801] Historical Survey 3 



or horses as the more expeditious method," even later 

 than the year 1800. " Horses were preferred for this 

 work. A crop of three thousand bushels could thus be 



threshed and secured in ten days. . . 



. . The treading floors were from forty to one hun- 

 dred and thirty feet, more commonly sixty to one hun- 

 feet in diameter with a path twelve to fourteen feet wide 

 near the periphery upon which the grain was laid. The 

 horses were led round at a slow trot in platoons equi- 

 distant from each other .... The floors were 

 sometimes removed from field to field, but permanent 

 floors made hard and smooth, and kept so by careful use, 

 were preferred. They were commonly fenced round, 

 sometimes with an outer and inner fence." 1 



Of the Georgia estates in 1790, it is said: Their 

 " chief products were negroes, rice, and tobacco . . 

 . . The staple was tobacco, and this was cultivated in 

 the simplest manner with the rudest of tools. Agri- 

 culture as we now know it can scarcely be said to have 

 existed. The plough was little used. The hoe was the 

 implement of husbandry. Made at the plantation 

 smithy, the blade was ill-formed and clumsy ; the 

 handle was a sapling with the bark left on ... Few 

 roads were ever marked by the tires of a four-wheeled 

 wagon or a tumbrel. When the tobacco was ready for 

 the inspector's mark, stout hogsheads were procured, the 

 leaves packed in, the heads fastened in, a shaft and a 

 rude axle attached, and, one by one they were rolled 

 along the roads for miles to the tobacco-house nearest 

 by." 2 Michaux, who made a journey through the 

 United States in 1802 for the express purpose of study- 



1 Preliminary Report, Eighth Census, p. 95. 



2 McMaster : History of the People of the United States, Vol. II, 

 p. 4- 



