THE LOWER PINE BELT, OR SAVANNA REGION. 57 



reclaimed as low down as the salt marshes. They are of limited quantity 

 and of inexhaustible fertility, the waste of cultivation being constantly 

 restored by the ricli deposits from the turbid streams that irrigate tliem. 

 Formerly their value was estimated in hundreds of dollars per acre. Since 

 the war the difficulty of obtaining labor has changed this, many of the 

 finest plantations remain uncultivated, or are only partially cultivated, and 

 lands once worth from |200 to $300 per acre may now be bought at from 

 $20 to $30, or less. There are more than two million of acres of land, 

 consisting of inland and river swamps, and of fresh water and of salt 

 marshes, admirably adapted to rice culture, now lying unused, in this 

 section of the State, most of it in its original wilderness. There are nu- 

 merous methods employed in the water culture of rice, from that known 

 as dry culture, when water is sparingly used, to that known as the "all 

 water culture," where the crop is only dried cnce or twice during the 

 season for the purpose of weeding it. Usually it is flowed four times. 

 Known as the " sjjrout flow," to perfect germination, the " point flow," to 

 stretch up the young plant, the " long flow," when the plant is six to eight 

 inches high, after* the first and second hoeings, and the " lay by flow," 

 after the third hoeing and until harvest. The fine mud and decomposed 

 vegetable matter that compose this soil is so soft that a horse will readily 

 bog in it, and therefore horse power has been little used in their cultiva- 

 tion, an objection that, with the solid cross dams at short distances, would 

 not apply to the plow moved by steam power. Horse power has, how- 

 ever, been used so far as to show that seed drills for planting and the 

 mowing machine for harvesting may be successfully employed in rice 

 culture. Under these circumstances, taking into consideration the amount 

 and certainty of the yield, from forty to eighty bushels i)er acre, and the 

 improved machinery for threshing and hulling, there is perhai)S no food 

 crop so entirely under the control of mechanical inventions, and so little 

 subject either to the vicissitudes of season, or the uncertainties of human 

 labor as the rice crop. The straw is much superior as forage to that of 

 any of the small grains, and except the hulls of the grain, there is no 

 waste in the crop, the very dust from the pounding, known as rice flour, 

 being most nutritious food for stock. 



Although eighty bushels per acre is generally given as a, large field 

 crop, the possibilities of the product are much greater, and Mr. Kinsey 

 Burden reports a yield from selected seed at the rate of 1,486 bushels per 

 acre. The rice crop for the whole State averages 20 bushels to the acre. 

 This means 600 pounds of merchantable rice, worth say $30 ; 400 pounds 

 of straw, worth $2.80 ; and 100 pounds of flour, $1.50— in all, $35.30. 

 Cotton gives an average of 182 pounds per acre, which, at ten cents, 

 would be only $18.20, or a little over half the gross yield of rice. Why 



