Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/307

 aquatica, chesnut oaks, or quercus prinus palustris, and several species of nut-trees. The whole of these trees are here an index of the greatest fertility, which does not take place in the western country, as I have before observed.

The best rice plantations are established in the great swamps, that favour the watering of them when convenient. The harvests are abundant there, and the rice that proceeds from them, stripped of its husk, is larger, more transparent, and is sold dearer than that which is in a drier soil, where they have not the means or facility of irrigation. The culture of rice in the southern and maritime part of the United States has greatly diminished within these few years; it has been in a great measure replaced by that of cotton, which affords greater profit to the planters, {289} since they compute a good cotton harvest equivalent to two of rice. The result is, that many rice fields have been transformed into those of cotton, avoiding as much as possible the water penetrating.

The soil most adapted for the culture of cotton is in the isles situate upon the coast. Those which belong to the state of Georgia produce the best of cotton, which is known in the French trade by the name of Georgia cotton, fine wool, and in England by that of Sea Island cotton. The seed of this kind of cotton is of a deep black, and the wool fine and very long. In February 1803 it was sold at Charleston at 1s. 8d. per pound, whilst that which grows in the upper country is not worth above seventeen or eighteen pence. The first is exported to England, and the other goes to France; but what is very remarkable is, that whenever by any circumstance they import these two qualities into our ports, they only admit of a difference of from twelve to fifteen per cent. The