At many places, in fact, the water for the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the time awaited when the stream was not brackish.
[Footnote 4: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1809), II, 201-206.] Economy of operation required cultivation in fairly large units.

Governor Glen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a rice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer."[5] Upon the resort to tide-flowing the scale began to increase.

For example, Sir James Wright, governor of Georgia, had in 1771 eleven plantations on the Savannah, Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, employing from 33 to 72 slaves each, the great majority of whom were working hands.[6] At the middle of the nineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on Jehossee Island, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, had some seven hundred slaves of all ages.
[Footnote 5: Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 202.] [Footnote 6: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, p.

445.] In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow system led to a fairly general standard of routine.

After perhaps a preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve or fourteen inches apart.