North Carolina is adapted to all the agricultural products of both North and South, with the exception of cane sugar.  The marshes on the coast make excellent rice plantations, and, when drained, are very fertile in cotton.  Much of the low, sandy section, extending sixty miles from the coast, is covered with extensive forests of pitch-pine, that furnish large quantities of lumber, tar, turpentine, and resin, for export to Northern cities.  When cleared and cultivated, this region proves quite fertile, but Southern energy has thus far been content to give it very little improvement.  Much of the land in the interior is very rich and productive.  With the exception of Missouri, North Carolina is foremost, since the close of the war, in encouraging immigration.  As soon as the first steps were taken toward reconstruction, the “North Carolina Land Agency” was opened at Raleigh, under the recommendation of the Governor of the State.  This agency is under the management of Messrs. Heck, Battle & Co., citizens of Raleigh, and is now (August, 1865) establishing offices in the Northern cities for the purpose of representing the advantages that North Carolina possesses.

The auriferous region of North Carolina extends into South Carolina and Georgia.  In South Carolina the agricultural facilities are extensive.  According to Ruffin and Tuomey (the agricultural surveyors of the State), there are six varieties of soil:  1.  Tide swamp, devoted to the culture of rice. 2.  Inland swamp, devoted to rice, cotton, corn, wheat, etc. 3.  Salt marsh, devoted to long cotton. 4.  Oak and pine regions, devoted to long cotton, corn, and wheat. 5.  Oak and hickory regions, where cotton and corn flourish. 6.  Pine barrens, adapted to fruit and vegetables.

The famous “sea-island cotton” comes from the islands along the coast, where large numbers of the freed negroes of South Carolina have been recently located.  South Carolina can produce, side by side, the corn, wheat, and tobacco of the North, and the cotton, rice, and sugar-cane of the South, though the latter article is not profitably cultivated.

Notwithstanding the prophecies of the South Carolinians to the contrary, the free-labor scheme along the Atlantic coast has proved successful.  The following paragraph is from a letter written by a prominent journalist at Savannah:—­

The condition of the islands along this coast is now of the greatest interest to the world at large, and to the people of the South in particular.  Upon careful inquiry, I find that there are over two hundred thousand acres of land under cultivation by free labor.  The enterprises are mostly by Northern men, although there are natives working their negroes under the new system, and negroes who are working land on their own account.  This is the third year of the trial, and every year has been a success more and more complete.  The profits of some of the laborers amount to five hundred, and in some cases five thousand dollars a