82 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



cotton planters, whose riches consist entirely of their slaves 

 and worn out plantations ? I desire to show, and I shall 

 prove it in practice, that a judiciously arranged system of 

 plantation economy will secure upon the plantation sufficient 

 grain, bacon, and mules to supply its wants : and a cotton 

 crop, unincumbered by these absolute necessaries, that realize 

 a handsome dividend upon the capital and labor of the planter. 

 In this cycle of rotation and shift of crops that I practice, 

 there is afforded, in the first place, every necessary means of 

 improving the fertility of the land. Another striking feature 

 about it, and not the least recommendatory of it, is the 

 amount of rich pasturage that it affords for stock. I regard 

 this as among its highest recommendations. Stock cannot be 

 raised successfully or advantageously without pasturage, in 

 addition to well-filled cribs of grain. The quantity of land 

 appropriated under this arrangement to corn, secures a suf- 

 ficiency of that grain for all needful purposes. This crop 

 should always be laid by early, and pas, the common cow- 

 pea, or some of its varieties, sowed broad-cast over the land 

 and ploughed or harrowed in, which adds very materially to 

 the value of the pasturage, as well as improves the condition 

 of the land. It is argued by planters generally that grazing 

 land injures it more than the stock are benefited by the pas- 

 turage. The argument is too often illegitimate ! The land is 

 first ruined by the one-crop practice of cotton, &c., till the 

 vegetable mold and inorganic salts of the surface and 

 ploughed soil are^exhausted, it is then turned out to pasture. 

 It soon runs together, of course, produces little grass, and sus- 

 tains poor stock. The difficulty is not so much in the injury, 

 which the hungry stock did in grazing the pasture, as the 

 ruinous system of culture that prevented any pasture at all. 

 Land under an improving system of culture is not- thus 

 affected. Rich land upon which water is not permitted to 



