364 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 

 Mr. Robinson's Tour. — No. 18. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 9:187-88; June, 1850^] 



[March ?, 1850] 



Visit to Jehossee Island — Rice Plantation of Ex-Gov- 

 enor Aikin.' — I hope my readers have read with some de- 

 gree of interest, my account of Col. Carson's rice plan- 

 tation, in the March number of the Agriculturist. The 

 minuteness of that description will enable me to shorten 

 the present one. I left Charleston on the morning of 

 January 25th., which was like a mild summer day in 

 autumn with us, and followed the windings of a crooked, 

 narrow channel, through which small steamboats run 

 towards Savannah by the inside channel to Beaufort. We 

 were several times interrupted by meeting large timber 

 rafts that come down the Edisto River, and through this 

 passage to Charleston, and had to wait till they could be 

 separated, to give us a passage through this fit abode of 

 aligators, that are often to be seen "as thick as three in 

 a bed." 



Although my point of destination was only thirty miles 

 direct from the city, I was twelve hours on the passage. 

 This island contains about 3,300 acres, no part of which 

 is over ten or fifteen feet above tide, and not more than 

 200 to 300 acres but what was subject to overflow until 

 diked out by an amount of labor almost inconceivable to 

 be performed by individual enterprise, when we also take 

 into account the many miles of navigable canals and 

 smaller ditches. There are 1,500 acres of rice lands, di- 

 vided into convenient compartments for flooding, by sub- 

 stantial banks, and all laid off in beds between ditches 

 3 feet deep, only 35 feet apart. Part of the land was 



^ Reprinted in part in De Bow's Review, 9:201-3 (August, 1850). 



' William Aiken, born January 28, 1806, at Charleston, South 

 Carolina; died at Flat Rock, North Carolina, September 6, 1887. 

 Planter, statesman, philanthropist. Developed his rice plantation 

 on Jehossee Island into a model of its kind. State representative 

 and senator, 1838-1842; governor of South Carolina, 1844-1846. 

 Representative in Congress, 1851-1857. See sketch in Dictionary 

 of American Biography, 1:128-29. 



