the north of Egypt, or the dominions in the same latitude in China.
Besides the bleak mountains, frozen lakes, and the large uncultivated
territory over which the north and northwest winds blow in winter, by
which they are rendered dangerous; when the extreme heat of summer is
united with a low marshy soil, where the water stagnates, and the
effluvia arising from it thicken and poison the air, it must prove the
occasion of a numberless list of fatal distempers. This last circumstance
serves to decide the healthiness of climates in every latitude. Sudden
changes from heat to cold are every where dangerous; but, in countries
where little caution is used in dress, they must often prove fatal. The
winds in Carolina are changeable and erratic, and, about the vernal and
autumnal equinoxes, commonly boisterous. In summer, they are sultry and
suffocating; in winter, cold and dry. Beyond doubt, the flat maritime
part is a most unhealthy situation, and the first settlers could scarcely
have been cast ashore in any quarter of the globe where they could be
exposed to greater hazards from the climate.

[Sidenote] Of the the country.

Yet the country, low and unhealthy as it is, affords many advantages for
commerce and navigation. As you approach towards the shore, the sea
gradually ebbs, which furnishes good soundings for the help of
navigators. For eighty, and in some places an hundred, miles from the
Atlantic, the country is an even plain, no rocks, no stones, scarce a
hill of any height is to be seen. Backwards from this the lands begin to
rise gradually into little hills and beautiful inequalities, which
continue increasing in height and variation until you advance to the
Apalachian mountains, three hundred miles and more from the sea. Here a
vast ridge of mountains begins, and runs through North America, in the
bowels of which no man can say what riches lie in store. These mountains