4. Agriculture—The chief employment of the people is agriculture. The land is generally divided up into large plantations.
A cotton compress in Mississippi. The loose cotton is pressed into bales. These are then covered with bagging and bound with iron bands. A finished bale rests on the truck.
Corn, wheat, tobacco, and many other crops are raised. Tobacco is produced extensively in North Carolina and Tennessee. But the Southern states are especially noted for their cotton, sugar, rice, fruits, and early vegetables.
5. Cotton is the most valuable of all the products. It grows on a plant. The seeds are inclosed in pods called bolls. Each seed is wrapped in the soft, downy substance that we call cotton. As the seeds ripen, the bolls burst open, and the fields are white with snowy cotton.
The seeds are separated from the cotton by a machine called the cotton gin, and the cotton is then packed in great bales and sent to market.
From cotton seed is pressed an oil that is as pure as olive oil. A hard cake is left, which is ground into cotton-seed meal and used as a fertilizer or as feed for cattle.
6. Rice is raised chiefly in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and South Carolina.
It grows both on prairie and lowland. The grain is very hard, and when first sown it needs to lie under water; so the rice grower floods his fields. Afterwards the water is drained off and the ground kept dry. Rice when growing looks something like wheat.
A Carolina rice field. Notice the canals, through whivch water is brought in; and the gats, which are raised or lowered at will.
7. Sugar-cane.—Traveling in Louisiana, we see great fields covered what we might suppose to be giant corn plants. These fields are sugar plantations. The plants are sugar-cane.
At the proper season it is cut down, carried to a mill, and crushed between iron rollers. The sweet juice is thus squeezed out. It is boiled a long time, until at last the solid sugar forms. Most of the cane-sugar made in the main body of the United States comes from Louisiana.
For Recitation.—Describe the surface of the Southern States. What kind of climate have the Southern states? What is the chief occupation of the Southern states? For what products are the Southern states noted? What is the most valuable crop of these states? Where does the South send its cotton?
Atlanta, Ga.—The tall buildings are in the business part of the town.
LESSON XXXVII.
1. Pine Forests.—Immense pine forests are found in these states, from the Texas prairies to the Dismal swamp in Virginia. Besides lumber, great quantities of tar, pitch, turpentine, and rosin are obtained from them.
The largest supplies are gathered in Georgia and North Carolina. Savannah and Wilmington are noted for the export of these products.
Where the pine forests have been cut away, we see truck farms upon which fruits and vegetables are grown and shipped to the North. Strawberries, tomatoes, beans, and peas grow here while Northern gardens are still covered with snow.
