r respects has been perfectly indescribable. Previous to
these improvements all the finer portions of the winter were
appropriated exclusively to the milling and the threshing of the
crop with the flail, yet it is manifest they added not one particle
to the value of the property; indeed, while going on, all other
work, and all preparation for another crop had to be suspended, so
that the condition of the plantation was not progressive, but
retrograde.

A short recapitulation will show what has been accomplished by the
enterprise of our planters in the last seventy years. At the close
of the Revolution it is believed the rice fields were poorly
drained, and when broken up were chiefly turned with the hoe, then
trenched with the hoe; then came three or four hoeings and as many
pickings. The rice was then cut with the sickle and carried in on
the head, then threshed with the flail, then milled and dressed, in
some cases wholly by human labor, and in others by a rude machine,
called a pecker mill. Now, in 1852, the hoeing, the pickings, and
the cutting with the sickle remain unchanged; but the lands are
better drained, and in the turning the plough has superseded the
hoe; the trenching, when, necessary, is done by animal power; the
rice, when cut, is carried in on a flat and wagon, then threshed and
milled by machinery, so perfect that it is difficult to imagine how
it can be surpassed.

It is one hundred and fifty-nine years since the introduction of
rice into Carolina, and there are grounds for supposing that our
people have accomplished more during that period, in the cultivation
and preparation of this grain, than has been done by any of the
Asiatic nations who have been conversant with its growth for many
centuries. We had the rare opportunity, a few years since, of seeing
a Chinese book on rice planting, which contained many engravings.
The language we could not read, but we comprehended a sufficient
number of the engravings to institute a comparison between their
system and our own, and the result was, in our method of irrigation
we were their equals, while in economy of cultivation, and in the
preparation of the grain for market and for use, we are greatly
their superiors. Again, some six or seven years since the East India
Company, of London, sent an agent to this country