When sold, the shafts
were reserved, and upon these was then erected a sort of box, into
which the few articles purchased were placed, and dragged home. These
articles almost universally consisted of some iron and steel, and a
little coffee and sugar, and sometimes a quarter of a pound of
tea--universally termed store-tea, to distinguish it from that made
from the root of the sassafras and the leaf of the cassia or
tepaun-bush.
Cotton was, to some little extent, cultivated near the seaboard in
Georgia and South Carolina, and cleaned of the seeds by a machine
similar to that used at the present day for preparing the sea-island
cotton for market. This was a tedious and troublesome method, and was
incapable of doing the work to any very great extent. Indigo, of a
superior quality to the American, was being produced in British India
and Central America, and the competition was reducing the price to the
cost of production. The same difficulty attended the growing of
tobacco. Virginia and Maryland, with their abundance of labor, were
competing, and cheapening the article to a price which made its
production unprofitable.
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