CHAPTER XVI. 



Journey through North Carolina. Wilmington. Recent Firj^i Passports 

 for Slaves. Cape Fear River and Smithfield. Spanish IJHB^and Uses 

 of. Charleston. Anti-Negro Feeling. Passage from Mulattoes to 

 Whites. Law against importing free Blacks. Dispute with Massachu 

 setts. Society in Charleston. Governesses. War Panic. Anti-English 

 Feeling caused by Newspaper Press. National Arbitration of the Amer 

 icans. Dr. Bachman s Zoology. Geographical Representation of Spe 

 cies. Rattle-Snakes. Turkey Buzzards. 



Dec. 23, 1845. THE monotony of the scenery in the princi 

 pal route from the northern to the southern states is easily 

 understood by a geologist, for the line of railroad happens to run 

 for hundreds of miles on the tertiary strata, near their junction 

 with the granitic rocks. Take any road in a transverse direction 

 from the sea coast to the Alleghanies, and the traveler will meet 

 with the greatest variety in the scenery.^ In passing over the 

 tertiary sands and clays, we see Pine Barrens where the soil is 

 sandy, and a swamp, or cane-brake, where the argillaceous beds 

 come to the surface. The entire absence of all boulders and 

 stones, such as are observable almost every where in the New 

 England States and New York, is a marked geological peculiar 

 ity of these southern lowlands. Such erratic blocks and boulders 

 are by no means confined in the north to the granitic or second 

 ary formations, for some of the largest of them, huge fragments 

 of granite, for example, twenty feet in diameter, rest on the 

 newer tertiary deposits of the island of Martha s Vineyard, off 

 the coast of Massachusetts. 



After leaving Richmond, I remarked that the railway from 

 Weldon to Wilmington, through North Carolina, had not im 

 proved in the last three years, nor the stations or inns where wo 

 stopped. I was told, in explanation, that this line would soon 



* Sco iny &quot; Travels in North America,&quot; voL i. p. 93 ; an&amp;lt;! the colored 

 ^eulo. icrtl map, ! 



