COTTON CULTURE. 11 



a region quite favorable to its growth, and in the section 

 lying between the Tennessee and Cumberland, and drained 

 by the Duck and Elk rivers, it has, in about half the 

 counties, been for many years the staple. 



In the northern part of those valleys, below Fort Donel- 

 son, its production gives place to tobacco. With the 

 exception of these parts of Tennessee, and the south-eastern 

 half of Arkansas, the Cotton States all touch the ocean or 

 the Gulf. The thirty-second degree, or a line drawn across 

 the Gulf States through Montgomery and Jackson, is the 

 centre of the cotton belt. For a hundred miles each side 

 of that parallel, north and south, and especially in the lands 

 bordering on the lower half of all the affluents of the Gulf 

 and the southern tributaries of the Mississippi, cotton is 

 produced to an extent, and of a quality surpassed by no 

 other equal area of the earth's surface. This is its natural 

 home ; here is its chosen domain. For cotton is essentially 

 a child of the sun. It does not rejoice in copious moisture, 

 and can thrive and come to perfection on less rain than any 

 plant cultivated on the continent. 



There are three classes of soil well suited to cotton. 

 First, the soft argillaceous limestone, or what is called the 

 rotten limestone and red lands of Georgia, South Carolina, 

 parts of Alabama and Mississippi, and a small part of 

 Texas. 



This description of soil is soft, fine and friable, easily 

 washed away, nearly, and in many parts entirely free from 

 stones. The descents to streams are steep, but, in general, 

 such soil is spread over an undulating surface, about half 

 of which should be protected from washing by the winter 

 rains with a system of circle ditching or circle ploughing. 

 The growth on such lands is beech, magnolia, white and 

 red oak, and some pine on the swells, with gum and enor- 

 mous poplars on the creek bottoms. From 1840 to 1850 

 probably two-thirds or three-fourths of all the cotton pro- 

 duced grew on land of this description. For the ten years 



