340 On the Low Country of North Carolina. 



groat abundance, they inferred, that they had been gained 

 from the ocean. The gulf stream being a peculiar feature in 

 the physical geography of the western world, and passing 

 along, at the distance of seventy or eighty miles from the 

 coast — it was conjectured, apparently from the circumstance 

 of proximity alone, to be the cause of the peculiar aspect of 

 our shores, and the agent by which the low country had been 

 created. Philosophers acquiesced in the popular theory, with- 

 out ever troubling themselves to enquire whether it was war- 

 ranted by facts, and could be supported by argument. Its 

 correctness is tacitly admitted by Mr. Scrope, in his letter to 

 the Editor of the Journal. " Does not the ocean seem to re- 

 treat more rapidly than can be explained, by the accumula- 

 tive action of the gulf stream upon its shores?" 



We have no evidence whatever, that the gulf stream has 

 the effect of accumulating sand and gravel on our coast, and 

 least of all is there any probability that it is piling them up, 

 in situations elevated above the level of the ocean. The 

 waters of the West Indian seas are -described as so clear and 

 transparent, that the vessels which navigate them seem to 

 float in the air, and the mariner can discern fish and coral at 

 sixty fathoms below the surface. The waters of the gulf 

 stream are of a deeper blue than the rest of the ocean, a 

 circumstance which seems to prove at least, that they are not 

 turbid. The rate of the current is from one to three miles an 

 hour, and with only this velocity, its propelling force must 

 be feeble — hardly adequate to the transportation of sand and 

 gravel. And even if we suppose these substances to be 

 brought along by it from the gulf of Mexico, it can only 

 strew them over the bottom of the sea — it can never elevate 

 them above its surface. 



It will perhaps be said, that the stream brings along the 

 materials and deposits them, and they are afterwards thrown 

 up by the waves. But we are altogether destitute of evidence 

 that the waves have any tendency to the production of such 

 an effect. Our theoretical views of the nature and mode of 

 their action would lead to the conclusion, that they would de- 

 molish and disperse existing sand-banks rather than pile up 

 new ones — and the former rather than the latter has in fact 

 been their effect, at least of late years, along the coast of 

 North Carolina. A new inlet was opened, not long since, at 

 the mouth of the Cape Fear river. It is well known that the 

 island which was then formed is gradually wasting away. 



