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A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860
A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 Author:Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA LOWLANDS, TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN the coast region in the neighborhood of Charleston and Savannah the ... more »influence of physiography upon social, industrial, and commercial history can hardly be overestimated. Coast configuration, soil, and climate have all been shaping factors.1 Besides being semi-tropical, the economic life of the district may be characterized as somewhat amphibious. While the people dwelt upon the dry land, they tilled their rice upon fields periodically submerged, and they relied for transportation largely upon the abundant waterways. The location and character of the watercourses was in early times of specially great importance, often controlling the spread of settlement, and determining the commercial economy. A fact of large consequence, for example, was the shallowness of these channels. In contrast with the Virginia lowlands, where the so-called rivers are really arms of the sea, permitting the ocean-going craft of colonial times to sail directly to the individual wharves of a thousand planters, the South Carolina 1 For topographical descriptions see John Drayton, View of South Carolina, Charleston, 1802, pp. 6 ff.; Robert Mills, Statistics of South Carolina, Charleston, 1826, pp. 130-133; Harry Hammond, ed., South Carolina Resources, Charleston, 1883, pt. i; Edmund Ruffin, Sketches of Lower North Carolina and the Similar Adjacent Lands, Raleigh, N.C., 1861. coast was water-broken in a way which required the loading and unloading of cargoes at a central point and the collecting of produce and distributing of supplies by means of small river craft. In Virginia, little concentration of commerce was required, so long as settlement was confined within the lowlands; and commercial towns, in spite ...« less