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'Battery' and see in the distance Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie and other fortifications which, though often attacked, were never carried by storm, I begin to understand the wonderful spirit of this people. Charlestonians held this stronghold for four years against the most powerful fleet of war vessels ever seen up to that time on this hemisphere."

Disastrous fires have destroyed many of the historic landmarks of the town, and the most interesting public building still standing is the Colonial Exchange, built in 1771, at a cost of £41,470. In its basement Colonel Isaac Hayne and other patriot prisoners were confined, and here General Moultrie walled up one hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder, which remained undiscovered during the three years that the British held the town. It was the scene of a ball and public reception in honor of General Washington when he visited Charleston after the Revolution, and was used as the Post-Office from 1783 until the construction of the new granite Post-Office, in Italian Renaissance style, during the last decade.

Of the first St. Philip's Church, built on the present site, Edmund Burke said that it "is spacious, and executed in a very handsome taste, exceeding everything of that kind which