130 THE PIEDMONT REGION. 



The Savannah river is now navigable for pole boats carrying fifty bales 

 of cotton for one hundred and and fifty -four miles above Augusta. The 

 report of the Chief Engineer U. S. A., 1879, states that, for an outlay of 

 $188,000, a permanent channel, three feet deep and sixty feet wide, of 

 safe and easy navigation for such boats, could be made. For $97,000, in 

 addition to the above, one hundred and fourteen miles could be made 

 into a steamboat channel, ninety feet wide and three feet deep. 



The Saluda river is navigable for eighty-four miles above Columbia, 

 where it unites with the Broad to form the Congaree river, for the same 

 kind of boat. 



The Broad river is navigable for one hundred and thirteen miles in 

 South Carolina, above Columbia, and for twenty-eight miles more in 

 North Carolina, for this class of boats. It has a total length of one 

 hundred and seventy-five miles. 



The Catawba river has a fall of three hundred and twenty -five feet in the 

 fifty-five miles of its course in South Carolina. Its banks are three hun- 

 dred to three thousand feet apart, and from ten to one hundred feet high. 

 Above Rocky Mount, in Chester, there is a fall at one point of fifty feet 

 in four hundred yards. It has a total length of two hundred and seventy- 

 two miles, and its source is two thousand five hundred feet above the 

 level of the sea. 



The data above given w^ere obtained by surveys made in the dryest 

 season of a very dry year, and, therefore, represents these streams at ex- 

 treme low water. This low stage of the water prevails during October 

 and November. At other seasons, the volume of water would be, on the 

 average, two or three times as great. The rivers are subject to freshets, 

 rising twenty to thirty feet above low water mark, this rise being greatest 

 where they issue from the Piedmont region. No local falls under ten feet 

 have been entered in the table, although such falls not unfrequently 

 afford the most available powers. Together, these streams furnish a 

 navigable highway of four hundred and five miles, which might be greatly 

 and permanently improved and much increased for a moiety of what the 

 same length of railroad would cost. 



GEOLOGICAL FEATURES. 



The rocks of the upper country of South Carolina are a continuation 

 of and similar to the rocks of middle North Carolina, identified by the 

 Geologist of that State, Prof. W. C. Kerr, as belonging to the Laurentian 

 and Huronian formations. They are held to be the most ancient of rocks, 

 and antedate the unnumbered ages during which the varied forms of 

 plant and animal life have succeeded each other on this planet. Disclos- 



