The peaceful waterfront of GEORGETOWN , the first town beyond Myrtle Beach to be anything more than a beach town, makes a refreshing and quite extraordinary contrast, while the main street has a late-Fifties feel. Ask at the visitor center , 1001 Front St (tel 1-800/777-7705), for a self-guided walking tour sheet to the fine antebellum and eighteenth-century houses in the 32-block historic district in the center. A quick stroll down the boardwalk, however, gives all-too-clear views of the monstrous steel works on the opposite bank. The Rice Museum (Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm; $5), in the clock tower on Front Street, tells how the cultivation of rice flourished on the coast during the slavery period. On the north side of town, turning east after the bridge, is the Belle W. Baruch Plantation ($15; by appointment only; tel 843/546-4623). Though fairly overgrown, the plantation's original " slave street " is still standing, complete with wooden shacks and a church. It serves as a powerful reminder of the brutal basis of antebellum southern prosperity, and an interesting look at the home of Bernard M. Baruch, who gave economic advice to presidents Woodrow Wilson on up to JFK.

If you want to stay in Georgetown, the Carolinian Clarion , 706 Church St (tel 843/546-5191; $50-75), is a good bet, and has a pool. To eat , you needn't stray from the motel's restaurant, Hook, Line and Sinker , which serves superlative crabcakes, fish stews and Low Country Boils until 9pm daily except Sunday.

Hopsewee Plantation , the grand mansion home of Thomas Lynch, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, is set in Spanish moss-draped grounds, twelve miles south of Georgetown on US-17 (March-Oct Mon-Fri; Nov-Feb by appointment only; $8; tel 843/546-7891). Clouds of large and ferocious mosquitoes drift up from the adjacent river, so think twice before visiting in summer. The less manicured, and slightly less mosquito-plagued Hampton Plantation State Park , further south, two miles off US-17 on Hwy-857, is probably closer to the look of a typical plantation. The grounds (9am-6pm; free) are pretty, but the house (summer Thurs-Mon 11am-4pm; rest of year 1pm-4pm; $2) is most impressive, a huge eighteenth-century Neoclassical monolith built by Huguenots, yet, while its exterior has been restored, the inside is pretty bare. The plantation itself is isolated in the heart of the dense Francis Marion National Forest . This heavily black area is particularly known for its sweetgrass basket-weaving, a craft that originated with the slaves in West Africa, using tight bundles of grasses to make intricate baskets and pots. Despite the enormously time-consuming work and the cost of materials, the baskets you see being made at roadside stalls here cost at most $20.

Further south, beyond the forest and a few miles north of Charleston, is the much-publicized Boone Hall Plantation (April-Aug Mon-Sat 8.30am-6.30pm, Sun 1-5pm; Sept-March Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sun 1-4pm; $12.50). A visit is a sanitized and annoying experience: the plantation may date from the late seventeenth century but the house is a twentieth-century reconstruction used for much television and movie filming. Tours are conducted by hapless young women in southern belle costumes, who rather overplay the connections with Gone with the Wind . The grounds are more interesting, with a long, tree-lined drive and another rare slave street, this time of small mid-eighteenth-century brick cabins that housed privileged slaves - domestic servants and skilled artisans.

North Coast plantations

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