TRANSPORTATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 023 



Peter Fayssoux, Richard Champion, Aaron Loocock, Pearson, 



John James, Francis Marion, John Dawson, Alexander Gillon, Samuel 

 Midwood, John Richardson, Ephraim Mitchell, William Bull, Duncan 

 McRae, Nathaniel Russell, Philip Gadsden, Peter Belin, Henry Laurens, 

 Jr., Edward Rutledge, Ralph Izard, John Budd, Robert Beatty, William 

 Smith, Minor Winn, William Clarkson, William Plill, James Theus, 

 Joseph Atkinson, Thomas Jones and Daniel Bourdeaux. This was the 

 grandest work of internal improvement that had been attempted in all 

 America (although it was soon afterwards surpassed by similar schemes 

 in other States), and nothing can show more conclusively the devotion 

 and resolute spirit of its promoters than the fact that after the charter 

 was obtained six years were consumed in making up the company. At 

 length, in 1792, work was commenced, and in July, 1800, at a cost of 

 $750,000, the canal was finished and a boat loaded with salt went from 

 Charleston to Granby.* The Santee Canal, twenty-two miles long, thirty- 

 five feet wide at the surface of the water, with a minimum depth of four 

 feet (the same as the Erie Canal), and thirteen locks, all built of stone or 

 brick, was a work of which the State may well be proud. It was no 

 light misfortune either to the generation which built the canal or to those 

 which witnessed its gradual disuse and final abandonment, that so much 

 public spirit, so much faith and energy, should have failed to yield a rich 

 return. Although the Santee Canal never realized the expectations of 

 its pryectors, it served a useful purpose, and was for thirty- odd years an 

 important highway, serving to keep down the rates of land carriage be- 

 tween Charleston and an extensive and important region. The defect in 

 the canal was its location across a ridge, and consequently the want of a 

 supply of water at its summit, sixt^^-nine feet above tide level. 



The facilities for water transportation in South Carolina probably 

 reached their highest development just before the epoch of railroads — 

 they are thus described in Mills' Statistics, published in 1826, page 156, 

 ef seq. : " The Savannah river divides this State from Georgia. It has 

 a ship navigation eighteen miles, from the ocean to the city of Savannah, 

 and good steamboat navigation 140 miles further, to Hamburg and Au- 

 gusta. Above these places, 100 miles, to Andersonville, the river has 

 thirty-three miles of rapids, with a fall of about eight feet to the mile, 

 on a regular inclined plane; the other sixty-seven miles is smooth, deep 



* In this same year. 1792, the " Western Inland Navigation Company " was incor- 

 porated by the State of New York, for the purpose of makino; a lock navipition from 

 the Hudson river to Lake Ontario, but it accomplished very little, and after great 

 expenditures, abandoned its work, which extended from the Mohawk to Oneida Lake. 

 Nothing more was done until 1817, when the New York Legislature appointed a com- 

 mission to build what has been since known as the Erie Canal. This was finished in 

 1 825 — a quarter of a century after the Santee Canal was opened. 



