2d. The region above tide water, notable for its turpentine farms and its cattle ranges.

III. The Upper Pine Belt or the Central Cotton Belt, having a width of twenty to forty miles. It is covered with a growth of long leaf pine, mixed with oak and hickory. The soil consists of a light sandy loam underlaid by red and yellow clays. It has an elevation above the sea of from one hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty feet. Large inland swamps, bays and river bottoms of unsurpassed fertility, covering five thousand five hundred square miles, are interspersed among the two regions last named.

IV. The Red Hills are immediately north of the last region. They have an elevation of three hundred to six hundred feet above the sea. The soil is red clay and sand, and there is a heavy growth of oak and hickory. They embrace the range of hills extending from Aiken county through Orangeburg to Sumter, where they are known as the High Hills of Santee, and also the ridge lands of Edgefield, famous for their fertility.

V. The Sand Hill Region. A remarkable chain of sand hills, attaining an elevation above the sea of six hundred to seven hundred feet, and extending across the State from Aiken to Chesterfield counties.

VI. The Piedmont Region includes that portion of the State known as the upper country. It has a mean elevation above the sea level of four hundred to eight hundred feet. Its soils are

1st. The cold gray lands overlying for the most part the clay slates.
2d. The gray sandy soils from the decomposition of granite and gneiss.
3d. The red hornblende lands.

4th. The trappean soils, known as flat woods meadow or black-jack lands in various sections.

VII. The Alpine Region is the extreme northwestern extension of the rocks and soils of the region just mentioned, differing from the former by its more broken and mountainous character, and by its greater elevation, ranging from nine hundred feet to three thousand four hundred and thirty feet at Mount Pinnacle, near Pickens C. H., the highest point in the State.

AGRICULTURAL RETROSPECT.

The first permanent settlers established themselves on the sea-coast of South Carolina in 1670. Bringing with them the traditions of a husbandry that must have been very rude at a period so long ante-dating the

a

Tullian era of culture, and adapted solely to the requirements of colder latitudes, they met with such poor success in the cultivation of European cereals that they soon found it would be more profitable to employ themselves in collecting and exporting the products of the great forests that surrounded them. In return for the necessaries of life, they exported to the mother country and her colonies, oranges, tar, turpentine, rosin, masts, potashes, cedar, cypress and pine lumber, walnut timber, staves, shingles, canes, deer and beaver skins, etc. It is interesting to remark in the accompanying diagram, that after being more or less in abeyance during a period of two hundred years, amid the fluctuations of other great staple crops, these forest industries seemed, in 1870, about to assume their ancient supremacy once more. With the settlement of the up-country the culture of small grain became more successful; and when Joseph Kershaw established his large flouring mills near Camden, in 1760, flour of excellent quality was produced in such abundance as to become an article of export of considerable consequence. In 1802, flouring mills had proven so profitable that quite a number were established in the counties of Laurens, Greenville and elsewhere. About that time, however, the attractions of the cotton crop became so great as to divert attention from every other, and the cereals lost ground, until the low prices of cotton prevailing between 1840 and 1850 prepared the way for a greater diversity of agricultural industries, and the small grain crop of 1850 exceeded four million bushels. Since then cereal crops have declined, and seem likely to do so, unless the promise held out by the recent introduction of the red rust proof oat should be fulfilled and restore them to prominence.

In 1693, Landgrave Thomas Smith-of whose descendants more than five hundred were living in the State in 1808 (a number doubtless largely increased since), moved perchance by a prophetic sense of the fitness that the father of such a numerous progeny should provide for the support of an extensive population-introduced the culture of rice into South Carolina. The seed came from the island of Madagascar, in a vessel that put into Charleston harbor in distress. This proved a great success, and as early as 1754, the colony, besides supplying an abundance of rice for its own use, exported one hundred and four thousand six hundred and eighty two barrels. Great improvements were made in the grain by a careful selection of the seed. Water culture was introduced in 1784, by Gideon Dupont and General Pinckney, rendering its production less dependent on the labor of man or beast than any cultivated crop. In 1778, Mr. Lucas established on the Santee river the first water power mill ever adapted to cleaning and preparing rice for market-the model to which all subsequent improvements were due-diminishing the cost of this pro

cess to a degree incalculable without some standard of reference as to the value of human labor, on which the drudgery of this toil had rested for ages. In 1828, one hundred and seventy-five thousand and nineteen tierces were exported, and the crop of 1850 exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand tierces, that of 1860 was something less, and in 1870 the product tumbled headlong to fifty-four thousand tierces.

INDIGO.

In 1742, George Lucas, governor of Antigua, sent the first seeds of the indigo plant to Carolina, to his daughter, Miss Eliza Lucas (afterwards the mother of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney). With much perseverance, after several disappointments, she succeeded in growing the plant and extracting the indigo from it. Parliament shortly after placed a bounty on the production of indigo in British possessions and this crop attained a rapid development in Carolina. In 1754, two hundred and sixteen thousand nine hundred and twenty-four pounds and in 1775, one million one hundred and seven thousand six hundred and sixty pounds were produced. But the war with the mother country, the competition of indigo culture in the East Indies, the unpleasant odor emitted and the swarms of flies attracted by the fermentation of the weeds in the vats, but above all the absorbing interest in the cotton crop, caused the rapid decline of its culture, and in the early part of this century it had ceased to be a staple product, although it was cultivated in remote places as late as 1848.

INDIAN CORN.

Indian corn, the grain which, "next to rice, supplies food to the largest number of the human race, * * the most valuable gift of the new world to the old," as a plant unknown to European culture, and in ill repute as the food of the ever hostile red man, received little attention from the early settlers. Nevertheless, with the steadiness that marks true merit, it worked its way to the front rank among the crops grown in the State. As early as 1739 it had become an important article of export and continued such until after 1792, in which year ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-five bushels were exported. About this time, in consequence of the absorption by cotton of all surplus energy, it fell from the list of exports and shortly after entered that of imports, on which to-day-taken in all its forms-it stands the largest. But its culture was by no means abandoned; on the contrary, the crop grew in size with the increase of the population. In 1860, more than sixteen millions

of bushels were produced. In 1857, Dr. Parker made, near Columbia, the largest crop per acre ever obtained anywhere; from two acres he gathered three hundred and fifty-nine bushels, and one acre gave two hundred bushels and twelve quarts. In consequence of the higher prices of cotton the corn crop was reduced in 1850 by one million of bushels; in 1870 it had gone down one half, having fallen to seven and a half million bushels.

COTTON.

Cotton is mentioned in the records of the colony as early as 1664, and in 1747, seven bags appear on the list of exports from Charleston. In 1787, Samuel Maverick, and one Jeffrey, shipped three bags of one hundred pounds each of seed cotton from Charleston to England as an experiment, and were informed for their pains by the consignee, that it was not worth producing, as it could not be separated from the seed. In 1790 a manufactory of cotton homespuns was established by some Irish, in Williamsburg county, the lint used being picked from the seed by hand. a task of four pounds of lint per week being required of the field laborers in addition to their ordinary work. All this speedily changed with the invention of the saw gin by Eli Whitney, in 1794. The first gin moved by water power was erected on Mill Creek, near Monticello, in Fairfield, by Capt. James Kincaid, in 1795. Gen. Wade Hampton erected another near Columbia, in 1797, and the following year gathered from six hundred acres, six hundred bales of cotton, and cotton planting became soon after the leading industry in nearly every county in the State. The crop steadily increased in size until 1860, when the three hundred and fifty thousand bales produced in the State were worth something over fourteen millions of dollars. From this date to 1870 there was a great decline, the crop of that year being more than one-third less than the crop of ten years previous, and reaching only two hundred and twenty-four thousand five hundred bales.

TABLE,

Showing the Production of Cotton in South Carolina from 1830 to 1880:

SEA ISLAND COTTON.

The first crop of sea island cotton was raised on Hilton Head, in 1790, by William Elliott. This crop reached its year of maximum production. in 1827, when 15,140,798 pounds of long staple cotton was exported from the State; in 1841 it had fallen to 6,400,000 pounds. Since 1856 this crop has fluctuated from a minimum in 1867 of 4,577 bales to a maximum in 1872 of 13,150 bales.

Even in so brief a summary as this, the attention of the reader must be called to the remarkable influence exerted on the three great crops of corn, cotton and rice, by their culture on the South Carolina coast.

The finest, as food for man, of all the known varieties of corn is the white flint corn, peculiar to the sea islands.

The finest cotton ever produced is the long staple cotton of Edisto island, which has sold for $2 per pound, when other cottons were bringing only nine cents.

Carolina rice heads the list in the quotations of that article in all the markets of the world. Not only has its yield and culture been brought to the highest perfection here, but mankind are indebted to the planters of this coast for the mechanical inventions by which the preparation of this great food stuff, instead of being the most costly and laborious, is made one of the easiest and cheapest.