lost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show a
similar tendency toward slaveholding concentration.

[Footnote 13: _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States,
1790: State of South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908); _A Century of Population
Growth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198.]

Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in the
form of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them was
so easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges for
scores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, by
catching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. But
unlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast were
generally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notable
growth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina,
Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown and
Beaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement in
Darien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of government
in their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focus
of commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense a
city-state.

The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantation
community. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctors
had country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from time
to time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement,
carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown of
their careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionately
than anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly alive
as the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For example