114 THE RED HILL REGION. 



No. 1 was from near Orangeburg village, the southern limit of the 

 region under consideration, and near the line where the buhr-stone passes 

 under the Santee marls. 



No. 2 was from Lang Syne, the same plantation from which the sam- 

 ples analyzed by Dr. Smith, were taken. 



No. 3 was from the " High Hills of Santee," near Statesburg, in Sumter 

 county. 



CLIMATE. 



Having an elevation of four hundred to five hundred feet and upwards 

 above the sea level, the red hills enjoy a dryer and more bracing atmos- 

 phere than the regions to the south. While it is a notable fact that they 

 are not so subject to the severer influences of storm winds as the lower 

 lying lands, the ordinary movements of the air are more perceptible there 

 than in the lower grounds. Thus, during the extremest heats of summer, 

 there is rarely a night when the refreshing influence of a gentle south 

 wind is not felt, blowing with a uniformity as though it had directly 

 traversed the seventy miles intervening between these slopes and the 

 ocean. Owing to this movement of the air and to its greater dryness, 

 late spring frosts are of less frequent occurrence here than they are fur- 

 ther south. Nor is vegetation destroyed by cold so early in the fall. In 

 ascending these hills in the autumn and early winter at a certain eleva- 

 tion a stratum of warm air is encountered, which seems to cling about 

 the hill-tops, while a much chillier night air fills the bottoms. These ad- 

 vantages at one time made this region famous for its fruits. During the 

 severest winter of the last half century the banana and the sago palm 

 in the open ground, protected only by a few handsful of cotton seed on 

 their roots, though cut by the frost, retained sufficient vitality to throw 

 up vigorous shoots the ensuing spring. This greater length of growing 

 season has also made attempts at growing sea island cotton and sugar 

 cane more successful here than lower down. The whole region is remark- 

 ably healthy, no taint of malaria approaches it and it is in an unusual 

 degree free from epidemics of every description. For these reasons many 

 localities here, especially the " High Hills of Santee," were formerly much 

 frequented as summer and health resorts by planters from all parts of the 

 State, as well as from other Southern States. 



GROWTH. 



The long leaf pine thins out on these hills and is sometimes replaced 

 by short leaf pine of large growth. Their southern aspect is the upper 

 limit of the long gray moss. The characteristic growth, however, is oak 



