With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not only detected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the true process.

She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number of planters; and from 1744 the crop began to reach the rank of a staple.[8] The arrival of Carolina indigo at London was welcomed so warmly that in 1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo produced in the British dominions.

The Carolina output remained of mediocre quality until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community about half as much gross income as did its rice.

The net earnings of the planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang might cultivate both staples.
[Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); Mrs.St.Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 265, 266.] [Footnote 9: B.A.Elzas, _The Jews of South Carolina_ (Philadelphia, 1905), chap.

3.] Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain.
From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July.