80 THE UPPER PINE BELT. 



paces for the thick growth of oak and hickory that has taken the land. 

 Among the many varieties of oaks, the live oak does not appear, except 

 as a planted tree ; the water oak, however, attains perfection, covering with 

 its evergreen foliage, not unfrequently, an area of half an acre, and meas- 

 uring eight to ten feet through at the root. This is the northern limit of 

 the magnolia in its wild state, and of the gray moss. The swamp woods 

 are cypress, white oak, gum, ash, liickory, beech, elm, and black walnut. 

 Besides the pine, there is on the upland, dogwood, liickory and eight or 

 ten varieties of oak, among which are tlie forked leaf blackjack, indica- 

 tive here of a dry and thirsty soil ; and the round leaf blackjack, showing 

 a moister and more fruitful soil. The olive, the Italian chestnut, and 

 pine, varieties of mulberry, the fig, peaches, apples, pears, pomegran- 

 ites, plums, pecan nuts, English walnuts, grapes, &c., are successfully 

 grown. 



PRODUCTIONS. 



The staple crops are cotton, corn, oats, ry6 (the southern variety), and 

 wheat, to a limited extent ; peanuts, yielding an average of forty bushels per 

 acre, sweet potatoes and rice. The culture of indigo and tobacco has been 

 abandoned, though once found profitable. Considerable attention is paid 

 in some localities to forest products — turpentine, pine timber, cypress 

 shingles, and white oak staves. Little attention is paid to stock raising. 

 Ninety to ninety-five per cent, of the work stock, oxen excepted, are im- 

 ported. Cattle, hogs and sheep depend almost entirely for their support 

 upon such food as the range furnishes, with as little (or less) looking after 

 as the first settlers bestowed on their wild herds. Mills gives the stock 

 in Orangeburg county, in 1825, as follows : cattle, 25,000 ; sheep, 10,000 ; 

 swine, 50,000. In the census of 1880 it stands : cattle, 16,573 ; sheep, 

 5,700 ; swine, 37,742 — a decline in the total of 20,000, notwithstanding 

 the population has increased from 15,563, at that time, to 40,995 in 1880, 

 agriculture remaining still their chief pursuit. Besides clay for bricks 

 and marl (except a deposit of iron ore near High Hill creek, Orangeburg), 

 no minerals of value have been discovered in this region. The Fee Dee 

 is the last river to the south where herring is caught in large numbers. 

 Shad in the spring, and sturgeon.and rockfish in the summer and autumn, 

 ascend all the rivers in this region, except that shad never enter the 

 waters of the Little Pee Dee, notwithstanding they are clear and deep like 

 those of the Edisto. 



STATISTICS. 



The upper pine belt covers about 6,230 square miles, and has a popu- 

 lation of 221,409, or 35.5 to the square mile, bearing in this regard about 

 the same proportion to the other regions of the State that it did in the 



