The principal crops are tobacco, wheat, corn, and hay, but the first is by far the most important, both from its quantity and its value. Everything else is really subordinate to it. The soils of the uplands and lowlands are adapted to very different varieties of this staple. That which grows in the rich loam of the bottoms is known as "shipping tobacco," because it is chiefly consumed abroad, as it bears transportation in the rough state without injury to its quality. "Working tobacco" is the name which is given to the variety that flourishes on the hills; and this is used in the manufacture of brands of chewing- and smoking-tobacco to meet the domestic as well as the foreign demand. There is a third variety which grows in small quantities on the plantation,--namely, "yellow tobacco," so called from the golden color of the plant as it approaches ripeness; and this tint is not only retained, but also heightened, when it has been cured, at which time it is as light in weight as so much snuff. This variety is principally used as a wrapper for bundles of the inferior kinds, and is prepared for the market by a very tedious and expensive process; but the trouble thus entailed and the money spent have their compensation in the very high prices which it always brings in the market. The fields where tobacco has been cultivated during the previous summer are sown in wheat in the autumn, unless they are new grounds, when the rotation of crops is tobacco for two years in succession, followed in the third year by wheat, and in the fourth by tobacco again. The soil is then laid under the same rule of tillage as land that has been worked for many seasons. As a result of this necessity for rotation, much wheat is raised on the plantation, although the threshing of it interferes very seriously with the attention which the tobacco requires at a very critical period of its growth. The greater part of the low-grounds is planted in Indian corn, the return in a good year being very large; and even when there has been a drought, the general average in quantity and quality falls short very little. The soil here is so fertile that tobacco planted in it grows too coarse in its fibre, while the cost of cultivating it is so high that the planter is reluctant to run the risk of an overflow of the river, which destroys a crop at any stage in a few hours. Although corn is very much injured by the same cause, it is not rendered wholly useless, for it can be thrown to stock even when it is unfit to be ground into meal. At a certain season the fields of this grain along the river present a beautiful aspect, the mass of deep green flecked by the white tops of the stalks resembling, at a distance, level, unruffled waters; but sometimes a freshet descends upon it and obliterates it from sight, the whole broad plain being then like a highly-discolored lake, with rafts of planks and uprooted trees floating upon its surface.