GOSSYPIUM. 



GOSSYPIUM. 



beak, but completely covered with a soft, close, 

 fine fur or down inseparably connected with 

 the shell of the seed. These new varieties 

 which produce the cotton now most in request, 

 are later in perfecting their fruit, and have, 

 consequently, increased the uncertainty of the 

 most uncertain and doubtful crop to which 

 perhaps human care was ever directed. 



"There is a long string of islands extending 

 from Georgetown, in South Carolina, to St. 

 Mary's, in Georgia, that is, from 32 30' to 

 30 north, a distance of about 200 miles. 

 These islands were covered with live oak and 

 other evergreens of a southern climate. They 

 had been the abode of the red men of the 

 West, but rather when the natives were fish- 

 ermen than hunters; and the vast accumula- 

 tion of oyster, and clam, and other shells, min- 

 gled with the remains of the bones and pottery 

 of their old inhabitants, fill every stranger with 

 astonishment at the multitudes which their re- 

 mains would bespeak, or the long time that 

 must have been required to introduce such ac- 

 cumulated masses. These decaying shells 

 seem to have intermingled with the original 

 sandy soils of these islands, and digesting the 

 vegetable matter that fell from trees and other 

 sources, formed with them a light and fertile 

 loam. These islands at an earlier period of 

 colonial story, had been employed in growing 

 indigo. It was upon two of these islands, sur- 

 rounded by the salt waters of the sea, and sepa- 

 rated from the continent by several miles of 

 grassy, but salt meadows, that the cultivation 

 of the sea island cotton commenced. 



" If Frederick the Great never forgot him that 

 introduced a better description of rye into Prus- 

 sia, and if Swift is right in saying he merits a 

 great name who will make two blades of grass 

 grow where one had grown before, why should 

 we deny to the dead what may be their due ? 

 The first cultivators of the sea island cotton 

 in Georgia were Josiah Tattnall and Nicholas 

 Turnbull, on Skideway island, near Savannah ; 

 James Spaulding and Alexander Bisset, upon 

 St. Simon's island, at the mouth of the Alta- 

 maha ; and Richard Leake upon Jekyl island, 

 adjacent to St. Simon's. For many years after 

 the introduction of the Anguilla cotton, it was 

 confined to the warm highland of these islands, 

 bathed by the saline atmosphere, and sur- 

 rounded by the salt water of the sea. Gra- 

 dually, however, the cotton culture was ex- 

 tended into lower grounds, and beyond the 

 limits of the islands to the adjacent shores of 

 the continent, into soils containing a mixture 

 of clay, and lastly into coarse clays deposited 

 by the great rivers where they met the tides of 

 the sea. In all these soils the cotton plant 

 grows well. In all these soils fine cottons are 

 produced. The only essential property that is 

 required is a saline atmosphere ; with it any 

 soil in Georgia or Carolina may produce fine 

 cotton; without it no soil will produce fine 

 cotton. 



"It is within this district of country, from 

 Georgetown, in South Carolina, to St. Mary's, 

 in Georgia, and extending not more than 15 

 miles from the sea, to which the sea island j 

 cotton is still confined. Whenever it has been 

 carried either south, or north, or west beyond i 



these limits, a certain decline in quality has 

 followed its removal. Many changes have 

 taken place in the manner of cultivating the 

 sea island cotton since the first introduction. 

 When first introduced, the seed was deposited 

 either in hills raised a little above the common 

 surface, at five feet distant each way, or in 

 holes at the same distance apart, and the in- 

 termediate spaces were dug up, pulverized, and 

 kept free of grass or weeds by the hand hoe or 

 by ploughing. But it was soon found that this 

 { distant planting, with a few seeds only, left a 

 great portion of the field unoccupied by plants, 

 and, consequently, unproductive; for, as it has 

 already been said, the cotton plant is one of 

 the tenderest productions of vegetable life. 

 The growers of cotton found it, therefore, 

 necessary to increase the quantity of seed, to 

 insure a sufficient number of plants, and to 

 bring them nearer together. Fortunately for 

 the cotton culture, TulPs book upon husbandry 

 had been more read in the Southern Colonies 

 than in England ; and his ridge husbandry was 

 adopted for sea island cotton, and is particu- 

 larly adapted to it, I may say necessary to its 

 successful culture. 



"The present process (and it has been the 

 same for 25 years past) is to make up the field 

 into ridges occupying 5 feet of space each, and 

 extending in straight lines across the entire 

 field. If the land is at all low, or subject in 

 any degree to water, these ridges are inter- 

 sected at 105 feet from each other by ditches 

 which receive the Avater that may collect in 

 the hollow spaces upon which the cotton plant 

 is growing. These hollow spaces represent 

 the water furrow in wheat cultivation, and 

 serve the same purpose, that is, in directing 

 the redundant water that falls, into the drains 

 that take it off the fields. 



" A field is well prepared to receive the cot- 

 ton seed when drains -intersect it at regular 

 distances of 105 feet; when the surface of the 

 land is thrown up into ridges of 5 feet, rising 

 about 10 inches above the intervals, the crown, 

 of the ridge flat, broad, and regular. A trench 

 is then made along the middle of the ridge 

 from 2 to 4 inches, dependent upon the time 

 of planting, which extends from the 1st of 

 March to the 1st of May. Upon this subject, 

 as upon all others in which men are concerned, 

 wisdom is found between the extremes, and ex- 

 perienced growers of cotton generally prefer 

 planting from the 1st to the 15th of April. When 

 cotton is planted early in March, before the 

 sun has warmed the soil to any great depth, it 

 is necessary to deposit the seed in drills not 

 more than two inches deep, or there will not 

 be warmth enough to vegetate the seed. Later 

 in the season, when the power of the sun has 

 increased, it is necessary, in seeking for that 

 moisture which is as requisite for vegetation 

 as heat itself, to sink deeper into the soil, and 

 the drills which are then made to receive the 

 cotton seed are required to be 4 inches deep. 

 From the many accidents to which this feeble 

 plant is subject in its first growth, experience 

 has taught the Georgia cultivator that it is ne- 

 cessary to place many more seeds in the ground 

 than can grow there ; and it is usual, there- 

 fore, to sow at least 1 bushel of cotton seed to 



549 



