The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half mile
distant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carried
the hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. The
average product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, each
bushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three cents
a pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules;
and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplement
their fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-five
thousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including the
two-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some ten
thousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseer
was the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpenters
and sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place," wrote
Robinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each
containing two tenements of three rooms to a family besides the
cockloft.... There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital,' and
a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath.
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