And yet so thoroughly fitted for the climate is the Negro, that not ten yards from the edge of the mud stood a comfortable negro-house, with stout healthy folk therein, evidently well to do in the world, to judge from the poultry, and the fruit- trees and provision-ground which stretched up the glen.
Through the provision-ground we struggled up, among weeds as high as our shoulders; so that it was difficult, as usual, to distinguish garden from forest.

But no matter to the black owner.

The weeds were probably of only six weeks' growth; and when they got so high that he actually could not find his tanias {115b} among them, he would take cutlass and hoe, and make a lazy raid upon them, or rather upon a quarter of them, certain of two facts; that in six weeks more they would be all as high as ever; and that if they were, it did not matter; for so fertile is the soil, so genial the climate, that he would get in spite of them more crop off the ground than he needed.

'Pity the poor weeds.

Is there not room enough in the world for them and for us ?' seems the Negro's motto.