Most of the
people were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenots
in particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and Santee
Rivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severest
handicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indies
were of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the family
names of Legare, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton,
Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlins
from St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people were
sluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were living
and laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could,
building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaiting
the discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won.
Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by Landgrave
Thomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved so
great a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century its
production became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be imported
rapidly.
Pages:
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163