is approved of
there. If it is I hope we shall have a bounty from
home, we have already a bounty of 5^s currancy
from this province upon it. We please ourselves
with the prospect of exporting in a few years a
good quantity from hence, and supplying our Mother
Country with a manifacture for w^{ch} she has so
great a demand, and which she is now supplyd with
from the French Collonys, and many thousand pounds
per annum thereby lost to the nation, when she
might as well be supplyd here, if the matter was
applyd to in earnest."

After this there are several letters from Governor Lucas, showing how
earnestly he wished to have the raising of indigo a success, and he
suggested that the brick vats may have been the cause of the failure,
and advised trying wood, but the truth of the trouble lay in the fact
that the two overseers sent by the Governor had been traitors, who
purposely achieved poor results, so that the American product should not
compete with that exported from their native island of Monserrat. When
Eliza discovered this her father at once sent a negro from one of the
French islands to replace them, and from that time the results were
steadily satisfactory. Soon enough indigo was raised to make it worth
while to export to England, and the English at once offered a bounty of
sixpence a pound. It is said that as long as this was paid, the planters
doubled their capital every three or four years, and in order to
commemorate the source of their wealth they formed what was at first
merely a social club, called the "Winyah Indigo Club," but later
established the first free school in the province outside of Charles
Town, a school which, handsomely endowed and supported, continued a
useful existence down to 1865.

Indigo continued to be a chief staple of the country for more than
thirty years, history tells us, and after the Revolution it was again
cultivated, but the loss of the British bounty, the rivalry of the East
Indies with their cheaper labour and the easier cultivation of cotton,
all contributed to its abandonment about the end of the century.
However, just before the Revolution, the annual export amounted to the
enormous quantity of one million, one hundred and seven thousand, six
hundred and sixty pounds, and all this revenue to the province of
Carolina, and its added benefits to all classes of citizen