The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

Extract of a letter from a gentleman of respectability on Edisto-Island, to his correspondent in Charleston, dated Sept. 16.

I am very sorry to inform you, that our cotton-fields are in a dreadful situation. The caterpillars have broke out in every field I know of upon the island, and their numbers really do surpass every thing of the kind I ever saw in my life. Large fields are totally destroyed by them, and their numbers are daily increasing. I was the third person who had them, and for seven or eight days they did me but little damage, and I had buoyed myself up with the hope of getting off very well, until a few days ago I rode where I first discovered them, and they did astonish me; for not only the cotton was full of them, but the face of the earth also, and every place that a cotton bush touched me or my horse, they were lest sticking; and I declare to you candidly, that it is my opinion, that there will not be a green leaf nor a green pod of cotton left on my plantation in a fortnight from this, and most of my neighbours are equally as great sufferers. I assure you we all have long faces on the occasion, as our crops are irretrievably lost.