THE LOWER PINE BELT, OR SAVANNA REGION. 45 



of extensive swamps and bays recall the salt marshes of the coast. Eight 

 large rivers receiving all the M-ater that falls in South Carolina, and a 

 large proportion from the watershed of North Carolina, besides several 

 smaller rivers and innumerable lesser streams, traverse this -region and 

 furnish more than 1,000 miles of navigable waters. The general ap- 

 pearance of the country is low and flat. The uniform level of the sur- 

 face is scarcely broken anywhere, except here and there on the banks of 

 the streams ])y the occurrence of slightly rolling lands. Lime sinks are 

 found and there is a notable chain of them south of Eutawville, between 

 the great bend of the >Santee river and the head waters of Cooper river. 

 In a depression of the sjbirface a miniature lake, never exceeding fifty 

 yards in length by a dozen in width, and sometimes only a few feet in 

 diameter, is found. The water is oi crystalline clearness, with a visible 

 depth of twelve to fifteen feet, and is contained in a funnel-shaped hollow 

 of the blue limestone rock, that underlies the soil at the depth of a few 

 inches. These lakelets or springs have no outlet, but at their bottom 

 Assures in the limestone rock, leading to unknown depths, are observed. 

 Through these fissures numbers of all the varieties of fresh water fish 

 common to this locality, including eels and alewives, some of them of 

 considerable size are seen to pass. So numerous are these »fish that if all 

 these open basins were put together into one, it would not afford food or 

 breeding space for one-hundredth part of the fish found in any one of them. 

 The inference seems warranted that there is here, in the caverns of 

 the limestone rock, a subterranean stream or lake many miles in extent. 

 The maximum elevation of this region above tide-water is reached at 

 the village of Branchville on the South Carolina railway, and is 134 

 feet. From the data furnished by the surveys of the railroads traversing 

 this region, the Port Royal, South Carolina and Wilmington roads (the 

 Charleston and Savannah road runs near to and parallel with the coast, 

 and the surveys of the Northeastern road have been destroyed), it ap- 

 pears that the average slope is about 3| feet per mile. This slope, how- 

 ever, seems to be much more rapid in the western and narroAver part than 

 it is in the eastern and broader portion of the belt. Altmans, on the 

 Port Royal railroad, is 105 feet above mean high tide at the head of 

 Broad river, 18 miles distant in a direct line, giving a fall of 5.8 ft. per 

 mile. Branchville is 134 ft. above the sea, which at North Edisto inlet, 

 near Jehossee island, is 48 miles distant, making the fall 2.8 feet per mile. 

 In the east the railroad bridge of the Great Pee Dee is 52 miles from the 

 sea and has an elevation above it of only about 59 feet, or but little more 

 than one foot to the mile. This fall Avould, with skillful engineering, be 

 sufficient for thorough drainage. Left as it is, however, wholly to the 

 operations of nature, this desirable object is far from being accomplished, 



