Many were no worse than smugglers; others were robbers
with violence; and a few had a dash of the fiend. All nations had sons in
the business. England to the south in America had just the ragged coast
line, with its off-lying islands and islets, liked by all this gentry,
whether smuggler or pirate outright. Through much of the seventeenth
century the settlers on these shores never violently disapproved of the
pirate. He was often a "good fellow." He brought in needed articles without
dues, and had Spanish gold in his pouch. He was shrugged over and traded with.
He came ashore to Charles Town, and they traded with him there. At one time
Charles Town got the name of "Rogue's Harbor." But that was not forever,
nor indeed, as years are counted, for long. Better and better emigrants
arrived, to add to the good already there. The better type prevailed, and
gave its tone to the place. There set in, on the Ashley and Cooper rivers,
a fair urban life that yet persists.
South Carolina was trying tobacco and wheat. But in the last years of the
seventeenth century a ship touching at Charleston left there a bag of
Madagascar rice. Planted, it gave increase that was planted again. Suddenly
it was found that this was the crop for low-lying Carolina. Rice became her
staple, as was tobacco of Virginia.
For the rice-fields South Carolina soon wanted African slaves, and they
were consequently brought in numbers, in English ships. There began, in
this part of the world, even more than in Virginia, the system of large
plantations and the accompanying aristocratic structure of society.
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