In their plans of inland navigation, the people of South Carolina have not neglected rail roads. Con siderable advance has been made in the construc tion of such a road from the city of Charleston to the Savannah river at Hamburg and Augusta. A charter was granted for the purpose to a company styled "The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company." The distance about 130 miles, in a di rection of north-west by west. A branch road is to leave the main line at Orangeburg, and be car ried, a little W. of N., about 40 miles to Columbia.
On a section of the earth differing so greatly in its extreme features, no one system of improvement could be effectually adopted. The whole embrac ing a vast inclined plain with a general north-west ern direction 250 miles, and rising from tide level to at least a mean of 1500 feet. The interior apex, a chain of mountains from which the streams me ander by very tortuous channels, and reach their oceanic recipient over a marshy and in great part flat and diurnally inundated border. Along the ocean coast and for 60 or 70 miles, inland canals are the most practicable, and in many localities the only practicable melioration that art can effect on the face of nature; but receding towards the moun tains the same exclusive preference is finally given or perhaps ought to be given to roads. A remark may be made on the rivers included in Table V., which, with some limitation, is due to all the streams issuing from the Atlantic side of the Ap palachian system. It is, that their volumes of wa ter are more abundant and more durable at each extreme than in the middle part of their courses. This will be more illustrated in the sequel, and may be dismissed here with the observation, that the causes of the phenomenon are no doubt evapo ration and absorption, the former more especially.
With Georgetown entrance, or the mouth of Pe dee, commences a new character of coast. The productive and comparatively small protruding islands which skirt Georgia and South Carolina cease, and from Winyaw Point to Cape Fear, the coast sweeeps inward an elliptical curve bounding Long Bay, by a low sandy line a little exceeding 100 miles. The small islands are mere sandy reefs lying parallel to the coast; and the inlets, so exces sively numerous from the mouth of the Alatamaha to that of the Pcdcc, now become rare. Long Bay
is followed by two others of nearly equal length, and in a very remarkable manner similar in regard to their inland curves and the features of their shores. Onslow Bay extends a semi-ellipsis from Cape Fear to Cape Lookout, and Raleigh Bay from Cape Lookout to Cape Hatteras. The latter promontory, the terror of mariners, and the great salient angle of the basin of North Carolina, proj•t1s into the Atlantic Ocean at N. Lat. 35° 12'. and Lon. 1° SG' E. from W.C. The general bearing of this singu lar series of curves on the Atlantic coast of the United States, from the mouth of Pedee, or more precisely, from Wioyaw Point to Cape Hatteras is, by calculation on Mercator's principles, N. 57° 35' E. and the reverse, and the distance 2911 statute miles.
With Cape Hatteras the coast, maintaining its character of long low sand islands extending paral lel to the margin of the ocean, inflects 70 degrees, and stretches in an almost direct line of 130 statute miles to Cape Henry, at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Combining the two lines of coast on each side of Cape Hatteras, we have, from Winyaw Bay to that of Chesapeake, a sandy coast of 421 statute miles, enclosing a physical section drained by Cape Fear river, Neuse river, Pamtico or Tar river, Roanoke, and Chowan rivers. This section may be with propriety designated the basin of North Carolina, since, though the larger part of the sub basin of its principal stream, the Roanoke, is in Virginia, it is discharged with all its confluents into the ocean on the North Carolina coast. 10 their aggregate forms, as regard the range of their individual rivers, the two basins of Georgia and South Carolina, and that of North Carolina, pre sent a marked contrast. In the basin of Georgia and South Carolina, the sources of the rivers spread 350 miles along the Atlantic side of the Blue Ridge, like the branches of a tree; whilst their volumes gradually approach and meet their com mon recipient within extremes of 200 miles. On the contrary, the basin of North Carolina spreads like a fan along the Atlantic Ocean, with an im mense salient curve from Little River inlet to the head of North river, a confluent of Currituck Sound, with a chord of 270 miles, whilst the re mote sources of its rivers are restricted to about 90 miles along the Blue Ridge.