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since the settlement of the county, in habits of idleness, without trades & wholey without instruction. Of the 591 Whites registered by us to this date, 250 could not write their names; and these are all natives of this county.

The demand for labor in this county is, almost exclusively, confined to able bodied men, and house servants & cooks. There is but one plantation in the county, where cotton is planted for market. Perhaps 50 persons can cultivate an acre or two, for home consumption. There are some 30 farms on Pearl River which usually averaged from 350 to 500 bushels of corn to the farm, but for the two last & the present season have yielded little owing to overflow in June. All the corn consumed in this county for twelve months past has been brought from New Orleans, at a cost to the consumer of about $2 or 2.75 per bushel. A little rice has been produced on the uplands (on soil trod by cattle) but no rye, oats, barley or buck wheat. No hay is made. Persons residing on the uplands never attempt to cultivate any thing, unless they have a stock of cattle to tread the land.

Cattle are, for the most part, owned by a few persons. They live in the range, winter & summer, and are kept for beef exclusively, and are usually sold at from one to three years old. No butter & little milk is yielded by cows here, owing to the absence of lime in our soil and the want of nutricous grasses. Hogs subsist on the wild most, and are few & inferior.