SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 147 



Perkins,^ and others have been successful in making 

 sugar upon hill lands. As not one cotton planter in a 

 hundred is making simple interest upon his investments, 

 it is no wonder that every successful effort to cultivate 

 sugar cane further north, and away from the immediate 

 alluvion of the river, where it was long thought it could 

 only be cultivated, should create considerable excitement 

 among the upland cotton planters. And although the 

 present low price of sugar does not offer a golden harvest, 

 equal to California ''placers," yet it is an ascertained fact 

 that brown sugars, at three cents, produce a better result 

 than cotton at six. And it is very evident that either 

 owing to the seasons or acclimatization, the culture is 

 continually extending northward, and I have no doubt 

 that most of the cotton plantations below Natchez, will 

 in a few years more afford twice as much sugar in value 

 as they now do cotton. True, the amount of money re- 

 quired to make the change is great — of that hereafter. 

 On the evening I left Woodville, I spent the night upon 

 one of the oldest American plantations in this part of 

 Louisiana, owned by General McAustin,^ an Irishman, but 



sugar. The beautiful plantation house which he built that year at 

 Greenwood, is illustrated and described in Saxon, Lyle, Old Louisi- 

 ana, 205, 327 (New York, 1929). 



'Dr. James Perkins, born in South Carolina in 1800; went to 

 the Felicianas in 1806 with his fathei', Lewis Perkins. Became a 

 famous physician. Although an old-line Whig, was elected to the 

 state senate in 1844 by a Democratic constituency. Chairman of 

 committee to investigate the famous "Plaquemines fraud." His 

 sugar plantation was known as the Star Hill Refinery. Skip- 

 with, Henry, East Feliciana, Louisiana, Past and Present: 

 Sketches of the Pioneers, 54-55 (New Orleans, 1892) ; Champom- 

 ier, op. cit.; map of Plantations on the Mississippi River; "Dii'ec- 

 tory of the Planters of Louisiana and Mississippi," op. cit., 348. 



^ Probably Robert McCausland or McCauslin, who claimed lands 

 which he had held since 1802 in "Feliciana." Fought with Andrew 

 Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans as a brigadier general of 

 Militia. American State Papers. Public Lands, 2:216; 3 -.il (Wash- 

 ington, D. C, 1834) ; Bassett, John Spencer (ed.), Correspondence 

 of Andrew Jackson, 2:141, 171, 180; 6:445, and General Index, 75 

 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 371, Wash- 

 ington, D. C, 1926-1935). 



