It was a common belief among overseers, when they saw an active, healthy young "buck" sleepy and languid about his work, that he had spent the night on one of these excursions.
The country we were running through--if such straining, toilsome progress as our engine was making could be called running--was a rich turpentine district.

We passed by forests where all the trees were marked with long scores through the bark, and extended up to a hight of twenty feet or more.

Into these, the turpentine and rosin, running down, were caught, and conveyed by negros to stills near by, where it was prepared for market.

The stills were as rude as the mills we had seen in Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and were as liable to fiery destruction as a powder-house.

Every few miles a wide space of ground, burned clean of trees and underbrush, and yet marked by a portion of the stones which had formed the furnace, showed where a turpentine still, managed by careless and ignorant blacks, had been licked up by the breath of flame.