354 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



steam threshing mill, steam saw mill, a noble mansion, a 

 very good lot of negro houses, overseer's house, barns, 

 stables, store houses, shops, &c., enough to make up a 

 town in California worth a million. 



The rice lands were originally covered with cypress and 

 cedar, and the amount of work required to clear and em- 

 bank them, not only around the outside, but to divide into 

 suitable tracts for flooding, and ditch them every hundred 

 feet, and then to keep the ditches and banks in repair, is 

 almost inconceivable. 



As the flooding of the rice land keeps it in a state of 

 constant fertility, all the straw can be used as manure 

 upon the upland, and with a more rational system of 

 cultivation, by the use of the plow, it might be kept in a 

 state of great productiveness. 



One of the great drawbacks to all these beautiful places 

 along Cooper River, is the necessity of leaving them every 

 summer to seek a more healthy location. Col. Carson 

 goes to Sulivan's Island, a spot noted in American his- 

 tory,^ where he keeps a house furnished and standing 

 empty half the year ; and while that is occupied, the one 

 at the plantation is idle. The same difficulty affects nearly 

 all the rice and sea-island cotton plantations in the lower 

 part of the state. The whites cannot live upon them, 

 while the negroes remain perfectly healthy. So that 

 though their income may appear to be larger than in 

 some other sections, their expenses are proportionately 

 greater, and this should teach us all to be more content 

 with our lot in life. 



Col. Carson estimates his proper plantation expenses 

 at $5,000 a year ; that is. 



For clothing, taxes, and medicine, $3,000 



Overseer's wages, 1,000 



Engineer's wages, 300 



Repairs of machinery and oil, 200 



Iron, lumber, staves, and hoop poles, .... 300 

 Sundry items, 200 



' Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, guarded Charleston's har- 

 bor against British attacks during the Revolutionary War. 



