INTRODUCTORY. 9 



Tullian era of culture, and adapted solely to the requirements of 

 colder latitudes, they met with such poor success in the cultivation of 

 Euroi)ean cereals that they soon found it would be more profitable to em- 

 })loy themselves in collecting and exporting the products of the great for- 

 ests that surrounded them. In return for the necessaries of life, they ex- 

 ported to the mother country and her colonies, oranges, tar, turpentine, 

 rosin, masts, potashes, cedar, cypress and pine lumber, walnut timber, 

 staves, shingles, canes, deer and beaver skins, etc. It is interesting to re- 

 mark in tlie accomjDanying diagram, that after being more or less in 

 abeyajice during a period of two hundred years, amid the. fluctuations of 

 other great staple crops, these forest industries seemed, in 1870, about to 

 assume their ancient supremacy once more. With the settlement of the 

 up-country the culture of small grain became more successful ; and when 

 Joseph Kershaw established his large flouring mills near Camden, in 1760, 

 flour of excellent quality was produced in such abundance as to become 

 an article of export of considerable consequence. In 1802, flouring mills 

 had proven so profitable that quite a number were established in the 

 counties of Laurens, Greenville and elsewhere. About that time, how- 

 ever, the attractions of the cotton crop became so great as to divert atten- 

 tion from every other, and the cereals lost ground, until the low j)rices of 

 cotton prevailing between 1840 and 1850 prej^ared the way for a greater 

 diversity of agricultural industries, and the small grain crop of 1850 ex- 

 ceeded four million bushels. Since then cereal crops have declined, and 

 seem likely to do so, unless the promise held out by the recent introduc- 

 tion of the red rust proof oat should be fulfilled and restore them to 

 prominence. 



In 1 093, Landgrave Thomas Smith — of whose d'escendants more than five 

 hundred were living in the State in 1808 (a number doubtless largely in- 

 creased since), moved perchance by a prophetic sense of the fitness that 

 the father of such a numerous progeny should provide for the support of 

 an extensive population — introduced the culture of rice into South Caro- 

 lina. The seed came from the island of Madagascar, in a vessel that put 

 into Charleston harbor in distress. This proved a great success, and as 

 early as 1754, the colony, besides supplying an abundance of rice for its 

 own use, exported one hundred and four thousand six hundred and 

 'eighty two barrels. Great improvements were made in the grain by a 

 careful selection of the seed. Water culture was introduced in 1784, by 

 Gideon Dupont and General Pinckney, rendering its production less de- 

 pendent on the labor of man or beast than any cultivated crop. In 1778, 

 Mr. Lucas established on the Santee river the first water power mill ever 

 adapted to cleaning and preparing rice for market — the model to which 

 all subsequent improvements were due — diminishing the cost of this pro- 



