INTKODUCTORY. O 



flow proceeds more slowly, passing the great inland swamps of the low 

 country, as if the waters still remembered when they found issuances 

 through these ancient deltas. In the great freshet of 179(5, the waters 

 of the Santee river broke through at Hell-Hole swamp, and made their 

 way to the sea through Cooper river. During the same freshet, the 

 Savannah river made its way through the swamps of Hampton county, 

 and emptied its waters through Broad river into the sea at Port Royal. 

 As each river leaves the region of rocks to enter the borders of the low- 

 country, it makes a sudden and well-marked detour eastward, except the 

 Savannah, which seems to have had its bed shifted westward at this line 

 of demarcation. Thus, had the grooves cut through the ancient strata of 

 tlio crystalline rocks by these streams been prolonged among the sands 

 and clays of the low-country, their estuaries would have been quite 

 difierent from what they are at present. Had the line of the Savannah, 

 as it channeled its way ages ago through the mica, slate and gneiss rock 

 of Oconee, Anderson and Abbeville counties, not been thrown westward 

 by the granites of Horse creek and the high sand and clay hills of Aiken 

 county, it would have continued its course to Broad river, at present 

 that magnificent arm of the sea forming the head of Port Royal harbor. 

 Here it would have been joined, too, by the waters of the North and 

 South Edisto, had they not been deflected eastward by the granite rocks 

 and sand hills of Aiken and Orangeburg counties. Here, also, the 

 waters of the Santee, containing those of the Wateree and Congaree, 

 Avould have joined them, had they followed the line of the ancient 

 channel of the Catawba, their most easterly affluent, as it grooved its 

 way through talc slates and granites of Lancaster, York and Chester 

 counties. It would seem more appropriate that some great Father of 

 Waters, having these proportions, should have built up such a grand 

 delta as the islands, rivers, sounds and bays of Beaufort present, rather 

 than it were the sole and undisputed estuary of such insignificant 

 claimants as the rivers Tillifinny, Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie, 

 preserving in their long names alone the memory of the noble river 

 that once must have found its way to the ocean here. Noting the 

 remarkable parallelism in this eastward deflection of nearly all the water 

 courses of Carolina, it would seem that one and the same cause must 

 have produced these changes. Such a cause would have been an 

 upheaving force — or forces, rather — operating from the southwest to the 

 northeast, in the line of the eruptive rocks that cross the State from 

 Edgefield to York counties. We may readily imagine how these 

 successive elevations running from the southwest, after turning the 

 Savannah into its present delta, pushed the other streams eastward, 

 dropping the different affluents as it passed along, leaving the Combahee 



