dertakings in economic botany.
In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated
by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two
preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success.
Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage her
indigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear of
injuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled the
manufacturing. 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. At
that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in
a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours
took the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into another
vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and
complet