The soil is of a light, sandy
mould, and yields in the best seasons a very moderate crop, say fifteen
bushels of corn and one hundred or one hundred and thirty pounds of
ginned cotton to the acre,--quite different from the plantations in
Mississippi and Texas, where an acre produces five or six hundred
pounds. The soil is not rich enough for the cultivated grasses, and one
finds but little turf. The coarse saline grasses, gathered in stacks,
furnish the chief material for manure. The long-fibred cotton peculiar
to the region is the result of the climate, which is affected by the
action of the salt water upon the atmosphere by means of the creeks
which permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton,
planted on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser
texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will in a
like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department secured
eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied by our forces,
including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned, and gathered in
storehouses, when our military occupation began.
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