VALUE OF RICE GROUNDS.

171

tion. The sandy bluffs on both sides are about forty feetabove the water, and the rice grounds extend for more thanthree miles from the channel of the river towards the northernbluff. It happens that there are no rice grounds on thesouth side for several miles above the town.

In Georgia and the Carolinas there are a good manymarshy grounds in the pine region, which have arisen frombeds of clay sending the water to the surface in springs. Theyare composed of black vegetable matter, too deficient inearthy materials to be possessed of fertility of any great per-manence. It was on such soils, however, that the firstsettlers raised rice; but being easily exhausted, recourse hadconstantly to be made to new laud. Though a considerablequantity of rice is here and there raised over the uppercountry on such soils, and even on the dry cotton lands,for domestic use, none of it is reckoned sufficiently goodfor exportation. The discovery that the tide-water swampsare peculiarly well adapted for the culture of rice is com-paratively recent. At first, the barren sandy soils weremore valued than they are now, because indigo was raisedupon them, and was one of the great staples of the country.This article can now be brought to the European marketat a cheaper rate from our possessions in India, and itsculture has therefore been abandoned in the United States.A revolution has thus taken place in the relative values ofthe swamp grounds and the dry pine lands. The value ofthe latter is at present merely nominal; while good ricegrounds are worth more than any other land in the country.The common price of rice grounds in the neighbourhood ofSavannah is £30 per acre, and some on the Cooper Riverwere sold at £40. These prices are more than double thoseof the best sugar lands on the Mississippi.

It is on the tide-water swamps of the Savannah, and thenumerous other rivers in Georgia and the Carolinas, that thefine rice known in Europe as the Carolina rice is cultivated.The production of rice for exportation is, in a great measure,confined to these swamps; and it is further limited to thefresh-water-tide swamps; for where the tides are salt, oreven brackish, they are unsuitable for irrigation. Rice is