FARMING. 



North Carolina is essentially an agricultural State. While she 

 has developed in manufacturing in the last decade more than any 

 other State in the Union, the increase in this line having been over 

 800 per cent, the greatest increase is in cotton manufacturing, which 

 is largely due to the fact that the farmers of the State are largely 

 engaged in the culture of this staple. To the large area in tobacco, 

 too, is due the great development of the State in the manufacture of 

 tobacco, and her unequalled forests of hardwoods have tended to the 

 building up of a great woodworking industry. 



Hence we come back to the soil as the source of the wealth and 

 development of North Carolina. There is no State in the Union, 

 unless we except California, which has such a varied series of crops, 

 owing to the great range of clhnate. Lying largely on the great 

 undulating plain sloping from the mountains to the sea, and from 

 the greatest elevation east of the Rockies down to the coast plain but 

 little elevated above the sea-level, North Carolina greets the rising 

 sun, and her climate varies according to the elevation. On the high 

 plateaus of the northwestern part of the State we find a grass and 

 grazing section with cattle on a thousand hills, and the forest growth 

 of white-pine, hemlock, and fir resembling Canada. Dropping over 

 the great escarpment of the Blue Ridge, we reach the undulating 

 region of the piedmont country, which in this State is again divided 

 into upper and lower piedmont by a range of hills a hundred or so 

 miles east of the Blue Ridge and forming the falls of the rivers 

 with wonderful water-powers. This section lies in a series of roll- 

 ing uplands, intersected by the rivers with their fertile bottom- 

 lands and rising from 700 to 1,500 feet elevation at the foot of 

 the Blue Ridge. East of the Uwharrie Mountains and the Occo- 

 neechee Hills there is still the same rolling upland extending east- 

 ward till it drops off into the level coastal plain which extends 

 inward for more than a hundred miles from the ocean. This lower 

 piedmont, from its lesser elevation, has a milder winter climate than 

 the upper piedmont, and the upper piedmont is far warmer in winter 

 than the mountain region between the Blue Ridge and the Great 

 Smokies that separate the State from Tennessee. As we reach the 

 lower coast we find that instead of the white-pines and hemlocks of 

 the high mountain plateaus and valleys, we have the first touch of 

 the Floridian vegetation in the cabbage-palms which tower among the 

 other evergreen growth on Smith's Island at the mouth of the Cape 

 Fear River. This wide-stretching area from the white-pine to the 

 palms shows the wonderful variety of climates which the State pos- 

 sesses, and accordingly indicates her adaptation to the crops of the 

 North and the South. The grassy uplands of the mountain country 

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