G INTRODUCTORY. 



and Edisto at St. Helena sound, as the Tillifinny, Pocotaligo and 

 Coosawhatchie were left at Port Royal to mark the delta there, and losing 

 the Ashle}' and Cooper rivers at Charleston harbor, while the Santee, 

 moved further westward, still marks out its channel to the sea near 

 AVinyaw bay. 



Again, on the near approach of the rivers to the sea, some of them 

 show a deflection westward. But the previously noticed parallelism does 

 not obtain in this case. In some, as in the Pee Dee, the westward bend 

 is well marked. In others, as in the Edisto, the river is merely turned 

 from an eastward to a south course, while the Santee seems scarcely at 

 all diverted from its eastwardly course. It would not seem, therefore, 

 that this change had resulted from the action of any single cause, but, 

 rather, that it was the resultant of opposing forces, operating with 

 varying intensities. Such forces would be found in the southeasterly 

 currents of the streams themselves, opposed by that southwesterly ocean 

 current — a recurrent of the Gulf Stream — that sweeps along the Carolina 

 coast. Where the river currents were strong, and loaded with a wealth 

 of detritus from the drainage of an extensive back country, it would hold 

 its own against the ocean current, dam it out and establish for itself the 

 direction of its outlet. Hence the Santee piles up its banks and carries 

 the shore line out beyond Cape St. Romain, and all the coast southwest 

 of it, the site of ancient and actual deltas, is lined with islands. Short 

 or sluggish streams, however, supported by the detritus of no great 

 water-shed — as the Waccamaw river — would yield readily to the action 

 of the ocean currents, conform to their direction, establish no nests of 

 islands at their deltas, but leave the sea to make a smooth, bare sand 

 beach. Such we find the curving shore from Georgetown entrance to the 

 North Carolina line to be, where, for twenty miles on a stretch, a carriage 

 may roll along the beach at low water, leaving in the hard sands not 

 the slightest impress of its wheels. 



Crossing the crystalline rocks nearly at right angles, the waters, in 

 their course through the up-country, encounter a series of natural dams, 

 which, while it renders them easily available as water-powers, seriously 

 oljstructs navigation. The passage of boats, say of two hundred tons 

 burthen, as a rule, reaches inland but very little farther than the 

 remarkable belt of high and healthy sand hills which lie along the lower 

 borders of these rocks. 



The tortuous course into which the streams have been forced by the 

 causes already stated, after entering the low country, while it has 

 increased the navigable waters of the State, giving, " apart from creeks 

 and inlets of the sea, an inland navigation of twenty-four hundred miles," 

 has seriously impeded the drainage of the low country, creating there 



