cotton is cultivated to some extent along the coast from Georgetown, S.C., to St. Augustine, but a great part of it is of an inferior quality and staple, and brings in the market less than one-half the price of the real ’Sea Island.’  This plant seems to delight in the soft and elastic atmosphere from the Gulf Stream, and, after it is ‘well up,’ requires but a few showers through the long summer to perfect it.  It is of feeble growth, particularly on the worn-out lands, and two hundred pounds is a good yield from an acre.  An active hand can tend four acres, besides an acre of corn and ‘ground provisions;’ but with a moderate addition of fertilizers and rotation of crops no doubt these productions would be doubled.  If the yield seems small, the price, however, makes it one of the most profitable products known.  The usual quotations for choice Sea Islands in Charleston market has been for many years about four times as great as for the middling qualities of Uplands,—­probably an average of from thirty-five to forty-five cents per pound; and for particular brands[C] sixty to seventy cents is often paid.  The writer has seen a few bales, of a most beautiful color and length of staple, which sold for eighty cents, when middling Uplands brought but ten cents per pound.  It is mostly shipped to France, where it is used for manufacturing the finest laces, and contributes largely to the texture of fancy silks, particularly the cheaper kinds for the American market.  After passing above the flow of the salt water, but within the rise of the tide, there is a wide alluvial range along the rivers and creeks, which, by a system of embankments, can be flowed or drained at pleasure.  This is cultivated with rice, and, if properly cared for, yields enormous crops, sometimes of sixty bushels to an acre.  The land is composed of a mass of muck, often ten feet deep and inexhaustible, and never suffers from drought.  This land is very valuable, one hundred dollars often being paid per acre for large plantations.  Much rice land, however, remains uncleared for want of the enterprise and perseverance necessary to its improvement.

Farther in the interior the land is principally of a sandy formation, most of it underlaid with clay.  Very little effort is, however, made by planters to cultivate it, although it is very easily worked, and with a little manuring yields fair crops of corn and sweet potatoes.  The cereal grains are seldom cultivated, but no doubt they would yield well.  A large portion of the main-land is composed of swamps, of which only enough have been reclaimed to make it certain that here is a mine of wealth to those gifted with the energy to improve it.  The soil is as fertile as the banks of the Nile, and nowhere could agricultural enterprise meet with such certainly profitable returns.  Recurring again to the agricultural capacity of the islands, it is certain that good crops of sugar-cane can be grown on them.  During the war of 1812, the planters turned their attention to