Captain James Sinkler from a crop of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered 216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.[6] Peter Gaillard of St.John's Berkeley received for his crop of the same year an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St.Paul's earned so much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself rich enough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the North and abroad.

He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which the neighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of it from the proceeds of two years' crops.[7] [Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black Oak Agricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T.G.Thomas, _The Huguenots of South Carolina_ (New York, 1887).] [Footnote 7: W.B.Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, p.

20.] The methods of tillage were quickly systematized.

Instead of being planted, as at first, in separate holes, the seed came to be drilled and plants grown at intervals of one or two feet on ridges five or six feet apart; and the number of hoeings was increased.

But the thinner fruiting of this variety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than about half the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap from their crops of the shorter staple.