ORIGIN AND SPREAD. 11 



The lands which grew the finest tobacco had light cream- 

 colored soils, 93 per cent of which was siliceous matter. 

 This porous, spongy, sandy earth, destitute of humus, 

 and incapable of growing any crop without the most 

 abundant application of manures, became the corner 

 stone of a new agriculture. Tobacco was planted upon 

 it, with the addition of a very small quantity of manure, 

 from which the plant could derive sustenance until it 

 approached maturity. When the manure became ex- 

 hausted, the plant began to lose its vitality and take on 

 every day a deeper yellowish tinge. Just before they 

 were harvested, the plants turned to a beautiful color, 

 like hickory leaves in autumn, and fields of tobacco at a 

 distance looked more like those 

 of small grain ready for the har- 

 vest than tobacco fields. 



The sterilized spots, worn 

 out and abandoned, grown up in 

 bamboo briers, chinquapin bushes FI< TOB ACCO noo 

 and sickly, scrubby pines, that in From an oid'poste'r. 

 1860 could with difficulty be sold for fifty cents per acre, 

 were soon in demand at thirty to fifty dollars per acre. 

 Old towns that had been well-nigh deserted because of 

 the decay of agriculture in their vicinity, suddenly took 

 on new life. New streets were laid out, great blocks of 

 buildings were erected, railroads were constructed, and 

 the constant going and coming of hustling business men 

 made a transformation as great and almost as quick, and 

 certainly as profitable, as would the discovery of gold 

 mines. Indeed, the yellow- tobacco interests of North 

 Carolina proved far more beneficial to the whole popula- 

 tion than the finding of gold mines would have been. 

 Gradually the planting extended, first westward from 

 the Piedmont region to the steep ridges lying at the 

 foot of the lofty mountains in Buncombe and other 

 counties in western North Carolina. Many thriving 



