Letters of Gov. Spotswood, I, 40; II, 295-297. Bolles, crossed that mountain barrier at Swift Run Gap, and discovered the Shenandoah Valley, "God's own country," as he devoutly called it. The fifty gentlemen of the governor's retinue, the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," who drank the king's health on the summit of Mount George, formed a significant contrast to the actual settlers who swarmed into the country during the next hundred years. The ScotchIrish of Ulster were driven to America in the eighteenth century by no less urgent a motive than impelled the Puritans and Cavaliers in the seventeenth. Their woolen and linen industries had been ruined (1681), their religious and civil liberty curtailed (1704) by act of Parliament. Seeking freedom from English tyranny, they crossed the sea by shiploads. It was a veritable race migration. Five hundred thousand came into the colonies between 1730 and 1770, the major part to Philadelphia and Charleston. In 1770 one third of the population of Pennsylvania was of this sturdy stock. Finding no desirable land open for settlement in the coast country, they pushed south along the valleys of the Appalachian Range and peopled the Great Valley of Virginia, destined to become the "cradle of America." In 1769 the southernmost settlement, Watauga, was planted in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains, in the elevated plateau formed by the streams that flow westward into the Tennessee. The men who took up farms in the mountain valleys could raise wheat and barley, meat and wool, fruit and vegetables sufficient for family use. For commodities that would bring a price in distant markets high enough to pay the cost of transportation, they were forced to depend on a variety of articles to be produced only by intelligent labor. From the hills came the deerskins and tanned leather, the timber and turpentine, the hemp and flax, that figure in the export tables. Such farms were profitable only under intensive agriculture. There was little temptation to acquire great estates or to import slaves. The people of the uplands were thrifty pioneers who tilled their fields with their own hands and manufactured clothing, furniture, and wagons for their own use, as did the small farmers of New England and Pennsylvania. The contrast in the physical features of the plain and the hill country was reflected in the character of the respective populations. The physical characteristics of the Carolinas and of Georgia were quite similar to those of Virginia, except that the climate of the coastal plain was warmer and more malarial. Here in the sea marshes were the great rice plantations. Rice must be flooded in the growing season, and it requires a rich vegetable mold such as belongs to the swamp belt. Once cleared of trees and thoroughly drained, the "dismals" were readily converted into rice fields. The work was such as no white man could endure. The laborer must stand knee-deep in mud and water, stooping under a broiling sun, while pestilent exhalations filled his lungs. Even the blacks sickened and died. McCrady, Carolina, 126, 143, 262- American I, 345, 346, There was not so much profit in this crop as in tobacco. Each slave was expected to produce £10 worth of rice in a season. For maintenance and cost of supervision, £3 must be deducted and for interest on purchase price £2 IOS. When to this was added the risk of sickness and loss, the rate of profit dwindled considerably. Nevertheless Fiske, the planters lived in state and luxury, drawing freely upon and Her the rice merchants for advances in money and goods. Neighbors, Slaves and overseers meant great estates here as in tide- II, 326-330. water Virginia. There was no chance for the working farmer in a region where the climate made field labor impossible for a white man. Old Virginia Rice was introduced into South Carolina in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Before the close of the eighteenth this crop made up one half the exports, a circumstance that gave serious concern to the home government. There was no great demand for rice in the British Isles, and so far as this export found its way into European markets, e.g. Spain and Portugal, it came into competition with English wheat. No arguments, however, could induce McCrady, the planters to cultivate the silkworm, so greatly desired by I, 350. the Spitalfield weavers. The seed of the Oriental indigo was planted on the Ashley River by Eliza Lucas, a botanical lady of Charleston, in 1741. After a series of vexatious experiments she succeeded in extracting a dye not inferior to the French product. For fifty years thereafter all the Sea Island planters devoted their richest soils to the cultivation of indigo. In the last decade before the Revolution, Carolina exported five hundred thousand pounds a year. Indigo, at from two to five shillings a pound, brought in a handsome revenue. One slave could care for two acres producing each eight pounds of dye, besides putting in the winter months on other crops. In the “back country" the hills were clothed with noble forests, and the soil, of the valleys at least, was amazingly fertile. Here wheat could be grown and fruits and vegetables. In the Northern counties tobacco was cultivated to advantage. Though there was more profit in tobacco than in rice, and though the air of the hills was more wholesome, the men of the Carolinas clung to the sea level, and population moved westward but slowly. Not till the second half of the eighteenth century were immigrants driven to these new lands. The first settlers paid their way by the products of the forests, lumber and pitch and tar and the skins of wild animals. As the trees were cleared away, cattle were brought in. The hill pastures were excellent grazing ground. Only the cultivated fields were fenced, and the cattle roamed at will over all unprotected land. A herd of a thousand head was not uncommon. This was the paradise of the Husbandry, pioneer. A fertile tract of land having been chosen, the settler had but to live upon it for a term of ten, fifteen, or twenty years to secure fee simple title. The forests teemed with game, the rivers with fish, and the fertile soil yielded food in plenty with the rudest tillage. An industrious man might readily acquire a snug little property. Few slaves were imported into the hills, for their labor was not so profitable as in the lowlands, and their requirements in the way of food and clothing were greater. Here, as throughout the Piedmont district, north and south, physical conditions favored the small estate and the self-employed farmer. American II, 15. |