Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/401

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SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

State tax, $4.05.

Stock in trade, $2,200.

Soil.—"Light and tolerably productive."

Education.—"Very little interest is taken in the subject of education." No academies; six public schools (1 to 485 square miles), sixteen pupils each. Wages of teachers, etc., yearly, $41 each school. No Sunday school or other libraries.

Character of the people.—"The citizens are said to be hardy, industrious, and honest." "Much good might be done by the organization of temperance societies."

Religion.—Fifteen church edifices, fourteen miles apart, each accommodating one hundred sitters, and valued at $56 each.


COAST COUNTIES.

State tax, $13.

"Amount of business done at St. Mary's is about $30,000 per annum," nearly all in lumber, and done by New Englanders No other trade statistics.

Soil.—"Of celebrated fertility."

Education.—No remarks on education or character by Mr. White. Four public schools (1 to 280 square miles), with seventeen pupils each, maintained at an average expenditure of $290 per annum. Two academies, with forty-five pupils. Five Sunday school libraries, with one hundred and ten volumes each.

Character of the people.—No remarks.

Religion.—Ten churches (five of which are in the town of St. Mary's, a beautiful and healthy village, resorted to by consumptives); average value, $850.


I have purposely omitted Effingham county in the above arrangement, because the adjoining coast county of Chatham contains the city of Savannah, an aggregate agency of northern and foreign merchants, through which is effected the commercial exchanges of a great extent of back country, the population of which can therefore afford no indication as to the point under consideration. Effingham, the county above Chatham, and one of the second tier, is worthy of notice, from some other important exceptional features of its constitution. Owing to the amount of rich soil in the county, along the Savannah river,