INTRODUCTION. 
19 
less considerable swamps, as Flower’s Swamp, lower clown on Lumber 
River, and Horse Swamp on Cape Fear River ; and others on South 
River and its tributaries ; Coneto Swamp in the eastern part of Edge- 
combe ; the swamps between Chockowinity Creek and Blount’s Creek, 
Jackson Swamp, Pantego &c., in Beaufort ; and Bear Swamp in Chowan, 
some of them 10 to 20 miles and more in area. 
The most productive farms in the State have been reclaimed from the 
borders of many of these swamps, and they are comparable to the most 
fertile and inexhaustible soils in the world, constant cultivation for more 
than 100 years, without manure, having shown no sensible effect on their 
fertility. The w r o> - ds pocosin and dismal, so common in the coast region, 
are local synonyms for swamp. 
Savannahs . — The term savannah is used to designate two very differ- 
ent classes of land, the one a gladey, peaty kind of swamp, the other a 
true prairie, a body of level, treeless, grass land. There are many tracts 
of the latter description in the counties near the coast. Probably the 
largest one is found in the eastern part of Beaufort count} 7 , called the Big 
Savannah near the mouth of Pnngo river. Its extent is about 3,000 acres. 
Another nearly as large, is the well known Burgaw Savannah, on the 
railroad, 25 miles above Wilmington. The origin of the Savannahs is 
doubtless the same as that of the prairies of the vVest; the chief cause of 
them (here at least), is the want of drainage ; and this is due partly to the 
level surface on which the water is held by the thick growth of grass, as 
by a sponge, and partly to a close, pasty, impervious soil. 
The Middle Division, or Hill Country, lying between the mountains 
on the west and the seaboard plain on the east, is not sharply defined on 
either hand, but is simply the term of transition from one to the other. 
It is, in form, a parallelogram, nearly included between the parallels of 
latitude 35° and 36^°, for a length of 200 miles ; and its limiting lines, 
south-east and north-west, are about 150 miles long. It comprises nearly 
one half of the territory of the State. It rises, toward the northwest, not 
less than 4 feet to the mile, attaining an elevation of 1,000 to 1,500 feet at 
the foot of the Blue Ridge, and having an average elevation of about 650 
feet. It is, however, traversed by a number of large rivers which have cut 
their channels 100 to 300 feet below the intervening ridges or divides, 
wdiose slopes are also channelled by the transverse courses of the smaller 
tributary streams, so that the whole surface is carved by their erosive 
action into an endless succession of hills and valleys. 
On considering this region a little more narrowly, it is seen to separate 
itself into two regions, which may be described as the middle region 
proper and the piedmont region. The former is characterized by along 
