by Edmund Burke
The whole country is in a manner one forest, where our planters have not cleared it. The trees are almost the same in every respect with those produced in Virginia; and by the different species of these, the quality of the soil is easily known; for those grounds which bear the oak, the walnut, and the hickory, are extremely fertile; they are of a dark sand, intermixed with loam, and as all their land abounds with nitre, it is a long time before it is exhausted; for here they never use any manure. The pine barren is the worst of all; this is an almost perfectly white sand, yet it bears the pine tree and some other useful plants naturally, and yields good profit in pitch, tar, and turpentine from thence; and when it is cleared, for two or three years together it produces very tolerable crops of Indian corn and pease; and when it lies low and is flooded, it even answers well for rice. But what is the best of all for this province, this worst species of it’s land is favourable to a species of the most valuable of all it’s products, to a species of indigo. There is another kind of ground, which lies low and wet upon the banks of some of their rivers; this is called swamp, which in some places is in a manner useless; in others it is far the richest of all their grounds; it is a black fat earth, and bears their great staple rice, which must have in general a rich moist soil, in the greatest plenty and perfection. The country near the sea, and at the mouths of the navigable rivers, is much the worst; for most of the land there is of the species of the pale, light, sandy-coloured ground; and what is otherwise in those parts, is little better than an unhealthy and unprofitable salt marsh; but the country, as you advance in it, improves continually; and at an hundred miles distance from Charles-town, where it begins to grow hilly, the soil is of a prodigious fertility, fitted for every purpose of human life. The air is pure and wholsome, and the summer heats much more temperate than in the flat country; for Carolina is all an even plain for eighty miles from the sea; no hill, no rock, scarce even a pebble to be met with: so that even the best parts of the maritime country, from this sameness, must want something of the fine effect which it’s various and beautiful products would have by a more variegated and advantageous disposition; but nothing can be imagined more pleasant to the eye than the back country, and it’s fruitfulness is almost incredible. Wheat grows extremely well there, and yields a prodigious increase. In the other parts of Carolina they raise but little, where it is apt to mildew and spend itself in straw; and these evils the planters take very little care to redress, as they turn their whole attention to the culture of rice, which is more profitable, and in which they are unrivalled; being supplied with what wheat they want in exchange for this grain, from New York and Pensylvania.
The land in Carolina is very easily cleared every where, as there is little or no underwood. Their forests consist mostly of great trees at a considerable distance asunder; so that they can clear in Carolina more land in a week, than in the forests of Europe they can do in a month. Their method is to cut them at about a foot from the ground, and then saw the trees into boards, or convert them into staves, heading, or other species of lumber, according to the nature of the wood, or the demands at the market. If they are too far from navigation, they heap them together, and leave them to rot. The roots soon decay; and before that they find no inconvenience from them, where land is so plenty.
The aboriginal animals of this country are in general the same with those of Virginia, but there is yet a greater number and variety of beautiful fowls. All the animals of Europe are here in plenty; black cattle are multiplied prodigiously. About fifty years ago, it was a thing extraordinary to have above three or four cows, now some have a thousand; some in North Carolina a great many more; but to have two or three hundred is very common. These ramble all day at pleasure in the forests; but their calves being separated, and kept in fenced pastures, the cows return every evening to them; they are then milked, detained all night, milked in the morning, and then let loose again. The hogs range in the same manner, and return like the cows, by having shelter and some victuals provided for them at the plantation; these are vastly numerous, and many quite wild; many horned cattle and horses too run wild in their woods; though at the first settlement there was not one of these animals in the country. They drive a great many cattle from North Carolina every year into Virginia, to be slaughtered there; and they kill and salt some beef, and a good deal of pork, for the West-Indies, within themselves; but the beef is neither so good, nor does it keep near so long as what is sent to the same market from Ireland. They export a considerable number of live cattle to Pensylvania and the West-Indies. Sheep are not so plenty as the black cattle or hogs, neither is their flesh so good; their wool is very ordinary.
CHAP. XXII.
THE trade of Carolina, besides the lumber, provisions, and the like, which it yields in common with the rest of America, has three great staple commodities, indigo, rice, and the produce of the pine, turpentine, tar, and pitch. The two former commodities South Carolina has intirely to itself; and taking in North Carolina, this part of America yields more pitch and tar than all the rest of our colonies.
Rice anciently formed by itself the staple of this province; this wholsome grain makes a great part of the food of all ranks of people in the Southern parts of the world; in the Northern it is not so much in request. Whilst the rigour of the act of navigation obliged them to send all their rice directly to England, to be re-shipped for the markets of Spain and Portugal; the charges incident to this regulation lay so heavy upon the trade, that the cultivation of rice, especially in time of war, when these charges were greatly aggravated by the rise of the freight and insurance, hardly answered the charges of the planter; but now the legislature has relaxed the law in this respect, and permits the Carolinians to send their rice directly to any place to the Southward of Cape Finisterre. This prudent indulgence has again revived the rice trade; and though they have gone largely, and with great spirit into the profitable article of indigo, it has not diverted their attention from the cultivation of rice; they raise now above double the quantity of what they raised some years ago; and this branch alone of their commerce is, at the lowest estimation, worth one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling annually.
Indigo is a dye made from a plant of the same name, which probably was so called from India, where it was first cultivated, and from whence we had for a considerable time the whole of what we consumed in Europe. This plant is very like the fern when grown, and when young hardly distinguishable from lucern-grass; its leaves in general are pennated, and terminated by a single lobe; the flowers consist of five leaves, and are of the papilionaceous kind, the uppermost petal being larger and rounder than the rest, and lightly furrowed on the side; the lower ones are short and end in a point; in the middle of the flower is situated the stile, which afterwards becomes a pod, containing the seeds.
They cultivate three sorts of indigo in Carolina, which demand the same variety of soils. First, the French or Hispaniola indigo, which striking a long tap root, will only flourish in a deep rich soil; and therefore though an excellent sort, it is not so much cultivated in the maritime parts of Carolina, which are generally sandy; but no part of the world is more fit to produce it in perfection than the same country, an hundred miles backwards; it is neglected too on another account, for it hardly bears a winter so sharp as that of Carolina.
The second sort, which is the false guatemala, or true bahama, bears the winter better, is a more tall and vigorous plant, is raised in greater quantities from the same compass of ground; is content with the worst soils in the country, and is therefore more cultivated than the first sort, though inferior in the quality of it’s dye.
The third sort is the wild indigo, which is indigenous here; this, as it is a native of the country, answers the purposes of the planter the best of all, with regard to the hardiness of the plant, the easiness of the culture, and the quantity of the produce; of the quality there is some dispute, not yet settled amongst the planters themselves; nor can they as yet distinctly tell when they are to attribute the f
aults of their indigo to the nature of the plant, to the seasons, which have much influence upon it, or to some defect in the manufacture.
The time of planting the indigo, is generally after the first rains succeeding, the vernal equinox; the seed is sowed in small straight trenches, about eighteen or twenty inches asunder; when it is at it’s height, it is generally eighteen inches tall. It is fit for cutting, if all things answer, well, in the beginning of July. Towards the end of August a second cutting is obtained; and if they have a mild autumn, there is a third cutting at Michaelmas; the indigo land must be weeded every day, and the plants cleansed from worms, and the plantation attended with the greatest care and diligence; about twenty-five negroes may manage a plantation of fifty acres, and compleat the manufacture of the drug, besides providing their own necessary subsistence, and that of the planter’s family. Each acre yields, if the land be very good, sixty or seventy pounds weight of indigo; at a medium the produce is fifty pounds. When the plant is beginning to blossom it is fit for cutting; and when cut, great care ought to be taken to bring it to the steeper, without pressing or shaking it, as a great part of the beauty of the indigo depends upon the fine farina which adheres to the leaves of this plant.
The apparatus for making indigo is pretty considerable, though not very expensive; for besides a pump, the whole consists only of vats and tubs of cypress wood, common and cheap in this country. The indigo when cut is first laid in a vat about twelve or fourteen feet long, and four deep, to the height of about fourteen inches, to macerate and digest. Then this vessel, which is called the steeper, is filled with water; the whole having lain from about twelve to sixteen hours, according to the weather, begins to ferment, swell, rise, and grow sensibly warm; at this time spars of wood are run across to prevent it’s rising too much, and a pin is then set to mark the highest point of it’s ascent; when it falls below this mark, they judge that the fermentation has attained it’s due pitch, and begins to abate; this directs the manager to open a cock, and let off the water into another vat, which is called the beater; the gross matter that remains in the first vat, is carried off to manure the ground, for which purpose it is excellent, and new cuttings are put in as long as the harvest of this weed continues.
When the water, strongly impregnated with the particles of the indigo, has run into the second vat or beater, they attend with a sort of bottomless buckets, with long handles, to work and agitate it; which they do incessantly until it heats, froths, ferments, and rises above the rim of the vessel which contains it; to allay this violent fermentation, oil is thrown in as the froth rises, which instantly sinks it. When this beating has continued for twenty, thirty, or thirty-five minutes, according to the state of the weather, (for in cool weather it requires the longest continued beating) a small muddy grain begins to be formed, the salts and other particles of the plant united and dissolved before with the water, are now reunited, and begin to granulate.
To discover these particles the better, and to find when the liquor is sufficiently beaten, they take up some of it from time to time on a plate or in a glass; when it appears in an hopeful condition, they let loose some lime water from an adjacent vessel, gently stirring the whole, which wonderfully facilitates the operation; the indigo granulates more fully, the liquor assumes a purplish colour, and the whole is troubled and muddy; it is now suffered to settle; then the clearer part is let to run off into another succession of vessels, from whence the water is conveyed away as fast as it clears at the top, until nothing remains but a thick mud, which is put into bags of coarse linen. These are hung up and left for some time, until the moisture is entirely drained off. To finish the drying this mud is turned out of the bags, and worked upon boards of some porous timber with a wooden spatula; it is frequently exposed to the morning and evening sun, but for a short time only; and then it is put into boxes or frames, which is called the curing, exposed again to the sun in the same cautious manner, until with great labour and attention the operation is finished, and that valuable drug called indigo, fitted for the market. The greatest skill and care is required in every part of the process, or there may be great danger of ruining the whole; the water must not be suffered to remain too short or too long a time, either in the steeper or beater, the beating itself must be nicely managed, so as not to exceed or fall short; and in the curing, the exact medium between too much or too little drying is not easily attained. Nothing but experience can make the overseer skilful in these matters.
There are two methods of trying the goodness of indigo; by fire and by water; if it swims it is good, if it sinks it is naught, the heavier the worse; so if it wholly dissolves in water it is good. Another way of proving is, by the fire ordeal; if it intirely burns away it is good, the adulterations remain untouched.
There is perhaps no branch of manufacture, in which so large profits may be made upon so moderate a fund, as that of indigo; and there is no country in which this manufacture can be carried on to such advantage as in Carolina, where the climate is healthy, provision plentiful and cheap, and every thing necessary for that business had with the greatest ease. To do justice to the Carolinians, they have not neglected these advantages; and if they continue to improve them with the same spirit in which they have begun, and attend diligently to the quality of their goods, they must naturally and necessarily come to supply the whole consumption of the world with this commodity; and consequently make their country the richest, as it is the pleasantest and most fertile part of the British dominions.
In all parts of Carolina, but especially in North Carolina, they make great quantities of turpentine, tar and pitch. They are all the produce of the pine The turpentine is drawn simply from incisions made in the tree; they are made from as great an height as a man can reach with an hatchet; these incisions meet at the bottom of the tree in a point, where they pour their contents into a vessel placed to receive them. There is nothing further in this process. But tar requires a more considerable apparatus and greater trouble. They prepare a circular floor of clay, declining a little towards the center; from this is laid a pipe of wood, the upper part of which is even with the floor, and reaches ten feet without the circumference; under the end the earth is dug away, and barrels placed to receive the tar as it runs. Upon the floor is built up a large pile of pine wood split in pieces, and surrounded with a wall of earth, leaving only a small aperture at the top where the fire is first kindled. When the fire begins to burn, they cover this opening likewise to confine the fire from flaming out, and to leave only sufficient heat to force the tar downwards to the floor. They temper the heat as they please, by running a stick into the wall of clay, and giving it air. Pitch is made by boiling tar in large iron kettles set in furnaces, or burning it in round clay holes made in the earth. The greatest quantity of pitch and tar is made in North Carolina.
CHAP. XXIII.
THERE are in the two provinces which compose Carolina, ten navigable rivers of a very long course, and innumerable smaller ones, which fall into them, all abounding in fish. About fifty or sixty miles from the sea, there are falls in most of the great rivers, which as you approach their sources, become more frequent. This is the case of almost all the American rivers; at these falls, those who navigate these rivers land their goods, carry them beyond the cataract on horses or waggons, and then reship them below or above it.
The mouths of the rivers in North Carolina form but ordinary harbours, and do not admit, except one at Cape Fear, vessels of above seventy or eighty tons; so that larger ships are obliged to lie off in a sound called Ocacock, which is formed between some islands and the continent. This lays a weight upon their trade by the expence of lighterage. North Carolina, partly upon that occasion, but principally that the first settlements were made as near as possible to the capital, which lies considerably to the Southward, was greatly neglected. For a long time it was but ill inhabited, and by an indigent and disorderly people, who had little property, and hardly any law or government to protect them in what they had. As commodiou
s land grew scarce in the other colonies, people in low circumstances observing that a great deal of excellent and convenient land was yet to be patented in North Carolina, were induced by that circumstance to plant to themselves there. Others who saw how they prospered, followed their example. The government became more attentive to the place as it became more valuable; by degrees something of a better order was introduced. The effect of which is, that though by no means as wealthy as South Carolina, North Carolina has many more white people; things begin to wear a face of settlement; and the difficulties they have lain under are not so many nor so great as to make us neglect all future efforts, or hinder us from forming very reasonable expectations of seeing the trade of this country, with proper management, become a flourishing and fruitful branch of the British American commerce. That even now it is far from contemptible, may appear by a list of their exported commodities, which I shall subjoin.
