■ 338 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



below Augusta, is the plantation of Ex-Gov. Hammond, His bot- 

 tom land is a sandy loam, and his upland almost wholly sand, 

 which does not yield an average of ten bushels of corn per acre. 

 That is considered a good yield in a good year in that vicinity. 

 He plants corn three by four feet apart, one stalk in a hill. Cot- 

 ton is planted one and a quarter by four feet apart, or rather it 

 is thinned to a stand at that, and yields an average of 400 pounds 

 per acre, and twenty acres is a common crop for each hand, or, 

 what is more common, ten acres of cotton, and ten acres of corn. 



Gov. Hammond has dressed all his upland with a heavy coat 

 of shell marl. He plows with small one mule plows, and as he 

 has 3,000 acres in cultivation, of course he cannot manure except 

 by foreign substances, such as marl, guano, superphosphate, &c., 

 but he finds great benefit from a pea crop, grown for a fertilizer 

 among corn. 



His greatest crops he has obtained from cypress swamps, 

 drained by immense open ditches, at an expense, beside clearing, 

 of $5 an acre. The swamp land averaged about 750 pounds per 

 acre. One acre gave 1,788 pounds. The swamp has to be culti- 

 vated entirely by hoes. 



This plantation covers 10,000 acres, much of it not worth 

 clearing for cultivation, it being, like a large portion of the State, 

 a barren sand, covered with long-leaf pine forest. There are 220 

 slaves on the place, 137 of which are on the list of work hands. 



The cost of clearing and draining the swamps is based upon 

 the quantity of cotton the same hands could have nM-de in the 

 same time upon the old fields. The estimate is as follows : 

 Clearing, $25 an acre ; ditching, $5 ; marling, $10. The previous 

 salable value of the land is not over $3 an acre. About 600 

 acres have been drained, by over forty miles of ditching, from 

 three to thirteen feet deep. 



The weekly rations of full-grown slaves upon this plantation 

 are two pounds of bacon and one pint of molasses, or three 

 pounds of bacon without molasse^, and one peck of corn meal. 

 No vegetables are dealt out, but, as the slaves work task work, 

 they get time to grow some potatoes, turnips, and peanuts in 

 their own gardens. 



About ten miles west of Columbia, S. C, I saw a newly-cleared 

 field planted with corn, the owner of which told me that it would 

 yield about five bushels of corn per acre, for two or three years, 

 and after that not over one or two bushels without manure. The 



