THE COAST REGION. 27 



can show more clearly the importance of tracino- and nnderstanding the 

 histcrv of plants under cultivation than the variations and improvements 

 in black seed cotton since its introduction on the Carolina coast. It is 

 known that the first bale of long- staple cotton exported from America, in 

 1788, was grown on St. Simon's island, Georgia. That this bale was 

 grown by a Mr. Bissell, from seed that came from either the Bahama or 

 the Barba^loes islands. Singularly enough the authorities leave this mat- 

 ter in doubt — the Hon. Wm. Elliott saving it came from Anguilla, one of 

 the Bahamas, and Signor Filippo Partatori (Florence, 18G6) saying it 

 came from Cat island, one of the Barbadoes. But as Anguilla is one of 

 the Barbadoes, and Cat island one of the Bahamas, it would seem diflicult 

 to decide to which group of islands Ave are indebted for these seed. How- 

 ever, as Mr. Thomas Spalding, of Sapelo island, says in a letter to Gov- 

 ernor Seabrook, in 1844, that three parcels of long staple cotton seed were 

 brought to a gentleman in Georgia, from the Bahamas, in 1785 and 178G, 

 it would seem that the seed reached our coast from those islands. In the 

 Bahamas it was called gossypium barbadense, in consequence doubtless of 

 being brought from Barbadoes. In the latter island it was known as 

 Persian cotton (Edward's West Indies, vol. iv.,p. 363) and was thought to 

 have come from that country where it was originally derived from the 

 gossypyum arboreum of India. Be this as it may, Mrs. Kinsey Burden, of 

 Burden's island, Colleton county, S. C, obtained some of these seeds from 

 Georgia and planted them. This crop failed to mature, and the first suc- 

 cessful crop of long staple cotton grown in South Carolina was planted in 

 1790, by William Elliott, on the northwest corner of Hilton Head, on the 

 exactspot where Jean Ribault landed the finst colonists and erected a column 

 of stone, claiming the territory for France a century before the English 

 settled on the coast. Mr. Elliott's crop sold for lOid. per pound. Other 

 planters made use of this seed, but it was not until Kinsey Burden, Sr.,of 

 Colleton county, began his selections of seed, about the year 1805, that at- 

 tention was strongly called to the long staple. Mr. Burden sold his crop 

 of that year for twenty-five cents per pound more than did any of his 

 neighbors. He continued to make selections of seed and to improve his 

 staple, and in 1825 he sold a crop of sixty bales at $1.16 per pound. The 

 year subsequent his crop sold for $1.25, and in 1828, he sold two 

 bales of extra fine cotton at $2.00 per pound, a price not often exceeded 

 since. The legislature was on the point of offering Mr. Burden $200,000 

 for his method of improving the staple of cotton, and Mr. Wm. Seabrook, 

 of Edisto, was prepared to pay him $50,000 for his secret, when it was 

 discovered that the fine cotton was due wholly to improvements made in 

 the seed by careful and skillful selections. Since then the greatest care 

 has been bestowed upon the selection of the seed, and to sucli perfection 



