REPORT 
ON 
THE GEOLOGY OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 
CHAPTER IL. 
Granitic Rocks.—Mineral Contents—Basaltic Rocks—Trap Dykes and their Distribution — 
Flat-woods of Abbeville —Meadow-woods.—Black-jack lands of Chester —Mineral contents of 
the Trap Rocks. 
It has been common to designate that portion of South Carolina above the falls of the rivers as 
the granitic region, yet granite proper forms comparatively but a small portion of the entire surface. 
The precise limits of the granite of the State is defined with difficulty, for this reason, that while 
it occurs in numerous localities, it no where spreads out so as to form a continuous area of any 
considerable extent, and never rises into any thing approaching a mountain in elevation. For the 
most part it appears on the surface only, in patches of irregular outline, where the slates and other 
overlying rocks have been removed by the streams and rivers on whose banks it most frequently 
occurs. It sometimes appears as if its irregular surface had protruded its most prominent points 
through the superincumbent rocks, by which the other and more depressed parts are yet covered. 
With a few exceptions, where it rises in masses of twenty or thirty feet in height, it seldom forms 
a conspicuous or picturesque object in the scenery where it occurs. Perhaps the position in which 
it presents the greatest continuity, and certainly where it has exerted the greatest influence on 
the topographical and physical features of the State, is where it is seen along the northern boun- 
dary of the Tertiary series, in a low range of hills extending, with occasional interruption, from the 
source of Horse Creek, on the Savannah, to the Congaree, below Columbia, and forming the water- , 
shed between the Saluda, which is tured aside from its course, and the head waters of the Edisto. 
The granite forms here a short anticlinal axis, having the clay slates dipping towards the North, 
and the Tertiary plane towards the South. And although it is generally concealed from view by 
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