148 THE PIEDMONT REGION. 



acres of land, although Governor Drayton saj's the season was a very 

 dry one. For several years past Governor Hagood has obtained two cut- 

 tings a year of excellent hay from fifty acres, and more, that he set out in 

 Bermuda grass, on the Saluda river bottoms. The yield is two to four 

 tons per acre. Mr. Doty, a" Kentuckian, who owns a blue-grass farm in 

 that State, but who is now living at Winnsboro, says, that taking the value 

 of the land into account, he makes his forage cheaper on the worn out 

 hills of Fairfield than he does on the famous blue-grass lands of his na- 

 tive State. His crops are oats and German millet. The latter he esti- 

 mates that he houses at a cost of six dollars per ton. Lucerne has long 

 been established in this town, and there are stools of this valuable forage 

 plant, still vigorous, known. to be fifty years old. In the same town, Col. 

 James H. Rion sowed, in 1874, a half acre of red land, a worn out old 

 field, infested with nut grass, in lucerne. In 1875 he got one cutting, and 

 from that date to 1880, from four to ten cuttings each year. The ten cut- 

 tings were obtained in 1878. The lucerne averaged two and a half feet 

 in height at every cutting, making a total growth for the season, of twenty- 

 five feet. By actual weighing, each cutting averaged 4,189 pounds from 

 this half acre, which was also carefully measured, giving a total of twenty 

 and a half tons, or at the rate of fort3''-one tons per acre. The mention of 

 such facts are not out of place, inasmuch as since the invention of the 

 cotton-gin the culture of cotton has so superseded all other agricultural 

 pursuits, that it might well be thought that nothing" else could be grown 

 here. Cotton planting has become so easy and simple, it requires so little 

 individual thought and effort, the money returns are so certain and direct, 

 or the crop may be so cheaply stored and preserved from injury for such 

 an indefinite time, every business, trade and industry accessory to the 

 work of the farmers, from bankers and railroads to imj^lement and fertili- 

 zer manufacturers, have become so thoroughly systematized and organized 

 in unison with this pursuit, that any change is difficult, and as a conse- 

 quence, the manifold resources o^ the country are neglected and un- 

 developed. 



STATISTICS. 



The metamorphic region embraces about 10,425 square miles, or nearly 

 one-third of the entire State. The population numbers 395,043, the in- 

 crease since the census of 1870 being thirt}^ per cent. The density of 

 population per square mile varies from twenty-six to twenty-seven in 

 Laurens and Lancaster, to forty.six and forty-eight in Newberry and 

 Greenville ; the average being 37.8 per square mile, which makes it the 

 most thickly peopled portion of the State, except the sea islands, which 

 have 39.4 to the square mile. The percentage of colored population 



