72 JOURNAL OF THE 



In the Coastal Plain Region. — In the eastern counties, 

 except along the western border of this Coastal Plain 

 region at irregular intervals, we find none of the hard 

 crystalline rocks suitable for broken stone roads. Over 

 the larger part of the area we have sand, clays and loams, 

 the sands becoming coarser and more gravelly along the 

 western border and finer towards the eastern. At a num- 

 ber of points along some of the rivers and in some inter- 

 vening areas is to be found a limestone rock which will 

 serve a fairly good purpose in road-building. 



Gravel. — The gravel along this western border can b^ 

 used successfully in making a fairly good road-bed, and 

 should be used extensively where the hard crystalline rocks 

 cannot be obtained. It may be found at many places in 

 counties between the line mentioned above, extending from 

 Gaston to Wadesboro, and a line drawn to the east of this 

 from Franklin, Virginia, by way of Scotland Neck, Tar- 

 boro, LaGrange and Clinton, to Lumberton; and in a few 

 places also considerably to the east of this latter line. The 

 gravel is more generally distributed along the borders of 

 the river basins, where it occurs in extensive beds, a few 

 inches to twenty feet in thickness, though along the west- 

 ern edge of the Coastal Plain region it is often found on 

 the hill-toJDS and divides between the rivers. 



In many places the gravel is suitable for use on the road- 

 bed just as it comes from the pit, containing pebbles of 

 the right size, from an inch down to a coarse sand, and a 

 small percentage of ferruginous clay, just enough to make 

 it pack well in the road-bed without preventing proper 

 drainage. In many cases, however, the proportion of clay 

 and loam and sand is too large and must be reduced by the 

 use of fine screens; and in other cases many of the pebbles 

 are so large that they must be separated by means of a 

 one-inch mesh screen, and those too large to pass through 

 this screen broken before thev are used. 



