Ancient Bones

In digging the Santee Canal twenty-two miles across from Santee to Cooper river, the workmen met with different strata..... In digging the summit canal which penetrated fifteen feet below the surface, there was a variety of strata, among which, was a very fine white clay; there was a stratum of red clay resembling red ochre. In this part of the canal the workmen got down to the natural bed of springs. In the course of this extended line of digging, were found trunks of trees seven feet below the surface, also many oyster shells of uncommon size, and bones of monstrous animals, unlike to any which are now known to exist. The latter were found eight or nine feet under the ground, and lying so near together as to make it probable that they originally belonged to one and the same animal. Its size may be conjectured from its ribs, one of which, when dug up was nearly six feet long; and from one of its jaw teeth which was eight inches and a quarter long, three inches and a half wide, its root eleven inches and a half long. The depth of the tooth from its surface to its bottom was six inches and a half. The other parts of the skeleton were in a relative proportion....

There are some circumstances which make it probable that the whole of the low country in Carolina was once covered by the ocean. In the deepest descent into the ground, neither stones or rocks obstruct our progress, but everywhere, sand or beds of shells. Intermixed with these at some considerable depth from the surface, petrified fish are sometimes dug up. Oyster shells are found in great quantities at such a distance from the present limits of the sea shore, that it is highly improbable they were ever carried there from the places where they are now naturally produced. A remarkable instance occurs in a range of oyster shells extending from Nelson's Ferry, on the Santee river, sixty miles from the ocean in a south west direction, passing through the intermediate country till it crosses the river Savannah in Burke county, and continuing on the Oconee river, in Georgia. The shells in this range are uncommonly large, and are of a different kind from what are now found near our shores, they are in such abundance as to afford ample resources for building and agriculture. On Doctor Jamieson's plantation six miles northeast from Orangeburg, and about eighty miles from the Atlantic ocean, ten hands can raise in a week as many of these oyster shells from their bed, though seven feet below the surface, as when burnt will yield twelve hundred bushels of lime. In digging for them there is nothing but common earth for the first seven feet, the soil for the next four feet is a whitish colored mass, intermixed with shells of the aforesaid description; a blue hard substance resembling stone succeeds for the next three or four feet, of this lime may be made but of an inferior quality; under this is sand, the depth of which is unknown.

Source:
Ramsay's History of South Carolina from Its First Settlement in 1670 to the year 1808
by David Ramsay, M.D.
Preface dated "Charleston, December 31st, 1808.
Published in 1858, by W.J. Duffie, Newberry, S.C.
Reprinted in 1959, by The Reprint Company, Spartanburg, S.C.

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