On the Low Country of North Carolina. 347 



safety, apparently , may we reason from the effects to the 

 cause. It is what I have ventured to do in the preceding 

 pages ; it being acknowledged on all hands that the forma- 

 tion of the low country is among the more recent geological 

 phenomena. Having satisfied my own mind of the correct- 

 ness of the views here taken, I determined to submit them to 

 the consideration of geologists ; believing that the establish- 

 ment of a sound and accurate theory, or even an approach to 

 it, always affords us essential aid in the further prosecution of 

 our investigations. If their correctness shall be admitted, 

 there will appear to be no improbability in the idea, that our 

 sand and clay have not been brought to us, from the gulf of 

 Mexico, but are the debris of rocks, that have been worn to 

 pieces in the neighborhood of the places where they now lie, 

 and strewed over the bottom of the sea— sand, from un- 

 known causes, having been deposited in some situations, and 

 clay in others. 



Which of the causes, just specified, has produced this en- 

 croachment of the land upon the sea — whether a depression 

 of the level of the ocean, or an elevation of its bed, we have 

 no means of determining, from evidence furnished on the 

 spot. We meet, occasionally, amongst the sand hills, with a 

 sandstone and conglomerate of a tolerably firm texture, of 

 which the people living where it occurs, say that it has .been 

 melted. But the marks of fusion are not as distinct as they 

 are in the trap rocks. The question will probably be decid- 

 ed in favor of elevation, on the ground of what has been ob- 

 served and settled in other countries. 



Age of the Low Country. 



The shells that occur in it prove it to be a recent member 

 of the series of strata, but the forests, by which it has long- 

 been covered, prove the era of its emerging from the sea, to 

 be considerably remote. In digging the Clubfoot and Har- 

 low canal, near the mouth of the Neuse river, the remains of 

 both the mastodon and elephant were found. The races to 

 which these remains belonged, are supposed to have become 

 extinct, either before or at the time of the last great catastro- 

 phe, that changed the face of the globe. The low country 

 was inhabited, by these animals, therefore, before the time of 

 the deluge recorded in the scriptures. 



I am, very respectfully, yours, E. Mitchell. 



University of North Carolina, Oct. 10, 1827. 



