SECONDARY STRATA. 129 
and of Rocky Point, in New-Hanover, owe their excellence to the 
same cause. It is not merely by affording lime to the soil, though 
the effect of this must be considerable, but also by presenting at 
the surface a mixture of the other earths, that independently of 
this, is of a very different kind, that it owes its superior produc- 
tiveness. It may not improbably be ascertained hereafter, that 
this formation has a more extensive ran|L,e through Greene, Du- 
plin, and Sampson, than has hitherto been supposed. In the two 
latter counties especially, as on the Five Runs, and Goshen 
Swamp, the whole aspect of the country, and the characters of 
the soil, are different from what is observed in those parts that 
are unquestionably tertiary. 
Where the shells of this formation were imbedded in siliceous 
sand, they have been dissolved in the course of ages, by the 
water charged with a small quantity of carbonic acid, derived 
from the atmosphere, that has flowed over them, and the calca- 
reous matter has descended until it met with the silica, when it 
has been arrested, and has entered into that imperfect combina- 
tion with that substance, which constitutes mortar. The result 
is, a pretty firm rock, hard enough to give fire with steel, and full 
of cavities, where shells have been, an aggregate, not of shells, 
but of casts of shells. This is quarried and cut into mill-stones, 
most of which are small, and turned by hand, but some, of the 
size employed where there is a command of water power. They 
answer tolerably well, but are deficient in hardness. 
When there is little or no sand, we have at some points a sim- 
ple accumulation of shells, forming a good limestone, sufficiently 
pure for all the common purposes of building, and of which it 
might be expected that it would supply a large extent of country 
with quicklime. Such is that nine miles below Waynesboro', in 
the north-west corner of Jones, in the northern part of Onslow, 
at Wilmington, and on the N. W. branch of the Cape Fear, to 
the distance of forty miles above. But this enterprize has been 
already so often, earnestly, but ineffectually, recommended that 
it can apparently answer no good purpose to point it out again, 
as a field of industry, that promises to reward amply whoever 
shall have the spirit to enter in and cultivate it. 
Of the Middle and Western Counties. The north-western 
half of the state, is composed altogether of rocks that at an early 
period in the earth's history were brought into the positions they 
now occupy ; and of the soil that has been formed upon them, 
by the decay and disintegration of rocks of the same kind. 
There is no stratum of foreign matter that has been brought in 
from abroad, in any part of this region, that which has been caused 
by rain water rushing down the sides of the hills, and the beds of 
the streams, alone excepted. The evidence of this is furnished 
by the facts, that the gravel is all angular and sharp, and that the 
characters of the soil, constantly vary, with those of the subja- 
c ot rock. A very few appearances there are that are difficult 
12 
