SOUTH CAKOLINA PHOSPHATES. 103 



course by a shorter and more direct route to the shores of the 

 Carolinas. What is now the Charleston basin, then not ele- 

 vated above the level of the sea, with its shelving shores and 

 warm current, offered peculiar facilities for the growth of the 

 coral animal, which, in its thousand forms, flourished in its 

 genial waters. Unable to live at a greater depth than sixty- 

 feet, its outward progress was limited, and it could only 

 grow upward to the surface of the water, forming walls or 

 living reefs, inclosing in their rear a shoal or lagoon, in 

 which swarmed thousands of species of marine life. Into 

 this inland sea the weaker fled for safety and the stronger for 

 prey, and over these reefs and into this lagoon were con- 

 stantly being hurled by the ocean waves the remains of the 

 monsters of the sea. This must have also been a place of 

 common resort for land animals and birds of many kinds, and, 

 after all, it must have occupied many thousand years to de- 

 posit so many million tons of bone. Some time ago a com- 

 pany of scientific men visited Turner's Falls to examine the 

 remarkable geological characteristics of that locality, "\^^len 

 the learned leader was asked how old a specimen of track- 

 bearing shale might be, he replied he could not tell exactly, 

 but it was so old that a hundred thousand years either way 

 could be of no account. So we can imagine that many hun- 

 dred thousand years may have deposited even this mass of 

 bone in this most favored locality. But the comparatively 

 even thickness over so vast an area is in itself wonderful. 

 This can only be accounted for by the action of water and 

 the constantly changing beds of the rivers in this low, flat 

 country. 



MINENG, IVIANTIFACTIIRING A^^) MAEKETING. 



The surface rock in the vicinity of Charleston being con- 

 sumed — and there seems to be no other rock but phosphatic, 

 — it became necessary to mine for a aupply. A trench is 

 opened in the vicinity of the river by digging first through 

 the shallow but fertile soil, then through the sand, when, 

 three feet, more or less, below the surface is found the stra- 

 tum of rock, which, being loosened by a pick, is thrown out 

 and taken to the river in donkey-carts, or in cars, on a tem- 

 porary track, to be washed of clay and sand. It is then ready, 

 in its crude state, to go to the factory to be manipulated into 



