A Poetical Geography of North Carolina

Needham Bryan Cobb (1836-1905) was a minister, Confederate chaplain, editor, teacher and writer who edited the North Carolina Almanac for nearly 30 years after the Civil War. Among other things, he wrote a short geography book unlike any I've seen before.
Cobb was president of the Wayne Institute and Normal College, according to the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, and principal of Lilesvile High School. He authored a lively little book recently reissued by the North Caroliniana Society – the Poetical Geography of North Carolina.
This little volume has been out of print for nearly a century, notes former N.C. Supreme Court Associate Justice Willis Whichard, president of the society, but in its day it was used as a textbook in North Carolina schools, “whose pupils learned form verse not only the names of scores of towns and 96 counties (there are 100 now), but also the bays, sounds, rives and all 394 principal creeks of the state. Each stream, even in rhyme, was identified by its source and destination,” notes Whichard.
Here’s part of what Cobb wrote about the state’s waterways:
“Now we’ll learn the lengthy rivers
Flowing through the Old North State;
Take them down for future study,
Write them all upon your slate.”
Under Tributaries of the Catawba, Cobb wrote:
“Linville, johns and upper little,
Come from mountains tall and blue,
Join Catawba flowing eastward,
Then flow southward with it too.
South Catawba then approaches,
With its branches, large and wee;
Green and Broad, from Blue Ridge tumbling,
Join it, and they form Santee.”
Makes me wonder: Does anyone learn by rhyme anymore?
The Society, which celebrates all things related to North Carolina, has some copies of the book available to the public for $25, half of which is tax deductible, according to Prof. H.G. Jones, longtime secretary of the society. Write the North Caroliniana Society, Campus Box 3930, Chapel Hill N.C. 27514-8890.