Part 22
Columbia, founded within these twenty years, is the seat of government for the state of South Carolina. {273} It is built about two hundred fathoms from the Catabaw River, upon an uniform spot of ground. The number of its houses does not exceed two hundred; they are almost all built of wood, and painted grey and yellow; and although there are very few of them more than two stories high, they have a very respectable appearance. The legislature, formed by the union of the delegates of different counties that send them in a number proportionate to their population, meet there annually on the first of December, and all the business is transacted in the same month; it then dissolves, and, except at that time, the town derives no particular advantage from being the seat of government.
The inhabitants of the upper country, who do not approve of sending their provisions to Charleston, stop at Columbia, where they dispose of them at several respectable shops established in the town.
The river Catabaw, about twenty fathoms broad, is only navigable during the winter; the rest of the year its navigation is stopped by large rocks that intercept {274} its course. They have been, nevertheless, at work for these several years past in forming a canal to facilitate the descent of the boats, but the work goes on very slowly for the want of hands, although the workmen are paid at the rate of a dollar per day.
Columbia is about a hundred and twenty miles from Charleston; for the whole of this space, and particularly from Orangeburgh, composed of twenty houses, the road crosses an even country, sandy and dry during the summer; whilst in the autumn and winter it is so covered with water that in several places, for the space of eight or ten miles, the horses are up to their middles. Every two or three miles we meet with a miserable log-house upon the road, surrounded with little fields of Indian corn, the slender stalks of which are very seldom more than five or six feet high, and which, from the second harvest, do not yield more than four or five bushels per acre. In the mean time, notwithstanding their sterility, this land is sold at the rate of two dollars per acre.
The extreme unwholesomeness of the climate is {275} clearly demonstrated by the pale and livid countenances of the inhabitants, who, during the months of September and October, are almost all affected with tertian fevers, insomuch that at this period of the year Georgia and the Lower Carolinas resemble, in some measure, an extensive hospital. Very few persons take any remedy, but wait the approach of the first frosts, which, provided they live so long, generally effect a cure. The negroes are much less subject to intermittent fevers than the whites; and it is seldom that in the great rice plantations there is more than one fifth of them disabled on this account.
{276} CHAP. XXXI
_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.
{285} CHAP. XXXII
_Low part of the Carolines and Georgia.--Agriculture.--Population.-- Arrival at Charleston._
The low country of the two Carolinas extends from the borders of the sea for a hundred and twenty or a hundred and fifty miles, widening as it gets towards the south. The space that this extent embraces presents an even and regular soil, formed by a blackish sand, rather deep in parts, in which there are neither stones nor flints; in consequence of which they seldom shoe their horses in that part of the United States. Seven-tenths of the country are {286} covered with pines of one species, or _pinus palustris_, which, as the soil is drier and lighter, grow loftier and not so branchy. These trees, frequently twenty feet distant from each other, are not damaged by the fire that they make here annually in the woods, at the commencement of spring, to burn the grass and other plants that the frost has killed. These pines, encumbered with very few branches, and which split even, are preferred to other trees to form fences for plantations. Notwithstanding the sterility of the land where they grow, they are sometimes interspersed with three kinds of oaks; viz. the _quercus nigra_, the _quercus catasbœi_, and the _quercus obtusiloba_. The wood of the two first is only fit to burn, whilst that of the other is of an excellent use, as I have before remarked.
The Pine Barrens are crossed by little swamps, in the midst of which generally flows a rivulet. These swamps, from ten to forty fathoms broad, are sometimes more than a mile in length, and border on others, more spacious and marshy, near the rivers. {287} Each have different degrees of fertility, clearly indicated by the trees that grow there exclusively, and which are not to be found in the upper country. Thus the chesnut oak, or _quercus prinus palustris_, the _magnolia grandiflora_, the _magnolia tripetala_, the _nyssa biflora_, &c. flourish only in swamps where the soil is of a good quality, and continually cool, moist, and shady. In some parts of these same swamps, that are half the year submerged, where the earth is black, muddy, and reposes upon a clayey bottom, the acacia-leaved cypress, the _gleditsia monosperme_, the lyric oak, and the bunchy nut-tree, the nuts of which are small, and break easily between the fingers. The aquatic oak, the red maple, the _magnolia glauca_, the _liquidambar stiracyflua_, the _nyssa villosa_, the _Gordonia lasyanthus_, and the _laurus Caroliniensis_, cover, on the contrary, exclusively the narrow swamps of the Pine Barrens.
The Spanish beard, _tillandsia asneoides_, a kind of moss of a greyish colour, which is several feet in length, and which grows in abundance upon the {288} oaks and other trees, is again a plant peculiar to the low country.
In those districts where there are no pines, the soil is not so dry, deeper, and more productive. We found there white oaks, or _quercus alba_, aquatic oaks, or _quercus aquatica_, chesnut oaks, or _quercus prinus palustris_, and several species of nut-trees. The whole of these trees are here an index of the greatest fertility, which does not take place in the western country, as I have before observed.
The best rice plantations are established in the great swamps, that favour the watering of them when convenient. The harvests are abundant there, and the rice that proceeds from them, stripped of its husk, is larger, more transparent, and is sold dearer than that which is in a drier soil, where they have not the means or facility of irrigation. The culture of rice in the southern and maritime part of the United States has greatly diminished within these few years; it has been in a great measure replaced by that of cotton, which affords greater profit to the planters, {289} since they compute a good cotton harvest equivalent to two of rice. The result is, that many rice fields have been transformed into those of cotton, avoiding as much as possible the water penetrating.
The soil most adapted for the culture of cotton is in the isles situate upon the coast. Those which belong to the state of Georgia produce the best of cotton, which is known in the French trade by the name of Georgia cotton, fine wool, and in England by that of Sea Island cotton. The seed of this kind of cotton is of a deep black, and the wool fine and very long. In February 1803 it was sold at Charleston at 1s. 8d. per pound, whilst that which grows in the upper country is not worth above seventeen or eighteen pence. The first is exported to England, and the other goes to France; but what is very remarkable is, that whenever by any circumstance they import these two qualities into our ports, they only admit of a difference of from twelve to fifteen per cent. The cotton planters have particularly to dread the frosts that set in very early, and that frequently {290} do great damage to the crops by freezing one half of the stalks, so that the cotton has not an opportunity to ripen.
In all the plantations they cultivate Indian corn. The best land brings from fifteen to twenty bushels. They plant it, as well as the cotton, about two feet and a half distance, in parallel furrows from fifteen to eighteen inches high. The seed of this kind of Indian corn is round, and very white. When boiled it is preferable to that cultivated in the middle and western states, and in Upper Carolina. The chief part of what they grow is destined to support the negroes nine months in the year; their allowance is about two pounds per day, which they boil in water after having pounded it a little; the other three months they are fed upon yams. They never give them meat. In the other parts of the United States they are better treated, and live nearly upon the same as their masters, without having any set allowance. Indian corn is sold at Charleston for ten shillings per bushel, about fifty-five pounds weight.
{291} Thus rice, long cotton, yams, and Indian wheat, are the only cultures in the maritime part of the southern states; the temperature of the climate, and the nature of the soil, which is too light or too moist, being in no wise favourable for that of wheat or any kind of grain.
Through the whole of the low country the agricultural labours are performed by negro slaves, and the major part of the planters employ them to drag the plough; they conceive the land is better cultivated, and calculate besides that in the course of a year a horse, for food and looking after, costs ten times more than a negro, the annual expense of which does not exceed fifteen dollars.
I shall abstain from any reflexion concerning this, as the opinion of many people is fixed.
The climate of Lower Carolina and Georgia is too warm in summer to be favourable to European fruit-trees, and too cold in winter to suit those of the Carribbees. The fig is the only tree that succeeds tolerably well; again, the figs turn sour a few days after {292} they have acquired the last degree of maturity, which must doubtless be attributed to the constant dampness of the atmosphere.
In the environs of Charleston, and in the isles that border the coast, the orange-trees stand the winter in the open fields, and are seldom damaged by the frosts; but at ten miles distance, in the interior, they freeze every year even with the ground, although those parts of the country are situate under a more southerly latitude than Malta and Tunis. The oranges that they gather in Carolina are not good to eat. Those consumed there come from the island of St. Anastasia, situate opposite St. Augustin, the capital of East Florida; they are sweet, very large, fine skinned, and more esteemed than those brought from the Carribbees. About fifty years ago the seeds were brought from India, and given to an inhabitant of this island, who has so increased them that he has got an orchard of forty acres. I had an opportunity of seeing this beautiful plantation when I was at Florida in 1788.
{293} In the general verification of the United States, published in 1800, the population of North Carolina, comprising negro slaves, amounted to four hundred and seventy-eight thousand inhabitants, that of Georgia to one hundred and sixty-three thousand, and that of South Carolina to three hundred and forty-six thousand. Not having been able to see the private extracts of the two former states, I am unacquainted with the proportion that there is between the whites and blacks, and the difference that exists between the population of the low and high countries; however an idea may be formed by the verification of South Carolina, where they reckon in the low country, comprising the town of Charleston, thirty-six thousand whites and a hundred thousand negroes, and in the high country one hundred and sixty-three thousand whites and forty-six thousand negroes.
I arrived at Charleston on the 18th of October 1802, three months and a half after my departure from Philadelphia, having travelled over a space of {294} nearly eighteen hundred miles. I staid at Carolina till the 1st of March 1803, the epoch when I embarked for France on board the same ship that had taken me to America eighteen months before, and arrived at Bourdeaux on the 26th of March 1803.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The date given here is evidently wrong; the translation in Phillips’s _Voyages_ gives it as August 25, which corresponds with the arrival of Michaux in Charleston.--ED.
[2] The piastre was the Spanish dollar, then the common circulating coin in the United States, and the one whose value was adopted in our dollar. A South Carolina shilling was worth 3/14 of a dollar.--ED.
[3] The services of the elder Michaux in introducing European plants into America, were considerable. He is said also to have been the first to teach the frontier settlers the value of ginseng.--ED.
[4] The History of Oaks discovered in America by A. Michaux.--F. A. MICHAUX.
[5] Dr. Nicholas Collin was one of the most prominent members of the Philosophical Society, elected in 1789, dying in 1831. It is a curious mistake of Michaux’s to call him president, at a time when Jefferson held this position. Dr. Collin was often acting chairman, and had been chairman of the committee for raising funds for the elder Michaux’s proposed Western exploration (1792).
Dr. John Vaughan was treasurer and librarian of the Society for many years.
The Bartrams were famous botanists of Philadelphia, whom the elder Michaux frequently visited. See _ante_, p. 97, note 177.--ED.
[6] The gardens of William Hamilton were at this time the most famous in the United States. They now form part of Woodlawn cemetery, West Philadelphia, where some rare trees planted by him still exist.--ED.
[7] Till the year 1802, the stages that set out at Philadelphia did not go farther South than to Petersburg in Virginia, which is about three hundred miles from Philadelphia; but in the month of March of that year, a new line of correspondence was formed between the latter city and Charleston. The journey is about a fortnight, the distance fifteen hundred miles, and the fare fifty piastres. There are stages also between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, as well as between Charleston and Savannah, in Georgia, so that from Boston to Savannah, a distance of twelve hundred miles, persons may travel by the stages.--F. A. MICHAUX.
[8] For historical sketch of Shippensburg, see Post’s _Journals_, vol. i of this series, p. 238, note 76.--ED.
[9] Gotthilf Heinrich Ernest Muhlenberg was a brother of General Muhlenburg of Revolutionary fame, and grandson of Conrad Weiser. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1753, educated at Halle, Germany, and on his return to America in 1774 was ordained as a Lutheran clergyman. He served charges in New Jersey and Philadelphia until 1779, when he settled at Lancaster, where he remained until his death in 1807. He was much interested in botany, and devoted all his leisure to that pursuit, being a member of the American Philosophical Society, and, as Michaux notes, in correspondence with many scientists.--ED.