NORTH CAROLINA 121 



tributaries, there are great tracts of the best land, 

 garden-earth often to a depth of 6-8-10 feet. But 

 even in the lower country there are extensive tracts of 

 the richest soil along the rivers and creeks, and lying 

 quite unused. People prefer the higher, dryer, poor 

 land, because being without undergrowth, it is more 

 easily brought into tilth and needs no ditches for 

 draining. The bottoms would make most excellent 

 meadow-lands, or under different treatment might be 

 used for rice-culture, in which case every acre would 

 fetch 5-6 guineas. For such enterprises the North 

 Carolinians are as yet either not rich enough or too 

 slothful. 



The first settlers having laid down no meadows, the 

 practice is followed to this day. And hence most of 

 the farmers, although they keep a number of cattle in 

 the woods, can hardly winter one milch cow at the 

 house, are commonly at a stand for milk and butter, 

 and must buy of the people farther inland, who keep 

 fewer cattle than they themselves. In other places, 

 along the rivers and coves, there are long stretches 

 free of timber, and covered only with a rough swamp- 

 grass. As is proved in like instances in the northern 

 provinces, these might be easily brought into grass, 

 did not the people here balk at the trouble, even per- 

 suading themselves that their cattle will not do on any 

 other feed but what is to be had in the swamps and the 

 thin woods-pastures. The milk of cows pasturing in 

 the swamps is many times not palatable, and the bad 

 taste disappears only after the cows have been fed for 

 some days on corn and corn-fodder. 



We landed on the south side of Albemarle Sound, 

 at the mouth of a small river on the low banks of 

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