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the possibility of his being subjected to the consequences of violating the laws. This raises the premium, and increases the distresses of the distressed. The practice will exist with or without laws; for none have been found able to restrain it. It is far from being improbable that the repeal of all laws on the subject would be more for the interest of both borrowers and lenders than the present system of enormous penalties inflicted on those who ask and take more than seven per cent. for the use of their money.

AGRICULTURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

FROM 1670 TO 1805.

CHAPTER V.

To facilitate the improvement of new countries the settlers should have a general knowledge of the climate, soil, and productions of such as are similar and have been previously cultivated. Information on these subjects, especially when corrected by philosophy and experience, leads to useful practical results. In these particulars the proprietors as well as the first settlers were deficient. The countries subject to Great Britain both in Europe and the American continent, were much colder than South Carolina; and her possessions in the West Indies much more steadily warm. The productions of neither ware suited to this climate, which was a medium between the two. From inattention to these circumstances the first attempts at agriculture in the province were injudicious. They were directed to the cultivation of those highland grains with which the settlers were best acquainted, but these were unsuitable to the low sandy soil common on the sea-coast. An anxiety to raise provisions may have directed their industry into this channel, but the maize and potatoes, both natives of the country, would have answered better. The swamps and low grounds were of forbidding aspect, thickly wooded and hard to clear; and when cleared were not adapted to any productions with which the inhabitants for the first twentyfour years of the settlement were acquainted. During this period their efforts to cultivate the commodities which in England pass under the general name of corn, turned to little account. The woods presented a much more profitable object for their industry. In addition to bears, beavers, wild cats,

deer, foxes, raccoons and other numerous animals whose skins or furs were valuable, they abounded with oak and pine trees; the former yielded staves which were then in demand in the adjacent West India Islands. The juice of the latter extracted from the growing tree by incision and solar heat forms turpentine. This distilled yields the spirits of turpentine and the residue is rosin. The same tree when dead and dry, by the application of fire yields tar, and that when boiled becomes pitch. The trunk is easily converted into masts, boards or joists. Little labor was requisite in a country abounding with fuel and pines for obtaining these and other valuable commodities from this most useful of all trees. While the early settlers of Carolina were engaged in procuring naval stores, furs and peltry for market, and cultivating European grains on a sandy soil for provisions, providence directed them to a new source of great wealth. Landgrave Thomas Smith who was Governor of the province in 1693, had been at Madagascar before he settled in Carolina.* There he observed that rice was planted and grew in low and moist ground Having such ground at the western extremity of his garden attached to his dwelling house in East Bay street, he was persuaded that rice would grow therein if seed could be obtained. About this

*The exact time of the arrival of Thomas Smith in Carolina is not known, but it must have been soon after it began to be settled, for as early as 1688 he obtained in his own name a grant of about six acres of land on White Point. He or his father came from Exeter, in England, and was one of the many dissenters who migrated to America as an asylum from the persecution which was raised in the seventeenth century against nonconformists to the church of England. A tradition has been regularly handed down among the descendants of Thomas Smith, that he obtained the passing of a law, the principle of which continues to this day, for drawing juries indiscriminately from a box so as to preclude the possibility of packing a jury to carry any particular purpose. This tradition accords with authentic dates and facts: for on the the 15th of October, 1692, the first law on that subject was passed and was entitled "an act to provide indifferent jurymen in all cases, civil and criminal." This law, in common with the others passed on that day, was authenticated with the name of Thomas Smith in conjunction with Governor Philip Ludwel, Paul Grimball, and Richard Conant. That Thomas Smith was then a person of so much influence as to have a principal agency in passing a favorite good law is highly probable, for in seven months after he was constituted a landgrave and also appointed Governor of the province. He was the founder of a numerous and respectable family in Carolina, of which many of the fifth and sixth, and some of the fourth and seventh generation are now living. They have generally retained the principles of their common ancestor so far as to be zealous friends of religion. Among them have been found some of the most distinguished pillars both of the Episcopal and Independent churches. The immediate descendants of Thomas Smith were two sons: of these, one was the father of twenty children, and the other of four. Of these twenty-four grandchildren, seventeen were married; and their descendants have multiplied and branched out into many families. The number of the descendants of Thomas Smith who are now alive cannot be exactly ascertained, but there is reason to believe that it exceeds 500. For it is known that there are now living forty-five descendants of the Rev. Josiah Smith, who was only one of his seventeen married grand-children, and that there are more than twenty living descendants of Josiah Smith, cashier of the branch bank, who is only one of the very many of his great grand children. There is an evident fitness that the founder of so numerous a progeny, should be the introducer of rice, which of all known grains is best calculated for the support of an extensive population.

time a vessel from Madagascar being in distress, came to anchor near Sullivan's Island. The master of this vessel inquired for Mr. Smith as an old acquaintance. An interview took place. In the course of conversation Mr. Smith expressed a wish to obtain some seed rice to plant in his garden by way of experiment. The cook being called said he had a small bag of rice suitable for that purpose. This was presented to Mr. Smith who sowed it in a low spot of his garden, which now forms a part of Longitude Lane. It grew luxuriantly. The little crop was distributed by Mr. Smith among his planting friends. From this small beginning the first staple commodity of Carolina took its rise. It soon after became the chief support of the colony. Rice, besides furnishing provisions for man and beast, employs a number of hands in trade; and is therefore a source of naval strength. In every point of view it is of more value than mines of silver and gold. Rice is said by Dr. Arbuthnot to support two-thirds of the human race. No doubt can exist of its contributing extensively as nutriment to the great family of mankind.

Besides its consumption in Europe, Africa, and America, many millions of the inhabitants of Asia, live almost exclusively upon it. In plantations where it is cultivated, every domestic animal is usually fat and hearty. Among all the variety of grains none is more productive, nutritious, or wholesome than rice. In its simple state it is both a healthy and cheap food for the poor, and with proper preparation and additions it is one of the greatest delicacies at the tables of the rich; every particle of it is trebled in bulk and doubled in weight, and in its capacity for aliment, from the quantity of water it imbibes in boiling: for water is now known to be the principal ingredient in nutrition. He that eats rice at the same time receives mucilage and water, solid and fluid aliment of the most nourishing kind. Its emollient and glutinous qualities make it eminently useful in bowel complaints, and as such it forms an important article in the stores of armies and other large bodies of men. One pound of it has been found on experiment to go as far in domestic cookery, as eight pounds of flour. It is more durable than any other known grain. Its substance is so hard as not to be penetrable by the insects which deposit their ova in other farinaceous substances. It has been eaten in a sound and wholesome state four, five and six years after it was cleaned; and there is no doubt of its keeping good even more than twice as long when it is covered with its natural husk. To those who from age or infirmity are deprived of their teeth, rice is a most convenient aliment, for it requires little or no mastication. When introduced into the stomach after being well boiled, it is more easily digested than

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almost any other solid food not thoroughly masticated. To that class of people whose deranged stomach cannot digest bread, unless well raised and thoroughly baked, rice affords a safe and agreeable substitute, for it requires no fermentation, and when sufficiently boiled is as likely to agree with the stomach as crusts of bread or the best baked biscuits. To exhausted armies, starving navies, or even to the weary traveler, though far removed from the haunts of men, if fuel, water and an earthen or metallic pot can be procured, rice quickly affords a palatable and strengthening aliment. voyages round the world, flour of every kind and everything made from flour is apt to spoil, but rice sustains no injury from change of climate or the longest period of any voyage hitherto known. Such is the grain which was introduced into Carolina about 115 years ago, and has ever since been in high demand. With several in Charlestown and the adjacent country, it is the principal vegetable aliment they use for the greatest part of their lives. They experience nothing of that blindness which ignorance attributes to its constant use. The variation in the amount of the crops of this useful commodity is an important document in the history of Carolina; for it has been materially affected not only by the introduction of other staples, but by the political revolutions of the country. When it was introduced there were few negros in the province, the government was unsettled, and the soil and other circumstances most favorable to its growth were unknown. For the first twenty years after it began to be planted, the ravages of pirates on the coast made its exportation so hazardous as to discourage the cultivation of it. In the year 1724, about six years after the pirates were entirely suppressed, 18,000 barrels of rice were exported. Our knowledge of what was previously made or exported is conjectural; but each succeeding crop brought an additional quantity to market. In the year 1740, the amount exported was 91,110 barrels; in 1754 it had reached to 104,682 barrels. Till the middle of the eighteenth century the chief article of export was rice; but about that time much of the attention and force of the planters was transferred from it to indigo. Nevertheless the culture of this grain continued to advance, though slowly, till the commencement of the American revolution; when the average quantity annually exported was about 142,000 barrels. In the course of the revolutionary war, the small crops of rice were consumed in the country; and so many of the negroes were either destroyed or carried off that the crop of 1783, the first after the evacuation of Charlestown, amounted only to 61,974 barrels. With the return of peace the cultivation of rice was resumed, and continued to increase till the year 1792;

when the crop exported amounted to 106,419 barrels. About this time cotton began to employ so much of the agricultural force of the State, that the crops of rice since that period have rarely exceeded what they were about the middle of the eighteenth century.

The culture of rice in Carolina has been in a state of constant progressive improvement. Though it can be made to grow on highland, yet the profits of it when planted there are inconsiderable. The transfer of it to the swamps was highly advantageous. It gave use and value to lands which before were of no account, and by many deemed nuisances; and it more than trebled the amount of crops. Had the first mode of planting been continued, the highland would soon have failed; but much of the rice swamp in Carolina is inexhaustible.

Another great improvement is the water culture of this valuable grain. The same preparation which fits the soil for the growth of rice equally favors the growth of grass and weeds. The old method of destroying these intruders with the hoe was so laborious as to curtail the crops; but when reflection and experience had pointed out that overflowing the rice fields at a proper season, would kill the grass and weeds while it nourished rice, a plant delighting in water, the practicability of planting more ground became obvious. For the first seventy or eighty years after rice became a staple commodity, the attention of the Legislature and of individuals was steadily fixed on the contrivance of some labor-saving machinery for separating the grains from its closely adhering husk. After many attempts machines, worked by the tides, were contrived and erected by Mr. Lucas, which are equal to the beating out twenty barrels a day by the force of tide water with the help of a few hands. Before they were introduced, the labor of the negroes in doing the same business by hand was immense. It sometimes crippled the strength of the men, and often destroyed the fertility of the women. Being done at unseasonable hours, it was a frequent source of disease and death. All this mischief in a great measure has been done away for the last twenty years, in which period rice mills have

* South Carolina is indebted to Gideon Dupont, of St. James Goose Creek, for the water culture of rice: he was an experienced planter of discernment and sound judgment, who after repeated trials ascertained its practicability. In the year 1783 he petitioned the Legislature of the State on the subject. A committee of five was appointed to confer with him. To them he freely communicated his method, relying on the generosity of the public. The treasury being then empty, the committee could only recommend granting him a patent. This he declined. His method is now in general use on river swamp lands, and has been the means of enriching thousands, though to this day his own family have reaped no benefit whatever from the communication of his discovery. Thomas Bee, now federal Judge for the district of South Carolina, was one of the above committee; and on his authority these particulars are stated.

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