TOWNS OF SOUTH CAROLINA. GG9 



bay from Charleston, and is connected with it by a steam ferry. It is a 

 pleasure and health resort for Charlestonians and people from the upper 

 country, who resort here in summer to enjoy the sea air and bathing its 

 fine beach affords ; it contains many handsome cottages and some attrac- 

 tive drives. It derives its name from Fort Moultrie, which beat off the 

 British fleet of Sir Peter Parker, June 28th, 1776, and which, with Fort 

 Sumter, a mile distant across the north channel, guards the entrance to 

 the port. There are six stores. 



McClellansville has ten stores, and is some thirty miles to the northeast. 



The city of 



CHARLESTON 



is built on a peninsula, formed by the confluence of the Ashley and 

 Cooper rivers, that has an average elevation of eight to ten feet above 

 high tide. Its safe and spacious harbor, forty feet deep at the city, and 

 three miles wide, opens to the sea at a point about six miles to the south- 

 east. The soil is loose, quartzose sand for a depth of twent}'^ feet, resting 

 on a tenacious and impervious clay. The city is three miles long, and 

 varies in width from half a mile to two miles. " The first site of the 

 town (on the western bank of the Ashley) had been chosen without re- 

 gard to commerce. The point between the two rivers, to which the 

 names (Ashle}^ and Cooper) of Lord Shaftesbury were given, soon at- 

 tracted attention ; those who had purchased grants there, desirous of ob- 

 taining neighbors, willingly offered to surrender one-half their land as 

 commons of pasture. The neck of land, then called Oyster Point, soon to 

 become a village named from the reigning king, immediately gained a 

 few inhabitants ; and on the spot where opulence now crowds the wharves 

 of the most prosperous mart on our Southern seaboard, among the groves 

 that swept down to the river's brink, and were covered with the yellow 

 jesamine, which burdened the vernal zephyrs with its perfumes, the cabins 

 of graziers began the city. Long afterwards the splendid vegetation, 

 which environs Charleston, especially the live oak, palmetto and cypress 

 trees along the broad road which is now Meeting street, delighted the 

 observer by its perpetual verdure. The settlement steadil}^ increased ; 

 and to its influence is in some degre3 to bs attributed the love of letters. 

 and that desire of institutions of learning for which South Carolina was 

 afterwards distinguished." (Bancroft.) 



NotAvithstanding the provisions of the fundamental constitutions of 

 the great John Locke, devised expressly for this colony, Charleston was 

 not governed by a mayor or aldermen. Nor was there any township or- 

 ganization, or " select-men," no merchant or craft guilds, or unions, taking 

 part in local politics. The affairs of the town were administered directly 



