. OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 197 
Fig. 33. 
7 
That portion of the island lying on Alligator Creek, which is one of the mouths of the Santee, 
was very recently a salt marsh, but is now a rice plantation; it is filled with stumps, which are 
buried about fifteen inches below the surface. 
The encroachment of this island upon the ocean is marked by a series of beaches, in which fos- 
sils are embedded, and an addition of many acres, now going on, is marked by the dotted line on 
the shore. This increment, together with the extension of the opposite bank of the river, which 
has amounted to three miles in thirty years, of course confines the fresh water to the river, and 
forees back, to the same extent, the salt water; the result of which is the recession of the line of 
brackish water down the river. 'Tnis is curiously exhibited in Alligator Creek, which presents the 
remarkable phenomenon of a stream salt at both extremities and fresh in the middle; so that Mr. 
Lueas, the proprietor of the island, had the rare good fortune to detect this stream in its passage 
from a salt to a fresh water creek. 
At low water the river, at present, is fresh below the junction of the creek, and as the water 
flows through it from the river, it is also fresh in the creek. At the flow of tide the water is 
backed up, at d, where the creek empties into the ocean. In the mean time the tide flows up the 
river, and becomes salt above the other extremity of the creek, while the latter remains filled with 
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