influence inert and slow to enter upon great commercial enterprises, it is remarkable that Charleston merchants and planters planned and successfully constructed the earliest great railroad line in America. Mr. Courtenay says:
"While the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was
being constructed in 1829, under Stephenson's direction,
and Baltimore was reaching out to the Ohio River,
Charleston was projecting a railroad to the head of
navigation on the Savannah River, which when completed
was the longest railroad in the World."[1]
In the royal grants of land in Carolina the
Crown reserved an interest in all precious and
base metals, and some of the grants reserved
for the King a share of the diamonds and
precious stones which avarice rather than
common sense suggested might underlie tide-*water
South Carolina. Geologists and lawyers
laughed at the idea of precious stones in
marshes and sand dunes, though there had been
- ↑ The crude rules for passenger transportation in "the thirties" read strangely to the traveller who almost annihilates time and space in the modern "vestibule train," at the rate of sixty miles or more an hour. An early resolution of the South Carolina Railroad Board of Directors declares that there shall be "in future not over twenty-five passengers to any car; speed shall not exceed one car and passengers at fifteen miles per hour; two cars and passengers at twelve miles per hour; three cars and passengers at ten miles per hour."
