The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1886-10-19
THE PHOSPHATE BEDS OF BEAUFoRT

The Great Industry of the South Carolina
Coast-The brotherhood Dredge.
The phosphate beds make the great in
ustry of Beaufort, as Of most of the coast
'outhwest of Stone ferry; aud as all the
negroes average 81 day in cash earnings
Or can do 50 If they want TO work, their
general condition is good. a satisfactory
explanation of these phosphate deposits
has not been worked out, and II Is some
Thing Of a problem, as the geology OK
south Carolina jumps all the intermediate
ages between arch4an and tertiary. In
he piedmont section of the state the azoic
rocks stand out sharp and abrupt from
he hills and line the channels of the many
bright and swiftly flowing streams OF that
region. \ little further down the slope
The drift covers these rocks, and they are
still there;and the excavations at Columbia
bring out a horde of blue and hecked
granite A little lower, there is, In popu-
ar language mo bedrock" At Orange
burg they bored 100 feet for artesian
water, and found drift all the way down
clay, sand, and mari.
Still coming down the slope, one reaches
/ point where the sand has travelled so far
from its original matrix in the Blue ridge
hat it is completely triturated, and the
hills have no consistency. Along this line,
At an average distance Of perhaps sixty
miles from the coast, is a line Of sand hills
which seem to have been shaped by the
wind and below them is the broad nat,
generally unhealthful, low country"
where the purple and chocolate cOlored
streams flow sluggishly over Shiny bot
toms, between muddy banks shrouded by
he funeral moss, And yet on the sea
ward side OF this tract, in the bottom Of
The creeks and inlets, but occasionally eX-
IL. = 4 49,
phate rock.
1t was known to be of some value as
early as 1sj6 but nothing was done TO
develop it until the reconstruction legisla-
ture of 1868 chartered a company TO work
It. Since then The companies have paid
royalty To the state for all they took out OF
navigable waters or from state land, and
last year the state received $l75, 900 from
that source. As much was taken from
private lands, the yield must have ex-
seeded 200 900 tons. The supply is practi-
2ally ineXhaustible, as the strata wherever
pierced are over twenty feet thick; and in
many places it is known that successive
strata is superimposed with dirt between.
When first mined the rock is dark gray or
nearly black; after being washed and
ground it is a lighter gray. The COM
mercial article sell al So TO 50 per ton, and
it is expected that the total yield Of the
state this year will be worth over 81, 5OO,-
)OO
A great impulse has been given the work
lately by the Brotherhood dredge-the in
vention of Samuel Brotherhood-which
takes up the rock by thirty-six iron scoop
buckets, running on axles, somewhat in
the style of the endless platform Of horse
power In the original rock are sharks
teeth and fish bones of many kinds, which,
+ suppose, with the phosphate Of Fine,
valuable as a fertilizer. In front
l. rite are two steam dredges at
Of where FIST MafhCCawhers in the
/ work; across the A lew
/ works on the Iap5 o,,a rQd-
place are large Adjustments.
negroes still follow the old system Of w..
ing IN the shallow creeks and carrying out
such detached pieces of the rock as they
can handle.-"Parke" in Chicago Times