Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7] [Footnote 7: The best descriptions of the rice industry are Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C.

1843); and R.F.W.
Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), which latter is printed also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615.] The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms of mosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject.

Most of the whites were afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but the Africans were generally immune.

Negro labor was therefore at such a premium that whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except as overseers and occasionally as artisans.

In colonial times the planters, except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, lived on their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth century they began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour or two's riding distance from their plantations.