and can produce as much wool as she might desire; and yet, with the exception of a few cotton factories, she has paid no attention to this important branch of industry. Her surplus labor, now without employment would be amply suicient to raise up a manufacturing interest in our borders, which would go far to redeem our State from its dependence upon other States for manufactured articles, and would give life and activity to all branches of industry.

We know the backward state of this branch of industry, in our borders, has been owing, in a great measure, to the want of proper facilities for throwing manufactured us well as agricultural products into the market of the world. But, even if we had none, the erection of various kinds of manufactories could not fail to be of vast benefit to all other interests. While it would employ much of the labor which is now idle, it would create a demand for all agricultural products, thus beneficing the farmer and furnishing to our people the means to embark more largely and extensively into all enterprises of this kind.

Much of the capital of our State has been sent off to other States, because its owners could not find any thing in which they could profitably invest it. Much remains idle and useless in our midst. But we trust that a new spirit of enterprise will be infused into the minds of our people; that, as they are determined to overcome the difficulties which lie in their way to a free and rapid communication with the markets of the world, they will employ those means they have to make North Carolina one of the first States in the Union in wealth and in enterprise.

We have a good soil, a pleasant and varied climate-and why may not our citizens expend their means and put forth their energies to improve the advantages we have, and to develop the latent resources with which we have been so richly blessed?

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

1. PRODUCTION OF RICE IN SOUTHERN STATES.

In our first volume was published the invaluable memoir upon the rice plant, prepared by Col. Allston, of South Carolina, which is one of the most complete treatises extant upon any branch of agricultural industry. We followed, in our seventh volume, with a paper upon the culture of rice in India, and, in the eighth, with one upon the culture in Louisiana. To these we refer Sumter, the correspondent of the "Alabama Planter," in extracting from his remarks. COL. WARD, of South Carolina, says, that, in 1845, he planted a field of sixteen acres in rice of two different kinds, known as long and small grain. The long grain produced rough rice, 376 bushels, making clean rice 10,754 lbs. worth $-04 67, and a residuum of 519 32, or 16 bushels and 7 quarts of small or broken rice, and 31 bushels of flour. There was then, per acre of merchantable rice, 1,34414 lbs., worth $50 58 per acre. The small grain produced 348 bushels rough rice, making 10,767 lbs., worth $404 56. There was, then, per acre, 1,3151g bs. of merchantable rice, worth $50 87, and a residuum of 16 bushels and 23 quarts of broken rice and 33 bushels of flour.

In 1846, Dr. E. T. Hewitt planted a field of 25 acres in alternate beds, as in the foregoing case. His results were, long grain, 392 bushels rough rice, making 12,099 tbs. clean rice, or 968 lbs. nearly, per acre, worth $43 81 to the acre, and a residuum of 43 bushels of small rice and 401, bushels of flour. The small grain produced 381 bushels, making 11,065 lbs. clean rice, being 885.2 lbs. to the acre and worth $39 512% to the acre, with a residuum of 514 bushels of small rice and 37 bushels of flour. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that these small residuary portions of the unmerchantable product are used on the plantations, either as food for the hands or the stock upon it.

It is also of value to note the rate, per pound, at which the rice appears to

This will give an average price of 4.09 cents, nearly, for the varieties, as stated, per pound, in the two years 1845 and 1846, and an average money product to the acre of $45 14 nearly, an average product in bushels of rough rice of 361⁄2 nearly, and an average product of merchantable rice of 1,090 lbs.

The highest price per pound is 4.46 cents, the lowest 334 cents; the largest product per acre of clean rice is 1,342 tbs., the smallest is 885.2 lbs.-making the product of the first 50 per cent. larger than that of the second, per acre of clean rice; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose, that the latter was no more than a common crop, even if the former were an extraordinary one, and hence, making it a safe basis to make calculations upon.

Are there not, among your readers, some Carolinians and Georgians, who would be able to enlighten the public on the mode of culture, cost of it, and the probable results? I am persuaded that the southern part of the United States, by a proper direction of labor and capital, could monopolize the supply of rice as it now does of cotton, and thus add another strong item to the strong influences she now possesses on the commerce and destiny of the world, and render her institutions more safe and her property more profitable. Could the vast quantities of rich marsh lands that exist on our Atlantic and Gulf coasts, be converted into rice fields, a very extensive opening would be made for an additional application of slave labor, and consequent security and advantage to our section of the country. But the cultivation of the low-land rice need not be confined to the coasts and marshes of the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Mississippi. Throughout the South there are tens of thousands of acres susceptible of being flooded by springs and perennial streams, far in the interior and capable of producing the most heavy crops of rice at the smallest cost, either for land preparation or culture, and in portions of the country the most healthful and inviting.

The mode of cultivating rice in China, noticed in the Patent Office Report for 1847, page 173, is peculiarly applicable to the interior of a great part of the southern country. The large flats along small streams, capable of being dammed and thrown over large tracts of lands, and the springs that so generally issue from the hills that border these flats that may so easily be turned upon them, render flooding, in many places, a work of the smallest possible cost and of the utmost safety and security.

2. GOVERNOR AIKEN'S EXTENSIVE RICE ESTATE.

While upon the subject of rice, we cannot refrain from introducing, from the American Agriculturist, the sketch of a visit, by Solon Robinson, Esq., to Jehossee island, the magnificent rice estate of Ex-Governor Aiken, of South Carolina. We have ourselves frequently passed this plantation, between Savannah and Charleston, and know that it is one of the most perfect in the world.

This island contains about 3,300 acres, no part of which is over ten or fifteen feet above tide, and not more than 200 to 300 acres but what was subject to overflow, until dyked out by an amount of labor almost inconceivable to be performed by individual enterprise, when we also take into account the many miles of navigable canals and smaller ditches There are 1,500 acres of rice lands, divided into convenient compartments for flooding, by substantial banks, and all laid off in beds, between ditches three feet deep and only 35 feet apart. Part of the land was tide-water marsh, and part of it timber swamp. Besides this, Gov. Aiken cultivates 500 acres in corn, oats and potatoes; the balance is gardens, yards, lawns, and in woods, pasture and unreclaimed swamp. Wood is becoming scarce on the island-so much so that he drives the steam engine, to thresh the crop, by burning straw, which answers a good purpose, but is of doubtful economy; though he intends carefully to save and apply the ashes, which are very abundant, and note the difference, in value, between that application and the manure made from the decomposed straw. It is generally calculated that two-thirds of the straw will be sufficient fuel to thresh the crop, but Gov. Aiken has not found it so. He says there is no more danger of fire in the use of straw than in any other fuel. The flue is carried off fifty or sixty feet along the ground, and there rises in a tall stack that ne er emits any s arks. Sugar planters, and all farmers who use steam, may do well to notice this. I recollect Mr. Burgwyn carries his off from his barn in the same way, with the same effect. Governor Aikin, however, has one improvement that I recollect mentioning to

Mr. B. he would require; that is, a "man hole" into this flue, to enable him to clean out the great accumulation of cinders at the bottom of the stack. In Gov. Aiken s there are two, which are closed by iron covers.

The threshing apparatus is a most convenient one. The sheaves are brought from the stacks in the great smooth yard to a large shed where all the sheltered grain can be saved, and are there opened and laid on carriers, similar to cane carriers, which carries them up to these machines in the second story, where the grain is separated from the straw, and falls down into winnowing machines, from whence it is removed by hand (it might be carried by machinery) to another part of the building, over a canal, and is let down into boats to carry it about half a mile to the hulling mill, which is exactly like Col. Carson's, and driven by tide. It is carried from the boats to the mill by hand, or rather head, where a little head work of another kind would take it up out of the boat by elevators. The straw is consumed almost as fast as threshed. And here the saving of labor in getting wood, as well as the saving of labor in stacking the straw and hauling manure, must be taken into account, as an offset to the loss of manure in burning the straw.

The rice, for seed, is always threshed by hand, as experience has taught that the vitality of a considerable portion is injured in the threshing machines. It is justs with wheat. [An experienced farmer thinks about one grain in 500 is injured by threshing with machines, and, as about six per cent. by the last process, there is still a great pecuniary advantage in favor of threshing with a machine -Eps.]

The quantity of seed to the acre is two to three bushels, planted in drills 15 inches apart, opened by trenching plows; and, singular as it may sound to some other rice planters, Governor Aiken plows all of the land that will bear a mule or horse, of which he works about forty and twenty oxen.

Corn is generally planted in hills, upon the upland part of the island which is sandy, four by five feet, two stalks in a place, and yields an average of 15 bushels per acre. Corn, upon the low or rice land, does not yield well, though it makes very large stalks. With sweet potatoes, on the contrary, the low land produces nearly double, and of better quality, averaging 200 bushels to the acre, and frequently 400 bushels. The average yield of rice is 45 bushels to the acre, and upon one eighty-acre lot the average yield is 64 bushels. The crop upon that lot, last year, was 5,100 bushels, weighing 234,600 lbs.; that is, 46 lbs. to the bushel. This made 229 barrels of whole rice, two barrels of middling, and two and a half barrels of small rice, which, at 600 lbs each (probably about 20 lbs. below the average), would make 140,100 lbs. This, at three cents, will give the very snug sum of $4,203 for the crop of 80 acres.

The average annual sales of the place do not vary materially from $25,000, and the average annual expenses not far from $10,000, of which sum 2,000 is paid the overseer, who is the only white man upon the place, besides the owner, who is always absent during the sickly mouths of summer. All the engineers, millers, smiths, carpenters and sailors, are black. A vessel, belonging to the island, goes twice a week to Charleston and carries a cargo of one hundred casks. The last crop was 1,500 casks; the year before, 1,800, and all provisions and grain required, made upon the place. Last year, there was not more than half a supply of provisions.

Like nearly all the lower-country plantations, the diet of the people is principally vegetable. Those who work task work" receive, as rations, half a bushel of sweet potatoes a week, or six quarts of corn meal or rice, with beef or pork, or mutton occasionally, say two or three meals a week. As all the tasks are very light, affording them nearly one-fourth of the time to raise a crop for themselves, they always have an abundance, and sell a good deal for cash. They also raise pigs and poultry, though seldom for their own eating. They catch a great many fish, oysters, crabs, &c.

The carpenters, millers, &c., who do not have an opportunity of raising a crop for themselves, draw large rations, I think a bushel of corn a week, which gives them a surplus for sale. The children and non-workers are fed on corn bread, hominy, molasses, rice, potatoes, soup, &c.

The number of negroes upon the place is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each containing two tenements of three rooms to a family, besides the cockloft. Each tenement has its separate door and window, and a good brick fireplace, and nearly all have a garden paled in. There are two common

hospitals and a "lying-in hospital," and a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled, every Sabbath, with an orderly, pious congregation, and service performed by a respectable methodist clergyman, who also performs the baptismal, communion, marriage and burial rites.

There is a small stock of cattle, hogs and sheep, kept upon the place for meat, which are only allowed to come upon the fields in winter, under charge of keepers. The buildings are all of wood, but generally plain, substantial and good. There is a pretty good supply of tools, carts, boats, &c., and the land is estimated to be worth $10 an acre, for the rice land, which would be $150,000 The 500 acres upland, $25 per acre,....

The negroes, at $300 each,

Stock, tools and other property, say.

12,500 21,000

7,500

$360,000

which will show rather a low rate of interest, made from sales of crops, notwithstanding the amount of sales look so large.

Now, the owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered in dense shrubbery and making no show, and is, in fact, as a dwelling for a gentleman of wealth, far inferior, in point of elegance and convenience, to any negro house upon the place, for the use and comfort of that class of people.

He and his family are as plain and unostentatious, in their manners, as the house they live in; but they possess, in a most eminent degree, that true politeness and hospitality that will win upon your heart and make you feel at home in their humble cot, in such a manner that you will enjoy a visit there better than in a palace.

Nearly all the land has been reclaimed. and the buildings, except the house, erected new, within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. I fully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortable and happy, than he is to make money.

3. CHEAP FARMING LANDS IN VIRGINIA.

Taking into account the fertility and all the conveniences of navigable waters, and the products of the same, which add to the comforts and luxuries of life, and also the mildness of climate, I believe the tide-water region of Virginia offers the cheapest lands, according to their intrinsic value, of any part of the United States. Lands, that, under a moderate state of improvement and cheap system of fertilizing by lime, marl, clover or peas, or by an application of 200 fbs. of guano to the acre, can be made to average at least twelve bushels of wheat, or thirty bushels of corn to the acre; which can be bought at from $10 to $30 an acre, with good buildings and fences, within two days' sail of New York, I hold to be very cheap. Thousands of acres of timber land, or "old field" land, in the same region, can be bought for one to five dollars an acre. I was lately offered a very productive, well-improved farm upon the “Glouster Low Grounds," lying upon the navigable waters of the Severn, for $25 per acre. This farm is all underlaid with rich marl only a few feet from the surface. The flat lands" of the Rappahannock are worth from $10 to $20 an acre. The “hill lands" or "forest," are worth about half that sum, according to the state of improvement or locality.

As to the quality of the people, it may be gathered in a great degree from the fact, that neither doctor, lawyer, judge, justice, sheriff, clerk nor constable, can live by his profession. In the county of Caroline, with 20,000 inhabitants, for instance, I was told that a suit in court was almost unknown. The sheriff has not had a writ in his hands this year, nor has a suit, either civil or criminal, been instituted in the justice's court.

I do not think that emigrants from any of the northern States have any more to apprehend on account of health, than they would in the West. The condition of agricultural improvement may be imagined, when I tell my readers that nine-tenths of the plows used are the old "Freeborn pattern," little onehorse plows, and that land is planted with corn one year, and sowed with wheat and weeds next, and then corn again, without nianure, and yet people live, and the land does not become absolutely barren under such an exhausting system. No wonder that land is cheap-for the owners don't know its value.

S.

P

4. THE CAROLINA PALMETTO.

Speaking of the Washington monument, Mr. Frost, of the New Orleans Crescent, suggests the propriety of each of the States furnishing a part of the wood work as well as the stone. In that event, he adds, and we quote, for the sake of the allusion to the beautiful palmetto, the pride of our early home, rendered sacred by being incorporated in her banner and on her seal, and despite the too common but unmerited thrust at the politics of the State which the extract contains:

Texas could send a trunk of the pecan: Louisiana the cypress, which is the tree of the State; Mississippi the magnolia; Florida the live oak; Georgia and North Carolina the yellow pine; South Carolina the palmetto, though we fear the structure of this beautiful tree would be as impracticable as her politics. This is the finest specimen of the palm family indigenous to the United States. It is the chamaerops palmetto of the botanists. In the Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina, by the lamented Elliott, is the following interesting description

of this tree:

"Stem sometimes attaining a height of 40-50 feet, 12-15 inches in diameter. The frond 5 or 6 feet in length, growing at the very summit of the tree. Flowers in naked panicles. Drup bluish black.

"This palm possesses a great and, to this country, an increasing value. It is the only tree produced in our forests which is not attacked by the teredo navalis or ship-worm; and as it is incorruptible in salt water, its value for submarine construction is almost incalculable.

"Its leaves can be employed in the manufacture of hats, baskets, mats, and many other purposes of domestic economy; the cabbage,' composed of the unexpanded embryo leaves, may be classed among the most delicious vegetables produced on our tables. It is, however, a wasteful luxury, as the tree always perishes when deprived of this part of its foilage.

"Grows along the sea coast of Carolina and Georgia, confined to the neighborhood of salt-water; preferring damp, rich soils. Flowers June-July." And now that we are on the palms, we will give a beautiful description from Linnæus:

"Princes of the vegetable kingdom, of Indian origin, distinguished by their sheathed and many spiked flowers, their flowing habit, their lofty stature, the simple elegance of their unbranched, long-enduring stem, the leafy evergreen garlands with which they are crowned, and their princely treasures of rich fruit." The Sylva of North America, by Michaux, is a magnificent work. This enthusiastic naturalist made an extensive tour over a large portion of the continent, though he did not reach the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Nuttal, Professor of Natural History in Harvard University, however, traversed the continent with a party of trappers and hunters. On his return he added, or was to add, a voluine to the work. Unfortunately for the cause of natural science, this gentleman inherited a title and fortune in England. Unlike the Baron Von Humboldt, he appears to have given up the more laborious researches-in fact, we have lost sight of him. Bartram, more than a hundred years ago, explored the Southern States and Florida.

5. SUGAR LANDS OF FLORIDA.

In passing the Withlacoochee, in Benton county, we must not fail to notice the large sulphur and iron springs not over a mile from the large hammock we have left (Ten-Mile Creek hammock), and not more than two from the small one on the South side of the river. From these springs to the Crystal river, a distance of ten miles, there are but two small hammocks, and they are not of sufficient size to attract much attention from the sugar planter.

On Crystal river (the most beautiful probably in Florida) there is land enough, it is said, for about four plantations. The land is similar in character, although thought not to be of the first quality, with that of the coast lands before described.

The river is formed by a lake of springs-is wide and deep, and is but eight miles long. A high rolling pine country makes down to its head, and in view of its crystal springs, its lakes and islands, its evergreen woods, its Indian and shell mounds, its high shell islands at its mouth, its harbor and bay, its fish, oysters and turtle, it certainly is a most beautiful and desirable place. There are no planters upon this river.