The Inland Waterways of the South

The New South, not the old, self-satisfied South of pleasant memories and tender recollections, that lay ever half asleep basking in her own sunshine, content to raise the cotton supply of the world and to allow her wonderful natural resources of mine and forest to remain undisturbed, but the New South, awakening as a young giant, strong and vibrant, throwing off the fetters of commercial indiffer- ence, is at last aroused, or should I say being aroused, to the fact that the beneficent hand of the Creator has given to her more natural advantages than He has vouchsafed to any other part of this great Union.South of that invisible, but once sharply defined boundary, Mason and Dixon Line, now, thanks be, nearly forgotten, lies a mighty empire, greater in natural resources than the combined empires of Great Britain, France and Germany.Great in the fer- tility of its soil, great in the undeveloped and hardly touched wealth of its mines of coal, iron and stone, and greater still in the wealth of its forests, where stands to-day the timber reserve of this coun- try, it is greatest of all in the extent of its navigable streams that cross and intersect its states, all winding their way either to ocean or gulf.No similar section of North America, or for that matter of the globe, is so blessed with natural highways and gateways, rivers and harbors, as is the southern group of these United States

Geography · American Environmental and Regional History · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies