cotton planters have particularly to dread the frosts that set in very early, and that frequently [290] do great damage to the crops by freezing one half of the stalks, so that the cotton has not an opportunity to ripen.

In all the plantations they cultivate Indian corn. The best land brings from fifteen to twenty bushels. They plant it, as well as the cotton, about two feet and a half distance, in parallel furrows from fifteen to eighteen inches high. The seed of this kind of Indian corn is round, and very white. When boiled it is preferable to that cultivated in the middle and western states, and in Upper Carolina. The chief part of what they grow is destined to support the negroes nine months in the year; their allowance is about two pounds per day, which they boil in water after having pounded it a little; the other three months they are fed upon yams. They never give them meat. In the other parts of the United States they are better treated, and live nearly upon the same as their masters, without having any set allowance. Indian corn is sold at Charleston for ten shillings per bushel, about fifty-five pounds weight.

[291] Thus rice, long cotton, yams, and Indian wheat, are the only cultures in the maritime part of the southern states; the temperature of the climate, and the nature of the soil, which is too light or too moist, being in no wise favourable for that of wheat or any kind of grain.

Through the whole of the low country the agricultural labours are performed by negro slaves, and the major part of the planters employ them to drag the plough; they conceive the land is better cultivated, and calculate besides that in the course of a year a horse, for food and looking after, costs ten times more than a negro, the annual expense of which does not exceed fifteen dollars.

I shall abstain from any reflexion concerning this, as the opinion of many people is fixed.

The climate of Lower Carolina and Georgia is too warm in summer to be favourable to European fruit-trees, and too cold in winter to suit those of the Carribbees. The fig is the only tree that succeeds tolerably well; again, the figs turn sour a few days after [292] they have acquired the last degree of maturity, which must doubtless be attributed to the constant dampness of the atmosphere.

In the environs of Charleston, and in the isles that border the coast, the orange-trees stand the winter in the open fields, and are seldom damaged by the frosts; but at ten miles distance, in the interior, they freeze every year even with the ground, although those parts of the country are situate under a more southerly latitude than Malta and Tunis. The oranges that they gather in Carolina are not good to eat. Those consumed there come from the island of St. Anastasia, situate opposite St. Augustin, the capital of East Florida; they are sweet, very large, fine skinned, and more esteemed than those brought from the Carribbees. About fifty years ago the seeds were brought from India, and given to an inhabitant of this island, who has so increased them that he has got an orchard of forty acres. I had an opportunity of seeing this beautiful plantation when I was at Florida in 1788.

[293] In the general verification of the United States, published in 1800, the population of North Carolina, comprising negro slaves, amounted to four hundred and seventy-eight thousand inhabitants, that of Georgia to one hundred and sixty-three thousand, and that of South Carolina to three hundred and forty-six thousand. Not having been able to see the private extracts of the two former states, I am unacquainted with the proportion

that there is between the whites and blacks, and the difference that exists between the population of the low and high countries; however an idea may be formed by the verification of South Carolina, where they reckon in the low country, comprising the town of Charleston, thirty-six thousand whites and a hundred thousand negroes, and in the high country one hundred and sixtythree thousand whites and forty-six thousand negroes.

I arrived at Charleston on the 18th of October 1802, three months and a half after my departure from Philadelphia, having travelled over a space of [294] nearly eighteen hundred miles. I staid at Carolina till the 1st of March 1803, the epoch when I embarked for France on board the same ship that had taken me to America eighteen months before, and arrived at Bourdeaux on the 26th of March 1803.

THE END

JOURNAL OF A TOUR NORTHWEST OF THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS, BY THADDEUS MASON HARRIS, A. M.

Reprint from Boston edition, 1805; the Journal proper, omitting the Appendix thereto