force under Sumter, his exploits west of the Broad River, and also the important events which followed the assumption, by Greene, of the command of the Southern army, have been detailed in former chapters.
I left the family of Mrs. Barkley with real regret, on the morning after My arrival, and, pursuing a crooked, steep, and rough road down to the brink of the river, crossed the Catawba upon a bateau, at Rocky Mount Ferry, just below the Falls at the mouth of Rocky Mount Creek.
The scenery here, and for some miles on my road toward Hanging Rock, my next point of destination, was highly picturesque. I was approaching the verge of the Lowlands, the apparent shore of the ancient ocean, along which are strewn huge bowlders—chiefly conglomerates—the mighty pebbles cast upon the beach, when, perhaps, the mammoth and the mastadon slaked their thirst in the waters of the Catawba and the Eswawpuddenah.
For several miles the road passed among the erratic rocks and curiously-shaped conglomerates. When within three miles of Hanging Rock, I passed the celebrated Anvil Rock, one of the remarkable curiosities of the South.