30 CLIMATES. 



climates and blessed with health, there is no reason why the surplus 

 lands of this section should not become the homes of many thousands 

 more successful farmers than now, when the large farms are divided 

 up and properly cultivated. The main line of the Southern Railway 

 runs through this section, with branches east and west in all sections, 

 so that railroad transportation is excellent. At almost every station 

 one sees cotton mills in operation, and at High Point, a town which 

 has grown in the past fifteen years from a hamlet of 300 people to 

 a city of over 7,000, there is the largest woodworking industry in 

 the whole South. All these factories are taking men who were for- 

 merly on the farms, and are opening markets in all sections for gar- 

 den and farm products to feed these people, for every cotton mill 

 means quite a village to be fed by the surrounding farms. The pied- 

 mont section is a high rolling plain, rising from an elevation of about 

 600 feet on its eastern border next the hills to about 1,500 feet at the 

 foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It has the finest water-powers 

 of the State, which are slowly being utilized for manufacturing and 

 electrical power for the cities around. The soil is naturally good and 

 retains the improvement that is easily added by good farming. Its 

 chief lack is farmers men who will take up and make homes and 

 improve the surplus lands, which as yet are low in price, but rapidly 

 advancing. 



THE CENTRAL SECTION. 



This comprises the undulating country extending from the hills 

 that mark the outline of the piedmont country proper to the falling- 

 off of the uplands to the level coastal plain. This is sometimes called 

 the lower piedmont. In general character of soils it resembles the 

 true piedmont country, but the soils are more generally sandy and 

 gravelly over the red clay, though in many sections the same red clay 

 forms the surface soil. From its lesser elevation the winter climate 

 is slightly warmer than that of the upper piedmont section. On the 

 southern end of this section we come to the great long-leaf pine belt, 

 the sand-hill region, which, beginning in North Carolina, runs south- 

 west through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louis- 

 iana, and into Texas, an extended region of sand-hills supposed to be 

 the ancient dunes of the seacoast when the lower country was not 

 elevated above the Atlantic. This was for generations regarded only 

 for its product of turpentine and tar, and later for its lumber. But 

 of late years it has grown into a region for winter resorts, at first by 

 consumptives, who found the balmy air and dry soil favorable, and 

 many of whom, finding that they could live in comfort there and 

 could not do so in the North, settled permanently and built up the 

 town of Southern Pines. Making homes there, these people natu- 

 rally wanted to grow something. The deep sandy soil had always 

 been considered too barren for any cultivation. But it was soon 

 found that with proper .fertilization the soil was admirably adapted 



