CLIMATES. 29 



In short, the mountain country is admirably adapted to dairying and 

 fruit-growing and homes 



"Where the wing of life's best angel, 

 Health, is on the breeze." 



THE PIEDMONT SECTION. 



This section properly extends from the foot of the Blue Ridge to 

 the line of hills some hundred or more miles eastward, which make 

 the falls of the rivers that run from the mountains to the sea. This 

 eastern limit is a series of elevations rising in some places to over 

 1,000 feet above the sea and known by various names, as the Uwhar- 

 rie Mountains, Hickory Mountain, Occoneechee Hills, and Rouge- 

 mont, and it extends from the South Carolina line to the Virginia 

 line. Between this line of hills and the Blue Ridge is a rolling 

 country of hill and dale and river and valley, with their fertile bot- 

 tom-lands. In this section the two tiers of counties south of the 

 Virginia line are mainly devoted to the production of the famous 

 gold-leaf tobacco, which is produced in North Carolina better than 

 elsewhere. Southward of these counties the leading crop is cotton. 

 The whole section is evidently naturally fitted to diversified farming, 

 with grass, grain, and cotton, with cattle to consume the abundant 

 hay crops that can be produced. The climate of this region, sheltered 

 from the northwest blast in winter by the high mountains west, is 

 far milder in winter than the mountain country west of the Ridge. 

 The snowfall in winter is light even lighter than the sections east 

 of it, because of the lesser humidity of the climate and there is 

 hardly a day in winter when farm work in the soil cannot go on. 

 The soils of this section are largely the result of the decomposition 

 of granitic rocks forming the deep beds of blood-red clay. Here and 

 there this red clay is overlaid by a gray and lighter soil, the tobacco 

 soil of the country. The red-clay lands are admirably adapted to the 

 cultivation of wheat, and when well improved grow great crops. On 

 the red-clay soil of this section the late Governor Holt made on an 

 80-acre field 46% bushels of wheat per acre, and the same well- 

 improved farm makes great crops of cotton, corn, and hay. Thousands 

 of acres of similar lands are waiting for the systematic farmer to go 

 to work to bring out their capacities. There is no section where deep 

 plowing and subsoiling produce greater results than on these red-clay 

 uplands, for the piedmont red clay is all good soil down to the fast 

 rock, when once aerated and frosted by the winter, and there are 

 thousands of farms nominally worn out that only need a man with 

 energy enough to break into the fertile farm that lies right under 

 the scratch made by the little one-horse plow of by-gone days. With 

 careless cultivation and shallow plowing these hills are apt to wash 

 into gullies, but with deep plowing and proper level and shallow cul- 

 ture there is less danger of this. With one of the most delightful of 



