quality until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community about half as much gross income as did its rice.  The net earnings of the planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang might cultivate both staples.

[Footnote 8:  Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, Eliza Pinckney (New York, 1896); Plantation and Frontier, I, 265, 266.]

[Footnote 9:  B.A.  Elzas, The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia, 1905), chap. 3.]

Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain.  From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July.  At that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours took the dye-stuff out of the leaves.  The solution then drawn into another vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and complete the foaming fermentation.  Samples were taken at frequent intervals during the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge became apparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gently stirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the “blueing.”  When this had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor was collected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in the shade and packed for market.[10] A second crop usually sprang from the roots of the first and was harvested in August or September.

[Footnote 10:  B.R.  Carroll, Historical Collections of South Carolina, II, 532-535.]

Indigo production was troublesome and uncertain of results.  Not only did the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple virtually ended with the colonial period.  The War of Independence not only cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the receipt of the British bounty.  When peace returned the culture was revived in a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptly give place to sea-island cotton.[12]