s cotton, sir,’ said he, with an emotion that betrayed an excitement which we cared to provoke no further; for we had as soon sport with a rattlesnake in the blind days of August as a farmer at this season of the year, badly in the grass. * * *
“All jesting aside, we have never known so poor a prospect for cotton in this region. In some instances the fields are clean and well worked, but the cotton is diminutive in size and sickly in appearance. We have seen some fields so foul that it was almost impossible to tell what had been planted.
“All this backwardness is attributable to the cold, wet weather that we have had almost constantly since the planting season commenced. When there was a warm spell, it was raining so that ploughs could not run to any advantage; so, between the cold and the rain, the cotton crop is very unpromising. * * *
“The low, flat lands this year have suffered particularly. Thoroughly saturated all the time, and often overflowed, the crops on them are small and sickly, while the weeds and grass are luxurious and rank.
“A week or two of dry hot weather will make a wonderful change in our agricultural prospects, but we have no idea that any sort of seasons could bring the cotton to more than an average crop.”—Hernando (Miss.) Advance, June 22, 1854.