THE UPPER PINE BELT. 81 



enumeration of 1870. Tlie percentage of colored population is sixty 

 against sixty-three in 1870. 



The area of tilled land is 948,521 acres, being 152 acres to the square 

 mile, or nearly one-fourth of the entire surface. It is 4.2 acres per capita, 

 and twenty-one acres to ' the head of work stock. These lands being of 

 easy tillage, not unfrequently forty-five acres, exclusive of small grain, is 

 well cultivated to the mule. This is an increase of 167,497 acres over 

 the enumeration of 1870, by no means proportionate to the increase 

 in the population since that date. More than one-third, or 358,505 acres, 

 is in cotton, which is nine and a third per cent, of the entire surface, and 

 twenty-six per cent, of the cotton acreage of the State. It is ten acres to 

 the work animal, and one and a half acres per capita of the population ; 

 418,417 acres are in grain crops of all kinds, including corn, small grain 

 and rice ; 169,79(3 acres are in fallow and in other crops ; as fallow is not 

 regularly practiced in the husbandry here pursued, and as the other crops 

 include only sugar cane, potatoes, orchards and gardens; almost exclu- 

 sively for local use, and consequently small, this figure includes some of 

 the corn lands whose culture has been so largely abandoned, but which 

 are not yet entirely grown up. 



The farms number 19,649, averaging nearly fifty acres of tilled land to 

 the farm, which is the largest average in the State. Their relation, how- 

 ever, to the population remains about the same as in the regions south of 

 this, viz : one farm to twelve and a half of the population ; nortli of this 

 the number of farms in proportion to the population increases. 



The crops are : 



Cotton, 148,050 bales, against 83,210 in 1870, an increase of seventy 

 per cent. It is tw^enty-eight per cent, of the crop of the State. The yield 

 is 327 pounds lint per capita, the largest, except in the comparatively 

 small Red Hill region, where it is 348 pounds of lint. The average yield 

 per acre is 202 pounds of lint, which is also larger than elsewhere, except 

 for the small crop of the lower pine belt. In Marlboro county, the yield 

 per acre averages 267 pounds of lint, and the yield per capita, 536 pounds 

 of lint. This is the maximum product in the State, and entitles the region 

 to its designation as the central cotton belt of Carolina. 



The grain crop is 3,631,302 bushels, an increase of one and a half mil- 

 lions of bushels on the returns of 1870. This includes corn, small grain 

 and rice, and constitutes twenty-one per cent, of the grain crop of the 

 State. It is sixteen bushels per capita of the population, and 8.6 bushels 

 per acre. Allowing eighty bushels a year to the head of work stock, the 

 35,469 head in this region would leave less than 600,000 bushels for the 

 population, two and three-quarter bushels per capita, with nothing for the 

 other live stock. The maximum average product is attained in Marlboro, 

 6 



