226 VALUE OF THE SOUTH TO THE NORTH. 



a belt of naked prairie, like our English chalk-downs, 

 susceptible of cultivation to a certain extent, and pro 

 ducing the Georgian wheat. 



The variety grown on these downs is a winter-wheat, 

 sown about the end of September three-fourths to one 

 bushel of seed per acre. On this soil it gives a return of 

 only eight or ten seeds. One would suppose such a 

 produce would not pay for culture, at the price of 60 to 

 75 cents a bushel ten bushels, at 75 cents, being only 

 7i dollars, or 32s. 6d. an acre. 1 suppose that, as in 

 New Brunswick and Michigan, it is the excessive cheap 

 ness of culture, and the small expenditure of labour 

 required by this new land, that makes it possible to till 

 it for such small returns. 



The cotton-lands yield a bale of 450 to 500 Ib. of 

 clean cotton per acre. Wheat is also grown upon them. 

 The approved rotation on these rich soils is Indian-corn, 

 wheat, and cotton, with occasional naked fallows, and 

 rarer crops of clover and potatoes. Can such a rotation 

 fail to exhaust the surface-soil ? 



The connection between the northern States of Maine 

 and Massachusetts, and their countrymen in the south, is 

 profitable to the former in many other ways besides that 

 of speculating on the produce of their barrens. Two- 

 thirds of the population of these two States live on the 

 twenty miles of sea-board, engaged in shipbuilding and 

 manufactures. All their creeks, inlets, and river-mouths, 

 which are nearly countless, abound in lumber-merchants, 

 shipbuilders, and carpenters. The ships they build and 

 own are not employed, for the most part, in the com 

 merce of their own country, but in carrying to market 

 the produce of the southern States. Cotton, sugar, and 

 rice are grown by southern men, but they are conveyed 

 to the place of consumption by northerns, who profit 

 about as much by their crops as the growers do them 

 selves. 



