230 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR 
It is time that the planters .of the South were up and 
doing. There is no necessity that we should exceed the 
Scriptural injunction. We need not love our neighbor 
better than ourselves. We have, perhaps, bestowed suf- 
ficient attention upon the aifairs of our sister States and 
Territories of this Confederacy. While we have been 
fiercely contesting in regard to territory, which we never 
saw and never expect to see, either we or our posterity, 
the territory of our farms has been stealing away down 
the branches, creeks and rivers to the great deep. It has 
been the curse of that gallant old State, South Carolina, 
that she has been taking care of the Nation, to the neg- 
lect of her own soil. It has placed her in the rear when 
she ought to have been in the advance. Words are inade- 
quate to express the wicked folly of the Abolitionists, 
Yet they have done us less harm than our own defective 
Agriculture. We have millions of acres to reclaim. Under 
an improved system of cultivation, we have the cheapest 
and best labor and enough of it to accomplish this pur- 
pose. With lands constantly improving and with crops 
constantly increasing, we may smile at the idle efforts of 
these fanatics. When our lands are reclaimed and we 
want more, we or our children will carry our negro popu- 
lation wherever they will be profitable in spite of all the 
abolitionists under the sun. 
Let us increase our strength by increasing our Agri- 
cultural wealth. Let us appeal to our Legislatures. 1 he 
cost of the idle debates of one session would, if expended 
in agricultural premiums, give an impulse to agriculture 
which might be felt favorably by remote generations. 
In Georgia, there is to be a Convention of the friends of 
Internal Improvement, to devise the means of securing the 
aid of the State to Internal Improvements— meaning Rail- 
roads. Why should not another branch of internal im- 
provement— agriculture— be represented 'I Why should 
not the advocates of State Aid, be made to understand 
that the assistance of the planters to their views can be 
rendered only on condition that aid to Agriculture is in- 
corporated into them The planters and farmers can ob- 
tain the necessary assistance if they will it. If we do not 
obtain it, the failure will be owing to our ignorance, or 
want of concert or supine inactivity. H. 
LOW PRICE OF SOUTHERN LANDS-REMEDY, 
Etc. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I am not farming to 
much extent and it may, therefore, be thought presump- 
tion in me to give my views on the following subject ; but 
after carefully and anxiously reading the article com- 
menced in the May number and concluded in the June 
number of your valuable journal on “the Cheapness of 
Lands at the South, its Causes and Remedies,” I have de- 
termined to trouble you with my thoughts on that subject. 
If this article has but the effect to excite the minds of 
those capable of unfolding the subject, I have effected 
my object. With this spirit I send you this, which, should 
you think it worthy, give a place in the Cultivator. 1 ad- 
mit, with that article, the evils exist, and would gladly 
see them remedied, but differ as to the causes and reme- 
dies. 
There are four causes of exhaustion to our soils, and, 
consequently, of lessening their value, viz: 
1st. Our long hot summers. 
2nd. Our heavy washing rains of winter. 
3rd. The things cultivated. 
4th, The mode of cultivation. 
The first and second are peculiar to the South, They 
are the dark side of the picture of our snowy fields and 
sunny skies. They cannot be removed, but may be 
greatly warded off. With tliem the North has little or no 
trouble. Any one who will carefully observe the effects 
of one of our long summer drouths on the soil, will, un- 
hesitatingly, say that it injures the soil more than any 
crop raised by us. By it, nearly every liquid and vola- 
tile particle is evaporated. So great is this heat that in 
places it cracks the earth to the depth of twenty feet. In 
parts of Texas, well-diggers have seen traces of these 
cracks even deeper than that. 
2. The Washing Rains of winter . — The v/hole South is 
subject to tropical changes. The rainy season coming in 
winter. When it sets in, the rain falls in torrents. The 
earth is never frozen during our winters, but completely 
softened by these rains. In Texas, when rain sets in it 
fills these deep cracks with the top soil, leaving gravelly 
ridges between, resembling huge potato ridges. When 
these do not exist, owing to the unfrozen state of the 
ground, softened by the rains and our method of cultiva- 
tion, the remaining portions of the soil are mostly washed 
away. 
In the North their summers are short and warming — not 
burning ; and in the winter the earth is mostly frozen, 
the rain by freezing and the snow, instead of washing, 
forms a mantle of protection. 
3. The things Cultivaled . — The principal objects are 
cotton and corn raised from year to year on the same 
ground without change, unless it be from cotton to corn 
and from corn to cotton. Annually extracting from the 
soil the ingredients which compose the food of those 
plants until the soil is exhausted of them, however plenty 
in other ingredients, and then thrown away. The author 
of that article says that “cotton, of all our crops, is the least 
exhausting,” &c. Cotton, as it has but few lateral roots 
and is sustained principally by one large tap root, may, 
of itself, take least from our soil; but its clean culture 
and continued turning of the fresher soil to the burning 
sun makes it the most exhausting of all crops. Its clean 
culture and few lateral roots leaves the soil without any- 
thing to hold it togethe^i and in the worst condition pos- 
sible for our heavy winter rains. 
In the North, the principal objects of cultivation are 
grasses and the cereal grains, the stalks of which shade 
the ground in summer, and their root- lets form a complete 
tie to the soil against their thaws of spring. The stubble 
and stalks which they turn under in the fall, after the 
injurious heat of summer is over, forms a coat of 
manure which, by rotting, keeps the soil warm and mel- 
low. 
4. Our System of Cultivation . — As the author of the 
article truly remarks, “lands in the South are bought 
with the calculation of being worn out and deserted.” The 
clearing is about one-fourth done. For the first two years 
no crop is raised from shade and unbroken soil. As soon 
as the trees die and the rootlets rot, the soil, for want of 
something to hold it together, from scratching instead of 
plowing and that up and down hill, washes in a most 
frightful manner, Deep and horizontal plowing and hill- ^ 
side ditching are ridiculed. Manuring is almost wholly 
neglected except a handful of cotton seed in the hill. A 
very light and temporary affair. Our plowing averages 
from two to six inches deep. 
In the North, notwithstanding they have none of our 
winter washing rains, they horizontalize their plowing 
and efficiently hill side ditch their lands. Their plowing 
averages from 5 to 15 inches deep. In addition, they 
harrow and roll their lands after plowing until the soil is 
completely pulverized, and smoothed as near as may be. 
They manure without stint. 
remedies. 
That author recommends stock and their raising as a 
remedy, by furnishing manure, &c. Although I am a 
strong advocate for stock-raising, the idea that^stock en- 
riches the soil seems to me merely speculative. True, 
stock are great collectors of manure, but do not create a 
particle. The richness scattered over a great extent of 
