third party, as it were, stretching across the middle country of the State, between the larger farmers of the upper country on the one hand, and the planters of the lower country on the other. This, together with the sparsely settled country, where heavy sand hills were not favorable to transportation, before the days of railroads, has made this section in some sort a barrier between these two sections, socially and industrially, as it is geologically.

The crops are: cotton, 35,433 acres, two per cent. of the entire surface; yield, 15,055 bales, 6.1 bales per square mile, or about one hundred and ninety-three pounds of lint cotton per acre, a little above the average of the State, owing doubtless to the large area from which the small number of acres planted is selected. The yield per capita is only two hundred and thirty-nine pounds, less than in any portion of the State north of the lower pine belt and south of the Piedmont country.

Corn and other grain, 93,283 acres, yielding 920,444 bushels, a fraction less than ten bushels per acre, but thirty-two bushels per capita of the population, nearly double the average for the State, and twelve bushels per capita more than the next highest (the Piedmont) region. Another result of an independent small proprietary and of a rural population removed from the thoroughfares of travel and of trade, and forced truly on their own resources for subsistence.

In all other crops and fallow there is 22,643 acres, most of which is in orchards and gardens.

The work stock numbers 8,518, being 3.8 per square mile, which is less than in any region of the State, except among the extensive unimproved forests of the lower pine belt, where the proportion is only a little more than half the above. The ratio of work stock to population is 29-100 to one, being nearly double the average of the State. This is owing to the larger proportion of rural population, and consequently of farmers employing stock; to the small independent farm-holdings, separated by wide tracts of unimproved land; the small proportion of crops worked by hand, such as cotton and rice and the larger proportion of land in grain, tilled chiefly by horse power; and to the great facility and cheapness of keeping stock on home-raised supplies, in place of doing so with corn and hay brought from the north and west. These same reasons will account. for there being only seventeen acres of tilled land to the head of work stock, seven acres less than the average of the State, although the lands are light and of easy culture.

There is 70,901 herd of all kinds, being only twenty-nine to the square mile, which is eight less than the average for the State, and less than any where in the State, except upon the sea coast, and in the lower pine belt. This statement will doubtless seem very strange to the farmers in these

regions, affording the widest ranges of forest pasturage for stock, and who consider stock-raising as one of their most important concerns. This opinion among the sand hills arises from the fact, that there is 2.47 head of stock to each one of population, nearly double the average for the State, which confirms the importance of their stock to them, while it fails to show that lands in woods-pasture, with freedom of range for stock, give as much return in stock as lands under cultivation. On the contrary, tables here appended, show that the amount of live stock per square mile increases, with the increase in the number of acres of tiled. land per square mile. Whence it follows that stock raising in this State has passed out of that early condition of things, when wild stock roaming at large yielded the largest return.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PIEDMONT REGION.

LOCATION, PHYSICAL FEATURES.

The Piedmont region of South Carolina coincides very nearly with what is known as the upper country of the State. It includes the whole. of eight counties, to wit: Abbeville, Anderson; Newberry, Laurens, Union, Fairfield, Chester and Lancaster. It also embraces the northern portion of Edgefield and Lexington, and the northwestern portions of Richland, Kershaw and Chesterfield. The southern parts of Oconee and Pickens, and the southern and larger portions of Greenville, Spartanburg and York are within its limits. A line drawn from a point on the Savannah river three miles above Hamburg to Columbia, and running thence northeast to where the Great Pee Dee river crosses from North into South Carolina, defines, in a general way, its southern border. Its northern boundary follows, in the main, the direction of the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line railroad, which lies on the edge of the Alpine region, just north of the one under consideration.

PHYSICAL FEATURES.

The physical features of this portion of the State entitle it to the name of the Piedmont Region. Its rocks are so similar to those of the Blue Ridge mountains that, though they have been broken down, levelled off, and worn away by exposure, during the countless ages, to the vicissitudes of the seasons, they are, and always have been, the foot hills of the Apalachian range, while the broken and mountainous region to the north, usually spoken of as the Piedmont country, might be better called the Alpine or Sub-Alpine region of the State.

The elevation of thirty-one points in the Piedmont region, varying from a minimum of 179.5 feet on the granite rocks at the Congaree bridge, below Columbia, to a maximum of 880 feet at Belton, on the Greenville railroad, give a mean elevation above the sea of 590 feet. The mean elevation of the Columbia and Augusta railroad, where it passes along the southern border of the region, is 575 feet. That of the Air Line railroad in South Carolina, lying to the north of it and almost wholly within the Alpine region, is 910 feet. Between these two lines, therefore, a distance of some ninety miles, there is a general rise of the surface of three hundred and thirty-five feet, or less than four feet to the mile. This is a gentler slope than that of the tertiary plain or low country. The distance from the sea to its northern border being about one hundred miles, and the difference in elevation something more than five hundred feet, or over five feet to the mile.

The face of the country presents a gently undulating plain, which becomes more rolling as it approaches the rivers and larger streams, and is finally hilly and broken above the bottoms and narrow, low grounds, through which the numerous water courses find their passage.

While the general rise in the surface is less than that in the low country, the rise in the beds of the streams, owing to the resistance of the underlying rocks, which prevent the water from deepening their channels, is much greater. Thus, the elevation above the sea of the lower falls of these rivers is, for the Savannah, 133 feet; for the Congaree, 135.3 feet; for the Wateree, 133 feet; but where they enter this region from the north, the surface of the water has an elevation above the sea level of 403 feet for the Savannah, of 552 feet for the Broad river, and of 544 feet for the Catawba. This gives an average difference of 360 feet in about 83 miles, or a fall per mile in the Piedmont region of 43 feet, against an average fall in the lower course of these rivers of about 1.2 feet per mile. While this renders the navigation of the upper portions of these rivers difficult, it adds largely to their availability as water powers for moving stationary machinery.

The Savannah river, on the western boundary of the State, passes through the metamorphic rocks for more than one hundred miles, and although it receives many affluents, and some of them quite large, on its eastern bank, they join at such an acute angle as to make its eastern water shed very narrow-scarcely anywhere exceeding twenty miles in width. To the east, Lynch's river passes through this region for about twelve miles, its western water shed not exceeding five miles. Between these two narrow water sheds in the east and west there is an interval of about one hundred miles. The numerous streams traversing this interval belong to one river system, and unite shortly after entering the ter

tiary plain to form the Santee river, which has been called the river of South Carolina. The swift Catawba, with a fall of nearly six feet to the mile, merges into the Wateree and forms the eastern and main channel of this river system. Its larger affluents all reach it from the west, those from the east being, in comparison, small. The Saluda, on the other hand, the most westerly river of the group, receives all its larger affluents from the east; a high ridge on its western water shed, for the most part barely five miles wide, separates its waters from those flowing into the Savannah. The triangular space enclosed between these two streams and washed by their numerous tributaries, viz: Reedy, Little, Bush, Broad, Ennoree, Tyger, Pacolet and Fair Forest rivers, besides many large creeks and branches, bears ample evidence to the erosion it has suffered. The softer rocks, such as tale and mica slates, found beyond these streams on the eastern and western ridges of the triangle, are wanting within, it having been washed away, leaving behind them only the hard gneiss or the still harder granite to dispute the passage of the waters.

RIVERS.

The following gives the leading characteristics of some of these streams so far as they have been ascertained, numerically: