TOWNS OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 



G85 



These great highways, through the most fertile and perhaps the least 

 developed portions of the State, could thus be permanently opened for 

 transportation, which would be cheapened to the lowest rates by the com- 

 petition consequent on the free admission of all carriers. The cost being 

 estimated at only $257 per mile. 



The improvement in the Waccamaw river, which has its course par- 

 allel to the Atlantic coast, will make it a link in the great interior line 

 of water communication along the seacoast, uniting at the Cape Fear 

 with the inland water routes leading to Norfolk, Va. The estimates of 

 the amounts necessary to complete the whole line of interior navigation 

 from Georgetown to Norfolk is stated by the United States engineer corps 

 as $6,225,805 ; the distance being 538 miles, the cost would be less than 

 half of that for a railway. 



Looking south west ward, the Winyaw canal, uniting the Santee with 

 the waters about Georgetown, opens an inland route for steamboats to 

 Savannah, requiring for its completion, according to Robert Mills, one 

 or two short canals, aggregating in length eight and a half miles. Be- 

 yond Savannah there is the long contemplated inland route across the 

 peninsula of Florida, and thence, by interior salt water rivers, to New 

 Orleans, an improvement, the cost of which has been estimated at less 

 than half the original outlay for the Erie canal, besides being always free 

 from the obstacles of ice. Such a route would allow fleets of steam tugs 

 and barges to transport in bulk, safely and cheaply, along the Galf and 

 Atlantic coast, all the products of the great West, from the head waters 

 of the Missouri and the Mississippi. 



