80 COTTON CULTURE. 



Many of these lands are of a very red color, and wash 

 quite easily. As they have been many years in cultiva- 

 tion, and much abused, particularly in the mode of plow- 

 ing, they are not at present remarkably productive. The 

 average yield is something like two-thirds of a bale to the 

 acre. Cotton planting in Georgia has never been con- 

 ducted with the same exclusive devotion to the growing 

 of a single staple, as characterizes planting in the south- 

 west. 



The farmer in Georgia is in the habit of raising wheat, 

 oats, potatoes, and sometimes tobacco and hemp, cotton 

 being only one of his crops. There is not a great deal of 

 undeveloped cotton land in Georgia. A careful system of 

 plowing, with proper rotation, may keep the annual pro- 

 duction of this staple from falling off. 



SOUTH CAROLINA. 



The surface of this State, like that of North Carolina, 

 its northern boundary, and Georgia, its western, is divided 

 into three parts or species of land, the low lands, the 

 middle counties, and the mountains. The coast, for some- 

 thing more than a hundred miles back from the water line, 

 including the counties of Beaufort, Colleton, Charleston, 

 Georgetown, Horry, Marion, Williamsburg, a part of 

 Orangeburg and Barnwell, is low, swampy, fertile, and 

 sickly. On the bottoms of the Edisto, the Santee, the 

 Great and Little Pedee, and Lynch's Creek, rice is the 

 principal crop. The lower corner of the irregular triangle 

 which forms the State of South Carolina, or, in other words, 

 that part of the State which lies south of the line connect- 

 ing Augusta and Georgetown, affords in many places a 

 soil and climate admirably adapted to the black seed or 

 Sea Island cotton. 



Edisto Island, south of Charleston, is the best locality 

 in the United States for this variety of cotton. It is pro- 

 duced as far up the Savannah River as Barnwell district. 



