376 GLYNN COUNTY. 



is from 30 to 80 bushels per acre. Corn upon hammock lands 

 averages 15 bushels per acre. When manured they have been 

 known to yield 50 bushels per acre. Pine lands average 8 

 bushels per acre. Cotton averages about 125 pounds clean per 

 acre. The islands have a gray soil, and produce cotton, corn, 

 potatoes, peas, cane, &c. Apricots, figs, oranges, and some 

 other tropical fruits grow to great perfection. Olives too are 

 successfully cultivated, and oil made from the olive grown 

 upon St. Simon's has been pronounced by competent judges to 

 be inferior to no article of the same kind made in Europe. As 

 it is the opinion of many intelligent persons that the olive can 

 not only be successfully but profitably cultivated in our State, 

 we here insert copious extracts from a letter on this subject 

 written by James H. Couper, Esq., one of the most scientific 

 planters in Glynn, and w^ho has had much experience in the 

 culture of the olive. The letter was originally addressed to 

 the Hon. Mitchell King, of Charleston, who read it at a meet- 

 ing of the South Carolina Agricultural Society. Says Mr. Cou- 

 per : " The first and all-important question which presents itself 

 is whether our climate is adapted to the olive tree. The facts 

 which will be presented are, I think, decisive that the immediate 

 seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and the whole of Flori- 

 da, and the borders of the Gulf of Mexico, are as suitable for 

 the cultivation of the olive as the south of France.'' After 

 proving from a variety of facts that the climate of the olive 

 region in France is no milder than the maritime districts of 

 South Carolina, Georgia, and the whole of Florida, Mr. Cou- 

 per proceeds thus : " The actual growth of the olive tree itself 

 proves this most conclusively. At Dungeness, on Cumberland 

 island, Georgia, a number of trees bore abundantly before the 

 fatal spring of 1835. In 1825 my father imported, through a 

 French house in Charleston, two hundred trees from Provence, 

 via the Languedoc canal and Bourdeaux. They were five 

 months on the way, and did not arrive until May ; notwith- 

 standing which a very few only failed to grow. These trees 

 were planted at Cannon's Point, his residence, on St. Simon's 

 Island, lat. 31° 20', and had borne several crops of olives when 

 the severe cold of February, 1835, (8*^ of Fahrenheit,) injured 

 them so much that it was necessary to cut them down to the 



