PHYSICAL ASPECT OF THE STATE.

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The physical aspect of North Carolina presents some rather curious features, to which Governor Swain used to delight in calling the attention of the senior class in the University.

Computing the entire surface of the globe at 200,000,000 of square miles, the area of North Carolina, 50,000 square miles, is one-four-thousandth part. Computing the land surface at one-fourth of this, or 50,000,000 of square miles the area of North Carolina is just one-thousandth part thereof.

In 1776 the area of the original thirteen United States was but little over 1,000,000 square miles, of which North Carolina composed the twentieth part. Our present area, except the recent acquisition of Alaska, is, in round numbers, 3,000,000 of square miles, of which North Carolina constitutes the sixtieth part. In other words, says the Governor triumphantly, the world might be divided into just a thousand, and the Union into sixty, States equal in extent to North Carolina.

Again, the total population of the globe is estimated by the best geographers at 1,108,819,000; the population of North Carolina in 1870 was 1,070,000, or almost exactly the onethousandth part thereof. The average population of the globe is about 22 souls to the square mile-that of North Carolina is very nearly the same. North Carolina, also, is situated very nearly in the heart of the north temperate zone by latitude, and thurmally is perhaps precisely in its center, as is evidenced by its flora and by scientific observations carefully taken. In this respect, and particularly in the character of its productions, it is the center of the American Union, notwithstanding it is not included by geographers in the old group of "Middle States." It is the dividing line between the great staples, and

is both the northern border of the South and the southern border of the North. Here the two extremes meet. The cotton, rice, sugar and indigo of the south meet midway the State, the tobacco, wheat, rye, grass, oats and fruits, which constitute the chief products of the northern States; and so marked is this line, that I am told when scientific men have undertaken to work up and classify the flora of the United States, they have by common consent worked downward to North Carolina for the northern, and upward to North Carolina for the southern flora; and that here they find the great natural families of each region meeting and passing into each other. And the same is true, I am told, in regard to the fauna of the United States, also.

This happy mesne condition-geographical, thermal and political-is worthy the consideration of thinking people. Many interesting deductions may be drawn therefrom. Prominent among these are the beneficial conditions which here surround animal health and life, the great variety of vegetable productions, and the stable and equitable social and political institutions necessarily emanating from a community thus situated. Surely to be placed on the border where two great waves of agriculture meet, and where these products begin to be exchanged, is a great material advantage. And this advantage. is increased fourfold when it is remembered that this border land can produce at pleasure the peculiar staples of either section. The proof of this is found not only in the census reports, wherein it is shown that North Carolina comes nearer filling every column in the blanks than any other State, but also in the reports of men of science, who say that the flora presents a greater variety of species than can be found in any other portion of the continent. Professor Kerr, our State geologist, tells me that North Carolina contains over 2,500 species of plants. The fauna is also in the same excess over all other regions of the Union.

Here the long-leaf pine, the live-oak and the palmetto meet the Arctic spruces, the firs, and the Siberian birches of the North, and the magnolia spreads its glossy tropical foliage by the side of the hardy acorn-bearing oak. This variety of production is aided greatly by the shape of the earth's surface. From tide-water westward there is a gradual and steady rise of the land until the tops of the highest mountains are reached at an elevation of more than 6,700 feet. Computing 300 feet elevation equal to one degree, this would give us on the line of the 35th parallel, from the sea shore to the summit of Mt. Mitchell, all the varieties of climate and production to be found between that line and the 57th degree north. The country consists of three distinct regions, different in age and character, The first is the sand bed, extending from the shore of the ocean to the western edge of the long-leaf pine belt, about 100 miles in width. The course of this belt is almost precisely parallel to that of the sea shore and of the Blue Ridge, between which two it is situated, a little east of midway. This indicates very clearly that it was once, at no distant geological period, the Atlantic coast line and the broad flat plains between it and the present coast, filled with marl and marine fossils, constituted the bottom of the ocean. Geologically, this region belongs to the Post Pliocene or Quartenary age, which formations cover the whole surface, with the minutest out-croppings, on the banks of the streams, of Eocene and Miocene here and there. These meet the Triassic rocks south and west of Raleigh, which contain the coal measures, and the upper Laurentian rocks north and East of Raleigh.

In this belt are found the "pitch, tar, turpentine and lumber," which the old geographers declared constituted the "staple products of North Carolina." This ancient joke has stuck to us for more than half a century, and has invested us with the steadfast and fragrant soubriquet of "Tar-Heels." Happily, though the name remains, we are fast ceasing to

deserve it. The constant drain upon the pine forests has so much exhausted them that the traffic in their products has become comparatively unimportant. Smiling fields of corn and cotton occupy their places, and the lands which were once thought to be worthless except for their lumber, are becoming veritable gardens of fertility. Some 200,000 bales of cotton, 500,000 bushels of beans and peanuts-those invaluable aids to American railroad travel and legislation-3,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 10,000,000 bushels of corn, and the immense fields of peach trees and swelling vineyards of blushing grapes, all chiefly the product of that piney region of white sand, are enough to justify a new edition of the school geographies and redeem us from the implied reproach of the joke. Not only can this soil be made, useful to the agriculturist beyond what was expected after the exhaustion of its forests, but it has developed a capacity for some products superior to any soil on the continent. It produces near a half million bushels of sweet potatoes more than any other State, and of a quality perhaps better. It is the very home of the famous scuppernong grape which grows there with a luxuriance surpassing belief. One vine on Roanoke Island, known as Walter Raleigh's vine, is said to have covered an entire acre of ground, and to have produced in its prime more than 200 bushels of grapes. It is well authenticated that four vines will frequently cover an acre, producing fifty bushels of grapes each. The different varieties and seedlings of this grape flourish equally well wherever the long-leaf pine is found. And to the very base of the mountains, and all around their southern slopes, the grape of many kinds grows with profusion and bears fruit with luxuriant abundance. In view of the facts attending the beginning of grape culture here, I am tempted to predict that in a few years North Carolina will become the chief wine-producing State in the Union, California not excepted. So much for "pitch, tar, turpentine and

lumber." The places that know them now will soon know them no more. Peace to their memory! They were good friends in their day, and we are not ashamed of their association. We have no objection to being termed "Tar-Heels," and if our neighbors enjoy the joke, why, so do we!

After leaving this region comes next the Traissic formations containing the coal, which is a narrow belt, and then the regular azoic division, the Laurencian and Huronean rock, which, with inconsiderable exceptions, reach to the western limits of the State. They furnish a gravelly clay soil, and the face of the country is gently broken by an agreeable succession of hills and valleys. The latter are filled with streams and generally bordered by rich lowlands between the foot hills and the water. It is all well timbered, and produces every variety of farm crops. It much resembles the Piedmont uplands of Virginia. In addition to the commercial disadvantges North Carolina labors under, of having a cost cut up with sounds and sandbanks, the rivers present another. The three greatest rivers, Catawba, Yadkin and the Dan, run out of the State, and, with the exception of the latter, which enters again as the Roanoke, pour their navigable floods into the sea in other States, and it is noticeable that each, from its rising, runs due east and sweeps around by a vast arc to the south. There are only about 3,000 miles of river flow proper in the State, but the water power, owing to its high lands being the source of so many great streams, is absolutely immense. In a climate subject to neither extreme of heat or cold, where they never freeze over, and where health is assured in the midst of a fertile provision-producing country, their fitness for manufacturing purposes surpasses that of most of the American States, and is equal to that of any.

The last grand division of the State is in the mountains in the extreme west. The great Atlantic system of elevated chains finds its culminating point in North Carolina, and con