THE UPPER PINE BELT. 75 



original growth was long leaf pine, with undergrowth of post oak and 

 black jack runners. The land was cleared in 1835 and has been planted 

 continuously in cotton for the last thirteen years, yielding from 1,000 to 

 1,200 pounds seed cotton average on two hundred acres last year. The 

 cotton being a long staple variety of uplands, selling for two to five cents 

 a pound above ordinary uplands and not very prolific. 



No. 2, from Gov. Hagood's plantation, near Barnwell C. H. ; mulatto 

 soil ; original growth, long leaf pine ; oak and hickory undergrowth ; 

 yield 764 pounds seed cotton, average for ten years on one hundred and 

 forty acres. 



No. 3, field of Hon. C. S. McCall, near Bennettsville ; original growth 

 long leaf pine, with undergrowth of oak and dogwood ; has been planted 

 for two or three generations ; yield for several years past, one bale per 

 acre. 



No. 4, virgin forest soil, from red clay ridge, near Marion and Marlboro 

 line, on Donohoe, plantation of W. D. Johnson ; growth, large hickory, 

 oak and pine ; similar land under present culture averages for large fields 

 a bale of cotton to the acre one year with another, when planted for a 

 succession of years in the same crop. 



The following analyses are by Prof Shepard, and were published in 

 Tuomey's Agricultural Survey of South Carolina, in the year 1848. No. 



1 is from the cotton lands below Columbia, in Richland county ; and No. 



2 is from near Bennettsville, Marlboro county : 



(1) (2) 



Organic matter 9.00 5.40 



Silica 76.50 77.30 



Alumina 6.60 4f80 



Oxide of iron 2.40 5.00 



Lime 1.00 0.80 



Magnesia 0.50 1.00 



Potash and soda trace 0.00 



Phosphates 0.00 0.00 



Water and loss 4.00 4.70 



100.00 100.00 



The Pee Dee lands were little esteemed formerly, and seventy-five years 

 ago many of them were considered so impoverished by cultivation as to 

 have been abandoned by their owners for the fresh lands of Alabama. 

 Under the present system of culture they are the most productive and 

 certain in the State. As the above analyses show no superiority of the 



