THE INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS.

Bwell the rivers, and the torrents of their flood being at length conquered by thetide, the eddying currents deposit at the base of these sandy ridges the richfreight they have brought from the calcareous or granitic and aluminous soils ofthe distant mountains in which they rise, with the organic waste of the greatdeciduous forests through which they flow; silicious particles are again washed downfrom these, and with all is mingled the rieh silt of the lagoon bottom, brought upby the turbid tide during extraordinary storms of the ocean. Such is the soilwhich has been gradually forming until it is of great depth, now overgrown withan almost impenetrable forest, and thicket of underwood and rushes, which ischosen to be transformed into a rice plantation. It is at such a distance fromthe sea, that there is no taste of salt in the water by the tidal rise of which it istwice a day submerged to a depth of from one to three feet and alternately leftbare.

The shape and extent of the proposed rice ground having been determined on,the trees are felled and the surface cleared for a space of fifty feet all around it.On the inside of this belt, a ditch is now dug eight or ten feet wide and five deep,the earth excavated from which, serves to form an embankment about midwaybetween it and the river. This embankment must be high enough and strongenough to withstand the pressure of the strongest flood, and if the ditch does notafford material enough to make it so, earth is obtained from the edge of the river,a large margin beyond its outer base line being left for this purpose and tothe security of its foundation. At the commencement of this work, of coursenothing can be done except for a few hours at a time after the tide has partiallyebbed, but it does not take long to throw up a slight intrenchment which issufficient to resist its ordinary flood. As soon as this is finished, gates are formedwhich allow the outward flow of the water within the embankment, but preventits return. The labor is then continued without interruption. As soon as themain embankment is completed, the work of clearing the land commences; thetrees are felled and rolled into long rows, mingled with the brushwood andrushes. This being done, the inclosure is subdivided into fields of convenientsize by smaller embankments and ditches, each of which has a separate commu-nication with the river by means of a strong trunk provided with two gates, bywhich the passage of water in either direction may be permitted or prevented.As soon as the log heaps are sufficiently dry, they are set fire to, and as much aspossible consumed. Then the negroes go all over the inclosed ground, “ chop-ping ” and turning over the surface as well as they can with rude heavy hoes;the cypress stumps are much too strong and numerous to admit the use of anyof the more usual instruments of tillage. In the spring it is sown with rice.

As the soil dries and the vegetable matter in it decays under the influence ofair and heat, it diminishes in bulk, and the surface becoming lower, it is less com-pletely drained, and many minor ditches have to be dug, until, when in a fewyears the ground has become compact and stable, each field is divided into anumber of parallelograms of perhaps a quarter of an acre each. The new riceplantation does not offer a very pleasing landscape to the eye, the ground beingclosely studded with stumps and encumbered with half charred logs: let us leaveit and visit an old family plantation, such as a gentleman whom you may have metin summer, at Saratoga or Baden Baden, will drive you out to, if you have thegood fortune to fall in with him again, in Charleston or Savannah, during the win-ter. It was his great-grandfather that had the work done that we have thus farexamined.

You are drawn rapidly by a fine pair of horses over deep and trying sandy roadsthrough the midst of a dense pine forest, until you reach a simple gateway andlodge; the latter occupied by a crippled negro, unfit for field-work, who opens thegate for you. You enter and are at the head of your friend’s plantation; it is yet,however, nearly three miles to the river on which the rice fields are situated,about two-thirds of the 3000 acres which it contains being sandy upland, coveredmainly with pine wood. Soon after passing the gate, there is a clearing of aquarter of an acre, on which is a small cottage, with two log cabins, a log stable,a small garden, and a dozen or two peach and fig trees near it. An old negrolives in one of the cabins, the other dwellings are unoccupied. The “ summer-house,” our friend calls it. His overseer’s family reside here in summer, and hehas a room that he can occupy himself, in case he should have to spend a night onthe plantation during the heat of summer; for then it is almost certain death fora white man who has not been born and brought up subject to the miasm of therice fields, to sleep adjacent to them. This “summer house” is so far removedfrom them, and there is so much pine wood to intercept the malaria, that it is quitesafe for the overseer who spends the day superintending the labor of the negroeson the flooded land, to remain in it at night. The negroes, although they are con-sidered malaria-proof, are less healthy than on the cotton plantations; the mor-tality among the children, especially, is greater. They formerly were obliged tospend the night in close proximity to the rice fields, but recently new oabins forthem have been built back a little distance in the woods, and a marked improve-ment in their general health has been found to result from this removal. Fol-lowing the crooked road through the woods a mile or two further, we atlength drive through their settlement, as it is here called; the cabins are in tworows, some sixty yards apart, with an avenue of trees between. They are of wood,

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whitewashed, and elevated on posts about two feet from the ground. This' is toremove them from the moisture of the earth and to insure ventilation, or at least,the floors not being tight, to prevent the accumulation of carbonic acid gas withinthem, the negroes being too much accustomed, when they come in from theirwork at night, to shut themselves up closely in their cabins, and, leaving greatwood fires to smoulder on the hearth, to go to sleep upon the floor.

There is one cabin provided with a verandah, which is kept for a hospital,and another for a nursery for the negro babies, where they are taken care of byan old nurse, their mothers not being allowed to take them with them when theygo to perform their tasks in the rice fields. Children always seem to suffer morefrom malaria than grown people. At the lower end of the settlement is the Over-seer’s ordinary residence, a neat white cottage, with a garden and a small cabin ortwo, used by his domestic servants, behind it.

We now enter a really noble avenue of live-oaks and other smooth-leafed ever-greens, of great size and curiously hung with waving streamers of Spanish moss;driving for a quarter of a mile through it upon an elevated, dry and well kept road,we approach our friend’s country mansion, sooth to say a rather paltry house itis to be approached in this manner, built of wood, painted white, and of veryslight construction. Before it there are planted oranges, camellias, and otherplants that northerners are accustomed to consider exotics; on one side there is alarge court, around which are numerous offices, the kitchen detached from thehouse, the lodgings for the domestic servants, kennels for dogs, &c.; and beyond arange of stables. On the opposite side of the house is a fruit and vegetable garden,and on the fourth side is a broad open space (it would be a lawn if it did not lackthe essential, close, firm green-sward), with a few fine spreading trees upon it.The trunks are three feet in diameter, and you will be surprised, probably, tolearn that they were planted only thirty years ago—so rapid is the growth, stimu-lated by the hot, moist atmosphere which they here enjoy during the greater partof the year. You may observe, also, that the orange and lemon trees have fruitupon them, the camellia japonicas are of fine size and in profuse bloom; theywould, however, have suffered, and possibly been killed, if they had not receivedsome slight protection during the coldest nights of the winter. It is just theclimate in which rice of superior quality will produce most abundantly.

From the elevated verandah of the house, you may now look across the quasilawn, at the end of which there is a sudden depression of the surface of theground, and beyond it a landscape that would delight a Hollander. At first sightit seems almost interminable dead flat surface, with a crooked river, and a fewnarrow canals crossing it, some hedgerows along their banks, and a few isolatedtrees. Look closely and you may observe that there is a strong levee , or embank-ment all along the river side, and smaller walls of earth cross the flat ground runningat right angles to this and to each other. That is the rice land, now entirely freefrom stumps and logs, dry and smooth, and with no sign of the old swamp andforest, except in some neglected corner or point outside the river wall. There areseveral thousand acres of rice land under your eye, but it is generally owned inparcels of less than one thousand, and when of the best quality and thus highlyimproved, its value is from $150 to $200 an acre; the amount of upland, thecondition of the adjoining woodland, the distance from the city, the value of themansion and grounds about it, the character and health of the negroes, whichwould ordinarily be transferred with it, and other circumstances affecting itsdesirableness as a place of residence in the winter, such as the abundance of gamein the adjacent forest and waters, all having an influence upon its market value.If you undertake to purchase a plantation, it is very improbable that the propri-etor will be able to show you that he has been clearing ten per cent, per annumon the price he asks you for it. There are certain luxuries to be had upon an oldrice plantation, and a certain dignity and repute connected with the possession oiit, that rich people are often willing to pay handsomely for.

Our friend has nearly one thousand acres of rice land, and between two andthree hundred negroes. So many of these, however, are women and children,and infirm or weakly, that he will tell yon that his force is not equal to muchmore than one hundred strong men—or what a slave-dealer terms “prime field-hands.”

After you have feasted, and slept, and hunted, and otherwise enjoyed the goodcheer and generous hospitality of our planter, lie may take you to the ricefields and satisfy your curiosity with regard to their management. We walktoward the river (suppose it to be the latter part of March), and just at the footof the sandy upland (which was the bank of the old swamp), we come upon acanal some twenty feet wide, running all along the inner edge of the flat riceground. This brings water for flowing the inner fields; the swamp was so wideit was not convenient to arrange all the fields so as to flow them directly from theriver. It also serves to take the crop from the outer fields to the barn, and tosend it again down to the river, after it has been threshed and cleaned, to beshipped by the schooners to the (flty. Three large scows are kept on the planta-tion for this purpose.

We cross the canal on a bridge, at the end of which is a trunk like the flumeof a grist mill, except that it is covered over, and its mouth on the inside is at thebottom of a ditch, now nearly dry, which runs all around a field of some twenty