6 SEVENTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 



the owners and most of the overseers resided on the 

 plantations through the year. Indigo was a Hght 

 and beautiful crop ; the whole process of changing 

 it from the weeds into the matured dry lumps was a 

 very nice and critical one, requiring untiring atten- 

 tion during night and day ; a periodical change of 

 hands was required throughout the time, with the 

 exception of him called the indigo maker, who could 

 no more leave his post of responsibility, than could 

 the captain of a ship on a lee shore. 



Rice also began to be cultivated as a crop ; at 

 first on high land and on little spots of low ground, 

 as they were met with here and there. These low 

 grounds being found to agree better with the plant, 

 the inland swamps were cleared for the purpose of 

 extending the culture. In the course of time, as 

 the fields became too grassy and stubborn, they 

 were abandoned for new clearings, and so on ; until 

 at length the superior adaptation of the tide-lands 

 was discovered, and their great facilities for irriga- 

 tion. The inland plantations were gradually aban- 

 doned for these, and that great body of land, which 

 little more than a century ago furnished for exporta- 

 tion over 50,000 barrels of rice, now lies utterly 

 waste. Just previous to the Revolution, the tax re- 

 turns exhibited upwards of 5,000 slaves within the 

 parish, or rather in Santee swamp, there being then 

 no settlements out of its limits. 



Few planters failed of acquiring an independence, 



