90 APPENDIX. 



The State of North Carolina, lying on the northern border of the 

 cotton belt and between the 34 and 37 of north latitude, possesses a 

 medium temperature of climate, free from the severities of blighting 

 cold as well as from the debilitating and parching heat from equatorial 

 influences. Thus relieved from the extremes of climate, North Caro- 

 lina possesses that equable temperature which is peculiarly healthful 

 and invigorating to man, as well as to .all animated nature. This geo- 

 graphical advantage is enhanced by its topographical formation. With 

 a seacoast of near three hundred miles' extent, washed by the waves of 

 the Atlantic, it reaches back westward, until it embraces the towering 

 heights of the Blue Mountains. From the exhaustless fountains of 

 this mountain region flow the thousand streamlets which form her Ca- 

 tawba and her Yadkin Rivers ; and from her table-lands, which gently 

 soften down towards the coast, a thousand other never-failing brooks 

 and rivulets are gathered into her noble Cape Fear, her Neuse, her 

 Tar, and her Roanoke Rivers, all flowing eastward, watering abun- 

 dantly every district of the State, and emptying their waters into the 

 Atlantic. 



The mountain portion of North Carolina, embracing some twenty 

 counties, possesses a soil unsurpassed for fertility by any similar extent 

 of mountain country on our continent. Here the celebrated blue 

 grass is an indigenous growth ; and the mountain sides and alluvial 

 valleys alike make the finest meadows of this favorite and never-failing 

 pasturage. The winters here are short, and free from that intensity 

 which characterizes more northern latitudes. This mountain portion 

 of the State softens down eastward into a hill and dale plateau, embrac- 

 ing as many more counties ; and this is succeeded by a lovely cham- 

 paign country, extending to the Atlantic coast. The soil of this 

 extensive mountain and upland country, embracing some sixty of the 

 ninety-one counties in the State, is varied in character : a large propor- 

 tion of it, having a rich clay subsoil, yields abundant crops of the cere- 

 als and of cotton and tobacco : and the balance, having an admixture 

 of sand, is more easily cultivated, and, with light fertilization, yields 

 quite as abundant harvests. All is susceptible of the highest degree 

 of improvement ; and all produces native, as well as sown and culti- 

 vated, grasses, to a high degree of perfection. The remaining counties, 

 embracing the tide-water district of the State, have large districts of 

 rich alluvial soil, which have long been an Egypt from which thousands 

 of our fellow-citizens north of us have been provisioned. "Within the 

 limits of the State, there are fifteen hundred miles of railroad ; travers- 

 ing it longitudinally, latitudinally, and diagonally, penetrating its moun- 



