ON THE COTTON GIN. 283 



hundred pounds per acre, and at four acres to tlie hand, gave 

 about four hundred to the labor. 



My father died in the year 1794, leaving me some property 

 at St. Simon's Island. A gentleman, who had been his friend, 

 {jame, for his health, to spend the winter of that year in Georgia ; 

 he gave his advice freely to all he saw that were growing cot- 

 ton. I was young, he had been the friend of my father, I 

 listened to his advice, left eight or ten plants where one had 

 grown, and made off a small field of sixty acres, 350 Ibs. to the 

 acre. The revolution was accomplished, and the crop greatly 

 increased. 



4th. No manure was used for many years in the culture of 

 cotton, persons depending upon the in-field and the out, or the 

 alternate cultivation of the field, which was soon found neces- 

 sary. The first suggestion of manure upon a large scale to 

 cotton, came from Col. Shubrick, of South Carolina, who re- 

 commended, in some essays in the papers, the application of 

 the drifted reck that is thrown up by the tides. After the 

 hurricane of 1804, 1 bestowed a great deal of labor in spreading 

 this reck between my cotton rows, over several hundred acres. 

 "Whether the sea had left too much salt, or whether there was 

 too much in the material itself, I know not, but I neither then, 

 nor afterwards, experienced much benefit from the applica- 

 tion. 



5th. The plough was but little used for any purpose at St. 

 Simon's. It takes many years before the palmetto, and the 

 collateral roots of the live oak, make hammock land free to the 

 plough. Major Butler did use the plough, with mules, for both 

 purposes. 



6th. The cotton was generally worked four times. We 

 soon found that our working should cease as soon as the rains 

 became heavy, say at the middle or end of July. 



7th. The ridges were renewed every year, or every other 



