In that portion of his work which treats of South Carolina, Mr. Trotter enters more particularly into the plan of the connection: “The work contemplated by this company (The Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad) is the establishment of a railroad communication between the city of Charleston and the Ohio. The distance between Charleston and Cincinnati in a straight line, is about five hundred miles. Several routes have been surveyed by which the length of the railroad will be about six hundred, but no line seems to have been definitely fixed upon. A railroad called the South Carolina, already exists between Charleston and Hamburg, a town situated on the Savannah opposite to Augusta, in Georgia, this railroad has been purchased by the company, and will be made use of as far as Branchville or Aiken. One plan is to carry the road projected from the former to Columbia, the seat of Government in South Carolina, and then up the valley of the Broad river into the State of North Carolina. After surmounting the Blue Ridge by inclined planes with stationary engines, the road would by this plan, be carried down the valley of the French Broad River to Knoxville, in Tennessee, and thence through Cumberland Gap, to Lexington in Kentucky; from the latter city separate roads would proceed to Louisville, Cincinnati and Mayesville. The distance from Charleston to Cincinnati by this route would be 607 miles.”[102] Alluding to the Georgia route, he indicates the first as likely the route to be decided upon finally, and in the remarkably accurate map, for that date, shows that the line through North Carolina, is shorter by something like a fifth of the distance and that “the success of the South Carolina Railroad holds out a fair prospect for that of the greater work” as it— “although thus successful had to contend with great disadvantages; it was not only the first railroad attempted in the Southern States, but was at the time it was completed the longest railroad that had been constructed in any part of the world ... so that the projectors could derive little benefit from the experience of other works of a similar nature—the whole work too, which is a singular circumstance, was executed by the black population. In addition to these drawbacks, the limited means of the company caused the work to be executed in a very imperfect manner.... The original cost of the road was $904,500.00 but the filling up of the spaces between the piles and other expenses increased the cost up to the 31st of October 1834 to $1,336,615.09. The present company have almost reconstructed the whole work; two-thirds of the purchase money which has been paid, together with the expenses which have already been incurred, having amounted to nearly two million of dollars.”[103]