General observations on the Carolinas and Georgia.—Agriculture and produce peculiar to the upper part of these states.
The two Carolinas and Georgia are naturally divided into the upper and lower country, but the upper embraces a greater extent. Just at the point where the maritime part is terminated the soil rises gradually till it reaches the Alleghany Mountains, and presents, upon the whole, a ground rather irregular than mountainous, and interspersed with little hills as far as the mountains. The Alleghanies give birth to a great number of creeks or small rivers, the junction of which forms the rivers Pidea, Santea, {277} Savannah, and Alatamaha, which are hardly navigable above two hundred miles from their embouchure. In the upper country the most fertile lands are situated upon the borders of these creeks. Those that occupy the intermediate spaces are much less so. The latter are not much cultivated; and even those who occupy them are obliged to be perpetually clearing them, in order to obtain more abundant harvests; in consequence of which a great number of the inhabitants emigrate into the western country, where they are attracted by the extreme fertility of the soil and low price of land; since that of the first class may be purchased for the same money as that of the second in Upper Carolina; and, as we have already said, the latter is scarcely to be compared to that which in Kentucky and Cumberland is ranked in the third.
In the upper country the mass of the forests is chiefly composed of oaks, nut trees, maples, and poplars. Chesnut trees do not begin to appear in these states for sixty miles on this side the mountains. {278} It is only in the remote parts that the inhabitants manufacture maple sugar for their use.
Through the whole of the country the nature of the soil is adapted for the growth of wheat, rye, and Indian corn. Good land produces upward of twenty bushels of Indian wheat per acre, which is commonly worth about half a dollar per bushel. A general consumption is made of it for the support of the inhabitants since, except those who are of German origin, there are very few, as we have before remarked, that make use of wheaten bread. The growth of corn is very circumscribed, and the small quantity of flour that is exported to Charleston and Savannah is sold fifteen per cent. cheaper than that imported from Philadelphia.
The low price to which tobacco is fallen in Europe, within these few years, has made them give up the culture of it in this part of the country. That of green-seed cotton has resumed its place, to the great advantage of the inhabitants, many of whom have since made their fortunes by it. The separation {279} of the seed from the felt that envelopes them is a tedious operation, and which requires many hands, is now simplified by a machine for which the inventor has obtained a patent from the federal government. The legislature of South Carolina paid him, three years since, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars, for all the inhabitants belonging to the state to have the privilege of erecting one. This machine, very simple, and the price of which does not exceed sixty dollars, is put in motion by a horse or by a current of water, and separates from the seed three or four hundred pounds of cotton per day; while by the usual method, a man is not able to separate above thirty pounds. This machine, it is true, has the inconvenience of shortening by haggling it; the wool, on that account, is rather inferior in point of quality, but this inconvenience is, they say, well compensated by the saving of time, and more particularly workmanship.[60]
It is very probable that the various species of fruit trees that we have in France would succeed very well {280} in Upper Carolina. About two hundred miles from the sea-coast the apple trees are magnificent, and in the county of Lincoln several Germans make cyder. But here, as well as in Tennessea, and the greatest part of Kentucky, they cultivate no other but the peach. The other kinds of trees, such as pears, apricots, plumbs, cherries, almonds, mulberries, nuts, and gooseberries, are very little known, except by name. Many of the inhabitants who are independent would be happy to procure some of them, but the distance from the sea-ports renders it very difficult. The major part of the inhabitants do not even cultivate vegetables; and out of twenty there is scarcely one of them that plants a small bed of cabbages; and when they do, it is in the same field as the Indian wheat.
In Upper Carolina the surface of the soil is covered with a kind of grass, which grows in greater abundance as the forests are more open. The woods are also like a common, where the inhabitants turn out their cattle, which they know again by their {281} private mark. Several persons have in their flocks a variety of poll oxen, which are not more esteemed than those of the common species. In the whole course of my travels I never saw any that could be compared to those I have seen in England, which beyond doubt proceeds from the little care that the inhabitants take of them, and from what these animals suffer during the summer, when they are cruelly tormented by an innumerable multitude of ticks and muskitos, and in the winter, through the want of grass, which dries up through the effect of the first frosts. These inconveniences are still more sensible, during the summer, in the low country, through the extreme heat of the climate. The result is, that the cows give but little milk, and are dry at the end of three or four months. In the environs of Philadelphia and New York, where they bestow the same care upon them as in England, they are, on the contrary, as fine, and give as great a quantity of milk.
The horses that they rear in this part of the {282} southern states are inferior to those of the western. The inhabitants keep but very few sheep, and those who have a dozen are accounted to have a great number.
The commercial intercourse of the Upper Carolines and Georgia is carried on, in a great measure, with Charleston, which is not much farther than Wilmington and Savannah. The inhabitants go there in preference, because the commerce is more active, and the sales more easy. The articles they carry there consists chiefly in short cotton, tobacco, hams, salt butter, wax, stag, and bear skins, and cattle. They take, in return, coarse iron ware, tea, coffee, powder sugar, coarse cloths, and fine linen, but no bar iron, the upper country abounding in mines of that metal, and those which are worked sufficing the wants of the inhabitants. They also bring salt from the sea-ports, since there are no salt pits in any part of the Atlantic states. The carriage of these goods is made in large waggons with four wheels, drawn by four or six horses, that travel {283} about twenty-four miles a day, and encamp every evening in the woods. The price of conveyance is about three shillings and four-pence per hundred weight for every hundred miles.
Although the climate of the Upper Carolinas is infinitely more wholesome than that of the lower parts, it is not, in the mean time, at two hundred miles, and even two hundred and fifty, from the ocean, that a person is safe from the yellow fever.
Eight-tenths of the inhabitants of this part of the country are in the same situation as those of Tennessea and Kentucky. They reside, like the latter, in log-houses isolated in the woods, which are left open in the night as well as the day. They live in the same manner with regard to their domestic affairs, and follow the same plans of agriculture. Notwithstanding there are many of them whose moral characters, perhaps, are not so unspotted as those of the western inhabitants, it is probably altered by associating with the Scotch and Irish who come every year in great numbers to settle in the country, and {284} who teach them a part of their vices and defects, the usual attendants on a great population. The major part of these new adventurers go into the upper country, where they engage to serve, for a year or two, those persons who have paid the captain of the ship for their passage.