CHAPTER V. 
CULTIVATION OF COTTON, 
SECTION L 
SELECTING A PLANTATION— CLASSIFICATION OF FARMS PRICES 
EMPLOYING HANDS. 
If we attempt the classification of plantations, based 
on the single property of good land, we might dispose of 
the subject very readily by exhibiting the following grades : 
1. Good bottom plantations, which, upon careful culti- 
vation, yield from one to two bales per acre. 
2. Good upland plantations — fine table-land, with more 
or less creek bottom, yielding from one-half to one bale 
per acre. 
3. Second-rate upland plantations — land more undu- 
lating than No. 2, yielding from one-third to one-half bale 
per acre. 
4. Poor hills, yielding from one-eighth to one-fourth 
bale per acre. 
The first, while in the woods and the cane, were sold 
before the war for prices ranging from five to ten dollars 
per acre ; though fifteen or twenty years ago the same lands 
were bought by speculators as swamp lands for prices 
ranging from twenty-five cents to one dollar per aere. 
Good wild lands in the Mississippi bottom can now be 
