. West, the
first governor, is the following: "You are then to furnish yourself with
cotton-seed, indigo, and ginger-roots." He was also instructed to
receive the products of the country in payment of rents at certain fixed
valuations, among which cotton was priced at three and one-half pence
per pound.

In 1697, in a memoir addressed to Count de Pontchartrain on the
importance of establishing a colony in Louisiana, the author, after
describing the natural productions of the country, says: "Such are some
of the advantages which may be reasonably expected, without counting
those resulting from every day's experience. We might, for example, try
the experiment of cultivating long-staple cotton." The presumption is
that the short-staple variety had already been tried. In the very
beginning of the eighteenth century cotton culture in North Carolina had
reached the extent of furnishing one-fifth of the people with their
clothing. Lawson, speaking of the prosperity of the country and
commending the industry of the women, says: "We have not only provision
plentiful, but clothes of our own manufacture, which are made and daily
increase; cotton, wool, and flax being of our own growth; and the women
are to be highly commended for industry in spinning and ordering their
housewifery to so great an advantage as they do."

About this time cotton became widely distributed and cotton-patches were
common in Carolina. In fact, it is said to have been one of the
principal commodities of Carolina as early as 1708, but its culture was
only for domestic uses, and the same authority speaks of its being spun
by the women.

Charlevoix, in 1722, while on his voyage down the Mississippi, saw "very
fine cotton on the tree" growing in the garden of Sieur le Noir; and
Captain Roman, of the British Army, saw in East Mississippi black-seeded
cotton growing on the farm of Mr. Krebs, and also a machine invented by
Mr. Krebs for the separation of the seed and lint. This was a
roller-gin, and possibly the first ever in operation in this country.

Pickett says that in 1728 the colony of Louisiana, which at that date
occupied nearly all the southwest part of the United States, including
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, was in a flourishing condition, its
fields being cultivated, by more than two thousand slaves, in cotton,
indigo, tobacco, and grain.

Peter Purry, the founder of Purryville, in South Carolina, in his
description of the Province of S