- gard to their domestic affairs, and follow the same plans
of agriculture. Notwithstanding there are many of them whose moral characters, perhaps, are not so unspotted as those of the western inhabitants, it is probably altered by associating with the Scotch and Irish who come every year in great numbers to settle in the country, and {284} who teach them a part of their vices and defects, the usual attendants on a great population. The major part of these new adventurers go into the upper country, where they engage to serve, for a year or two, those persons who have paid the captain of the ship for their passage.
{285} CHAP. XXXII
Low part of the Carolines and Georgia.—Agriculture.—Population.—Arrival at Charleston.
The low country of the two Carolinas extends from
the borders of the sea for a hundred and twenty or a hundred
and fifty miles, widening as it gets towards the south.
The space that this extent embraces presents an even
and regular soil, formed by a blackish sand, rather deep
in parts, in which there are neither stones nor flints; in
consequence of which they seldom shoe their horses in
that part of the United States. Seven-tenths of the
country are {286} covered with pines of one species, or
pinus palustris, which, as the soil is drier and lighter, grow
loftier and not so branchy. These trees, frequently twenty
feet distant from each other, are not damaged by the fire
that they make here annually in the woods, at the commencement
of spring, to burn the grass and other plants
that the frost has killed. These pines, encumbered with
very few branches, and which split even, are preferred to
other trees to form fences for plantations. Notwithstanding
the sterility of the land where they grow, they
