NOETH-CAROLHSTA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 57 



becomes yellow after it has appeared above the ground when 

 it has reached the height of 10 or 12 inches. The most 

 valuable swamp and pocosin lands lie in Hyde, Beaufort, 

 Jones, Onslow and Brunswick counties ; those of Hyde have 

 been steadily cultivated for more than one hundred years 

 without manures, and still the crops are equally as good as 

 when first planted. Hundreds of square miles of the most 

 valuable of these lands still remain unsubdued. It may be 

 inferred that, as these swamp lands are so low and wet, that 

 they must necessarily be extremely unhealthy, or become so 

 when drained and the vegetable matter begins to decompose. 

 Experience, however, does not support this view. The testi- 

 mony of those who have cultivated them for forty years is, 

 that their families have enjoyed as much health as their 

 neighbors who have lived at a distance. Persons who are in 

 the habit of plunging into the swamp lands knee deep for 

 draining, and when drained to live in the immediate vicinity 

 of the extended surface of black vegetable mould for years, 

 are rarely sick with fevers. The points which are unhealthy 

 are those which are exposed to winds which blow over ex- 

 tended surfaces of the waters of the IsTeuse or Cape Fear 

 rivers. Miasm, which generates fever, arises more 'from the 

 banks of rivers than from the swamp and pocosin soils. 



32. The soil which is known as the gallberry soil is not of 

 a uniform composition or appearance ; one of the most com- 

 mon kinds is formed of sand, intermixed with black vegetable 

 matter. On exposure to rains by the road-side, or where 

 ditches are cut through it so as to expose a section one or two 

 feet thick, it has a grayish look from the presence of the white 

 marine sand which is exposed by washing. A microscope 

 shows at once the naked sand. A soil of this description, and 

 which is widely spread over the flat low grounds of the mid- 

 dle section of the eastern counties, I submitted to careful 

 analysis for the purpose of determining the amount of avail- 

 able material which it contains. It was taken from the plant- 

 ation of Mr. Lane, of Craven county, but is a fair representa- 

 tion of the soil of the Dover pocosin. It contained : 



