or ten miles, the horses are up to their middles. Every two or three miles we meet with a miserable log-house upon the road, surrounded with little fields of Indian corn, the slender stalks of which are very seldom more than five or six feet high, and which, from the second harvest, do not yield more than four or five bushels per acre. In the mean time, notwithstanding their sterility, this land is sold at the rate of two dollars per acre.
The extreme unwholesomeness of the climate is {275} clearly demonstrated by the pale and livid countenances of the inhabitants, who, during the months of September and October, are almost all affected with tertian fevers, insomuch that at this period of the year Georgia and the Lower Carolinas resemble, in some measure, an extensive hospital. Very few persons take any remedy, but wait the approach of the first frosts, which, provided they live so long, generally effect a cure. The negroes are much less subject to intermittent fevers than the whites; and it is seldom that in the great rice plantations there is more than one fifth of them disabled on this account.
{276} CHAP. XXXI
General observations on the Carolinas and Georgia.—Agriculture and produce peculiar to the upper part of these states.
The two Carolinas and Georgia are naturally divided into the upper and lower country, but the upper embraces a greater extent. Just at the point where the maritime part is terminated the soil rises gradually till it reaches the Alleghany Mountains, and presents, upon the whole, a ground rather irregular than mountainous, and interspersed with little hills as far as the mountains. The Alleghanies give birth to a great number of creeks or
