Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success.

Several new villages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serve as stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their budding hopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted.

The product was of inferior grade, the price was low, and the cost of freightage high.
The export from Charleston rose from 2680 hogsheads in 1784 to 9646 in 1799, but rapidly declined thereafter.

Tobacco, never more than a makeshift staple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity.[11] [Footnote 11: U.B.Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp.

46-55.] At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group of upland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" of Camden and Ninety-six, a total of 91,704 white inhabitants, divided into 15,652 families.