CLIMATE.

The upper pine belt is a peculiarly healthy region, and throughout its extent Mills and Simms, in their statistics, have enumerated a remarkable number of instances of longevity. There are no prevailing diseases unless it be a mild type of malarial fever during autumn, along the river swamps. The upland swamps not being subject to overflow, and resting on sand, are not troubled with these complaints when drained and cultivated. The seasons most favorable for cotton are those in which there is a dry, cold winter to facilitate the preparation of the land. Light showers in April to insure germination. A dry and warm May and June, not only to render the destruction of the grass easy, but, as the cottonplanters term it, to "cook the cotton plant"; hot weather, and even drought, at this stage of growth, increasing its productiveness. In July and August, hot weather, and seasonable showers, to keep up the strength of the plant and promote fructification. A dry fall for picking. The length of time between the latest frost in the spring and the earliest frost in autumn has an important bearing on the crop, and, in the absence of other records, the preceding table is given.

Although the cotton planting during these years was sometimes completed as early as the 30th of March, irreparable injury to the stand was only inflicted once, in 1849, when snow fell on the 15th of April, and was succeeded by cold weather. Nor do the autumn frosts always destroy the plant completely; blossoms at Christmas and New Year are not unfrequently seen, and there are occasionally winters of such mildness that the old cotton roots throw out fresh shoots in the spring, and there are rare instances where fields lying out have thus borne a crop the second year, that was worth gathering.

GROWTH.

The early settlers in this region were stock raisers. They kept up the Indian practice of burning off the woods during the winter. The destruction of the undergrowth by this means favored the growth of grasses, and numerous herds of almost wild cattle and horses found abundant pasturage, chiefly upon what was known as the wild oat, and the wild pea-vine. The cattle were sometimes slaughtered for their hides and tallow. The names of many townships and neighborhoods still testify to this primitive industry, as Steer Pen, Steerpoint, Horse Pen, and Pen Corner. The uplands were covered, as they still are, with a large growth of yellow pine, but a deer might then have been seen, in the vistas made by their smooth stems, a distance of half a mile, where now, since the discontinuance of the spring and autumn fires, it could not be seen fifteen

paces for the thick growth of oak and hickory that has taken the land. Among the many varieties of oaks, the live oak does not appear, except as a planted tree; the water oak, however, attains perfection, covering with its evergreen foliage, not unfrequently, an area of half an acre, and measuring eight to ten feet through at the root. This is the northern limit of the magnolia in its wild state, and of the gray moss. The swamp woods are cypress, white oak, gum, ash, hickory, beech, elm, and black walnut. Besides the pine, there is on the upland, dogwood, hickory and eight or ten varieties of oak, among which are the forked leaf blackjack, indicative here of a dry and thirsty soil; and the round leaf blackjack, showing a moister and more fruitful soil. The olive, the Italian chestnut, and pine, varieties of mulberry, the fig, peaches, apples, pears, pomegranites, plums, pecan nuts, English walnuts, grapes, &c., are successfully grown.

PRODUCTIONS.

The staple crops are cotton, corn, oats, rye (the southern variety), and wheat, to a limited extent; peanuts, yielding an average of forty bushels per acre, sweet potatoes and rice. The culture of indigo and tobacco has been abandoned, though once found profitable. Considerable attention is paid in some localities to forest products-turpentine, pine timber, cypress shingles, and white oak staves. Little attention is paid to stock raising. Ninety to ninety-five per cent. of the work stock, oxen excepted, are imported. Cattle, hogs and sheep depend almost entirely for their support upon such food as the range furnishes, with as little (or less) looking after as the first settlers bestowed on their wild herds. Mills gives the stock in Orangeburg county, in 1825, as follows: cattle, 25,000; sheep, 10,000; swine, 50,000. In the census of 1880 it stands: cattle, 16,573; sheep, 5,766; swine, 37,742-a decline in the total of 20,000, notwithstanding the population has increased from 15,563, at that time, to 40,995 in 1880, agriculture remaining still their chief pursuit. Besides clay for bricks and marl (except a deposit of iron ore near High Hill creek, Orangeburg), no minerals of value have been discovered in this region. The Pee Dee is the last river to the south where herring is caught in large numbers. Shad in the spring, and sturgeon and rockfish in the summer and autumn, ascend all the rivers in this region, except that shad never enter the waters of the Little Pee Dee, notwithstanding they are clear and deep like those of the Edisto.

STATISTICS.

The upper pine belt covers about 6,230 square miles, and has a population of 221,409, or 35.5 to the square mile, bearing in this regard about the same proportion to the other regions of the State that it did in the

enumeration of 1870. The percentage of colored population is sixty against sixty-three in 1870.

The area of tilled land is 948,521 acres, being 152 acres to the square mile, or nearly one-fourth of the entire surface. It is 4.2 acres per capita, and twenty-one acres to the head of work stock. These lands being of easy tillage, not unfrequently forty-five acres, exclusive of small grain, is well cultivated to the mule. This is an increase of 167,497 acres over the enumeration of 1870, by no means proportionate to the increase in the population since that date. More than one-third, or 358,505' acres, is in cotton, which is nine and a third per cent. of the entire surface, and twenty-six per cent. of the cotton acreage of the State. It is ten acres to the work animal, and one and a half acres per capita of the population; 418,417 acres are in grain crops of all kinds, including corn, small grain and rice; 169,796 acres are in fallow and in other crops; as fallow is not regularly practiced in the husbandry here pursued, and as the other crops include only sugar cane, potatoes, orchards and gardens, almost exclusively for local use, and consequently small, this figure includes some of the corn lands whose culture has been so largely abandoned, but which are not yet entirely grown up.

The farms number 19,649, averaging nearly fifty acres of tilled land to the farm, which is the largest average in the State. Their relation, however, to the population remains about the same as in the regions south of this, viz: one farm to twelve and a half of the population; north of this the number of farms in proportion to the population increases.

The crops are:

Cotton, 148,050 bales, against 83,210 in 1870, an increase of seventy per cent. It is twenty-eight per cent. of the crop of the State. The yield is 327 pounds lint per capita, the largest, except in the comparatively small Red Hill region, where it is 348 pounds of lint. The average yield per acre is 202 pounds of lint, which is also larger than elsewhere, except for the small crop of the lower pine belt. In Marlboro county, the yield per acre averages 267 pounds of lint, and the yield per capita, 536 pounds of lint. This is the maximum product in the State, and entitles the region to its designation as the central cotton belt of Carolina.

The grain crop is 3,631,302 bushels, an increase of one and a half millions of bushels on the returns of 1870. This includes corn, small grain and rice, and constitutes twenty-one per cent. of the grain crop of the State. It is sixteen bushels per capita of the population, and 8.6 bushels per acre. Allowing eighty bushels a year to the head of work stock, the 35,469 head in this region would leave less than 600,000 bushels for the population, two and three-quarter bushels per capita, with nothing for the other live stock. The maximum average product is attained in Marlboro,

ten and a quarter bushels per acre, twenty and a half bushels per capita.

of population.

The live stock number 313,811, which is one to every thirteen acres; sixteen to each farm; 11.4 head to each one of the population; two to the bale of cotton, and one to every eleven bushels grain produced.

SYSTEM OF FARMING AND LABOR.

A mixed system of farming is pursued in the upper pine belt, and the attempt is made to raise at least a portion of the necessary farm supplies. They are not raised, however, to the extent they were formerly, and although the reports all state that the tendency to raise them is increasing, the deficiency still remains very great, as the number of liens given for provisions and recorded against the growing crop show. In Barnwell there were 2,026 liens, averaging one hundred and twenty-five dollars, being eight dollars and eighty cents per bale of cotton produced; in Orangeburg there were 2,470 liens, averaging ninety dollars, being nine dollars and eighty-seven cents per bale; in Darlington there were 3,925 liens, averaging one hundred dollars, being sixteen dollars and forty cents per bale; in Marlboro there were 1,183 liens, averaging one hundred and ten dollars, being five dollars and forty cents per bale; in Marion there were twelve hundred liens, averaging one hundred dollars, being five dollars and a half per bale. The number of liens for 1880 show an increase on those given above for 1879. This does not indicate a diminution in the amount of supplies raised by farmers, but only shows an increase in the number of laborers who are seeking a credit, to enable them to do business on their own account as tenant farmers. It is by this class chiefly that the liens are given, mostly for provisions, next for fertilizers, and to some extent for mules and farm implements. It is the general experience that these small tenant farmers, mostly negroes, meet their obligations to the best of their ability; nevertheless, a mortgage given in January or February, on a crop not to be planted until April, is not taken as a first-class commercial security, and consequently the charges on the advances are heavy; for instance, when the cash price of corn is seventy five cents, the credit price is not unfrequently one dollar and twenty cents and upward.

West of the Santee and Wateree rivers in this region, the average acreage in cotton to the farm is fourteen acres; on only one farm is there over four hundred acres in cotton; in seventeen townships the maximum acreage is under one hundred acres; in twenty it is one hundred to two hundred; in five it is two hundred to three hundred; in two it is three hundred to four hundred.

East of the rivers named there are farms having over six hundred acres in cotton, the average acreage in cotton to the farm is sixteen acres. Here forty-six per cent. of the farms are rented, and fifty-four per cent. worked by the owners. Of the rented farms, thirteen per cent. are over fifty acres, while of those worked by the owners eighty per cent. are above that figure.

The laborers are chiefly negroes, but the number of whites engaged in field labor is largely increasing, in some localities, especially east of the Pee Dee, where one-third to one-half the field labor is performed by whites. The general price of day labor is fifty cents and food, though it fluctuates from forty cents to seventy-five cents. The class of day laborers is also largely increasing, being recruited from the increasing class of tenant farmers, who supplement their earnings by hiring out when not busy with their own crops, or when pressed for ready cash. Contract laborers are becoming much fewer; the general wages is ten dollars a month and rations, but in some localities it is as low as six dollars to eight dollars, and in others as high as twelve dollars to fifteen dollars, the higher prices prevailing in the northeast, the lower to the southwest, being less where the percentage of negroes is greatest, and vice versa. Hands hired by the year receive from ninety dollars to one hundred and twenty dollars, with rations, shelter firewood and truck patches. Hands, however, have always preferred, when contracting for a year's work, to have some interest in the crop, and this desire has steadily increased so as to have become by far the most general practice. This has been arranged in so many, and in such complicated ways, as to preclude any general description. For instance, a widely adopted system is one proposed as early as 1866, by a negro laborer in Silverton township. The laborer works five days in the week for the land owner and has a house, rations, three acres of land, and a mule and plow every other Saturday to work it when necessary, with sixteen dollars in money at the end of the year. Had he - worked four days and a half per week for the land owner, and one and a half days for himself, this would have been equivalent to one-fourth of the crop and his food. The sixteen dollars was intended to cover the fiftytwo half days more than this, which he worked.* This system proved

* This freedman was impressed with the belief that the share of the laborer should be his food and shelter, and one-fourth of the produce. While he was sure that his proportion covered this, he could neither state the rationale as above given, or apparently understand it, when stated. It may serve as an illustration of the instinctive processes by which these people seemed to grasp intuitively the most complicated problems, and the most advanced doctrines in the great questions as to the remuneration of labor. Only just emancipated, they at once take ground, to which the laborers of the old world seem to have been struggling up through all the centuries since the abolition of serfdom.