The Granby quarry, two miles below the city, furnished the material. of which the State House is built. It has not been worked since the war..

The Green quarry, one mile north of Granby, is worked by the Columbia Granite Company, making blocks for the pavements of Charleston. The company have a large capital, employ about twenty block makers and fifty drillers and laborers; the product is at the rate of one million of paving blocks annually.

Colonel F. W. McMaster has a quarry of fine granite on the Greenville Railroad, one mile north of Columbia; it is also within one hundred feet of the State canal that is being constructed here.

Professor Woodrow, of the University of South Carolina, who has examined these rocks in the vicinity of Columbia, says: "As to quantity they are practically inexhaustible. The rock is of a light gray color, the feldspar being light colored and the mica dark brown or black. It is fine grained, compact, and of uniform texture, and is comparatively free from seams and injurious veins, so that solid blocks of any desired size may be attained. Its durability might be inferred directly from the condition of its constituent material, and it is attested not only by blocks long exposed to the weather in the oldest buildings in the vicinity, but better still by the condition of the blocks that have been lying upon the surface for untold ages." For numerous other quarries see chapter on the Piedmont region, and the accompanying map.

FISHERIES.

South Carolina comes twentieth in the fish producing States, with 1,005 fishermen, and products valued at $212,482. She is, however, noted for her shrimp fisheries, these being more extensive than those of any other State, and nearly equal to those of all other States combined. In 1880 her fishermen secured 18,000 bushels, valued at $37,500. The principal fisheries are about Charleston, where several hundred negroes, with an occasional Spaniard, are engaged in fishing with hand-lines from vessels and small boats, to supply the city with whiting, blackfish and other species. A limited fishery occurs in the sounds about Beaufort, from which point a few fish are shipped to interior cities. Beyond the places mentioned no sea fishery of importance occurs, though there is more or less fishing for local supply along all portions of the coast. About 400,000 pounds of alewives, 207,600 pounds of shad, and 261,250 pounds of sturgeon, with considerable quantities of other species, were taken by the river fishermen, the largest fisheries being in the Edisto river and in the tributaries of Winyah Bay.

It may be here mentioned that in 1882 six whales were taken off Port Royal.

In 1878 a fish commission was appointed by the State government. Many eggs have been taken and the young fry hatched, and released in the streams of the State. In 1882 the commission released 166,000 well formed salmon, and 1,945,000 shad, besides a number of black bass and some salmon trout in the waters of the State. A State pond for the artificial propagation and culture of carp is established at Columbia, and has furnished these fish to 894 private ponds in the different sections of the State.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION

OF

TRANSPORTATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

By W. L. TRENHOLM.

The area of the State is about 30,000 square miles, and its topography creates three natural divisions, called the upper, middle and lower, of which the dividing lines are nearly parallel with the general line of the

coast.

Its frontage on the Atlantic, in a straight line from Little River Inlet to the mouth of the Savannah river, is one hundred and ninety miles, and towards this line the country descends in long undulations until it runs into the ocean, where it's flat edge is frayed out into capes and points and spits, or rent into islands, which present to the sea sloping beaches of white sand, backed by dunes covered with myrtle and studded with palmettos.

Between and behind these insulated fragments of the continent the sea water extends in bays, sounds and harbors, bordered with vast areas of marsh-covered mud flats, which, like the islands and the main land in rear of them, are pierced by innumerable inlets, creeks and passages, where twice a day the tides sweep through in endless ebb and flow.

Here the large rivers from the upper and middle country mingle their fresh waters with the brine, and lose their way to the sea amidst a labyrinth of tortuous passages.

On a belt varying in width from ten to thirty miles and stretching along the whole coast, these features repeat themselves with endless variation of detail, presenting to sloop and steamboat navigation access to full five thousand miles of shore line and to rivers, up which these vessels may ascend for hundreds of miles.

In the old days before railroads, half the area of the State enjoyed uninterrupted water communication with Charleston, and if we go back to

the first permanent European settlements, in 1670, we shall find that these characteristics of the country influenced materially the course of colonial development.

In the first place it was probably owing to the sub-division of the land by these water courses that the Indians in lower South Carolina were found in detached tribes, of only a few hundred each, which were too weak to contend singly against the whites, and too much separated from each other by physical barriers and old feuds to combine successfully.

In the next place the first settlers found the Indians well supplied with boats, but without roads, bridges, or domestic animals of burden, hence all the earlier needs of the colonists, in the way of transportation, were supplied by using the vessels they brought with them and the Indian boats. These Indian boats were of the same sort as were found along the whole coast from the Delaware capes to Florida, where they had been seen by Verazzani, in 1524, nearly a century and a half before the settlement of Charlestown. His description of them is thus translated by Hackluyt:

"We saw many of their boats made of one tree, twenty foote long and four foote broad, which are not made with iron or stone, or any other kind of metall; * ***** they help themselves with fire burning so much of the tree as is sufficient for the hollownesse of the boat, the like they doe in making the stern and fore part untill it be fit to sail upon the sea."

This sort of boat, constructed however with tools, continued in use by the colonists for a long time, under the names of Perriaguer, Pettiauger, and Dug-out. In 1696, the Colonial Legislature passed an Act to punish "any person who should steal, take away, or let loose any boat, perriaguer, or canoe," and from the earliest dates the statutes are full of the provisions made for opening and keeping open navigable waters.

It happened, too, that rice soon became the chief product of the country; it was grown in the swamps extending between the oozy water courses near the coast, and, being a heavy grain, is peculiarly dependent upon water transportation. The row boats and sloops that brought the rice to "town" belonged to the planters, and were manned by slaves; they carried back the family and plantation supplies, and at a later period were used in the annual moving to and from the city, in spring and autumn, which came into vogue. The rice was conveyed from the plantation to the landing in flats upon canals, or, when that was not practicable, it was hauled by oxen, on sleds.

Lumber, the next most important product of the country, was rafted to Charlestown, and on the rafts came also the wood to supply the city demand for fuel.

Among the exports, beef and pork occupy positions next in importance to lumber; the cattle and hogs, we know, were driven through the woods, for among the early Statutes is one prohibiting the slaughtering of animals within a certain time after they had been driven to "town."

A third consequence of the character of the country was, that when the colonists, who at first were planted only at Charleston and its immediate vicinity, began to push their settlements into the surrounding territory, their movements and location were determined by the directions and navigability of the water courses.

Georgetown, Beaufort, Goose Creek, Dorchester, Coosawhatchie, Saltketcher and Pocotaligo, were early occupied by traders with the Indians, and became, afterwards, rallying points of the colonists who took up the lands around them.

It was only after some settlements had been thus made that the colonists seemed to turn their attention to communications by land. In 1682, there is mention of a hundred and fifty mares and some horses that had been brought into the Province from New York and Rhode Island; and in the same year, on the 26th May, the Colonial Assembly passed the first law to provide for the making of roads,

Unfortunately, the text of the statute is lost, but the title has been preserved. It is "An Act for Highways." This Act was followed by many others of a special character, i. e., relating to particular localities, or providing for some particular work, all, however, conforming to a general plan which placed the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, as well as the conservation of navigable water courses, in the hands of prominent residents of the vicinity. Two or three of the leading planters in each neighborhood constituted the board of commissioners for that road district, and the confines of their territory were precisely defined.

Every male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty years of age was compelled by law to work on the roads of the district in which he lived; and all the timber required for bridges and causeways could be taken by the commissioners without compensation to the owner.

The location of roads and bridges, during the early days of the colony, was obviously governed by military considerations, rather than by those relating to trade and peaceful travel. The colonists were never free from attacks by the Spaniards and Indians until after 1715, and both before and after that time the apprehension of servile insurrection seemed always present to their minds.

To secure the public safety was, therefore, necessarily a prime consideration, and since the roads were at first regarded chiefly as lines of communication by which the scattered colonists could concentrate for defence, it is not surprising that the whole labor of the community should