are Reynolds, Prentice, Chaplins, Eddings, Hilton Head, Dawfuskie, Turtle, and the Hunting Islands.  Behind these lie St. Helena, Pinckney, Paris, Port Royal, Ladies’, Cane, Bermuda, Discane, Bells, Daltha, Coosa, Morgan, Chissolm, Williams Harbor, Kings, Cahoussue, Fording, Barnwell, Whale, Delos, Hall, Lemon, Barrataria, Lopes, Hoy, Savage, Long, Round, and Jones Islands.  These are from one to ten miles in length, and usually a proportional half in width.  St. Helena is over twenty miles in extent, and could well support an agricultural population of twenty thousand.  Port Royal is next in size, but, being of a more sandy formation, is not so fertile.  These islands are all of an alluvial formation,—­the result of the action of the rivers and the sea.  There is no rock of any kind, not even a pebble stone, to be found in the whole district.

The soil of these islands is composed mostly of a fine sandy loam, very easily cultivated.  In most of them are swamps and marshes, which serve to furnish muck and other vegetable deposits for fertilizing; but the idea of furnishing anything to aid the long over-worked soil seems to these proprietors like returning to the slave some of the earnings taken from him or his ancestors, and is seldom done till nature is at last exhausted, and then it is allowed only a few years’ repose.  Situated under the parallel of 32 deg., there is scarcely a product grown in our country, of any value, that can not be produced here.  Previous to the Revolution the principal staple for market was indigo, and that raised in this district always commanded the highest price.  It was from the proceeds of this plant that the planters were enabled for a long period to purchase slaves and European and northern American productions.  Soon after the Revolution their attention was turned to cotton; but the difficulty of separating it from the seed seemed to make it impossible to furnish it in any profitable quantity, for so slow was the process then followed that, with the utmost diligence, a negro could not, by hand labor, clean over a few pounds per day.  The genius of Whitney, however, opened a new era to the cotton planters, who were much more eager to avail themselves of his invention than to remunerate him.  It was soon perceived that the cotton raised on these islands was far superior to that produced in the interior, which is still called Upland, only to distinguish it from the ‘Sea Island.’  It was also noticed that while the common variety produced a seed nearly green with a rough skin, the seed of the islands soon became black with a smooth skin; the effect entirely of location and climate, as it soon resumes its original color when transported back to the interior.  The cultivation of this variety is limited to a tract of country of about one hundred and fifty miles in length, and not over twenty-five miles in breadth, mostly on lands adjacent to the salt water, the finest ‘grades’ being confined to the islands within this district.  It is true that black-seed