Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/308

 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.