Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws.: Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together With Observations on the Manners of the Indians.Bartram, William
History
Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws.: Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together With Observations on the Manners of the Indians.
Bartram, William
Bartram, William, 1739-1823 -- Travel -- Southern States; Indians of North America -- Southern States; Natural history -- Southern States; Southern States -- Description and travel
We now rise a bank of considerable height, which runs nearly parallel
to the coast, through Carolina and Georgia; the ascent is gradual by
several flights or steps for eight or ten miles, the perpendicular
height whereof, above the level of the ocean, may be two or three
hundred feet (and these are called the sand-hills) when we find
ourselves on the entrance of a vast plain, generally level, which
extends west sixty or seventy miles, rising gently as the former, but
more perceptibly. This plain is mostly a forest of the great
long-leaved pine (P. palustris Linn.) the earth covered with grass,
interspersed with an infinite variety of herbaceous plants, and
embellished with extensive savannas, always green, sparkling with ponds
of water, and ornamented with clumps of evergreen, and other trees and
shrubs, as Magnolia grandiflora, Magnolia glauca, Gordonia, Ilex
aquifolium, Quercus, various species, Laurus Borbonia, Chionanthus,
Hopea tinctoria, Cyrilla, Kalmia angustifolia, Andromeda, varieties,
Viburnum, Azalea, Rhus vernix, Prinos, varieties, Fothergilla, and a
new shrub of great beauty and singularity; it grows erect, seven or
eight feet high; a multitude of erect stems arise from its root; these
divide themselves into ascendant branches, which are garnished with
abundance of narrow lanceolate obtuse pointed leaves, of a light green,
smooth and shining. These branches, with their many subdivisions,
terminate in simple racemes of pale incarnate flowers, which make a
fine appearance among the leaves; the flowers are succeeded by
desiccated triquetrous pericarpi, each containing a single kernel.
The lowest sides of these savannas are generally joined by a great cane
swamp, varied with coppices and hommocks of the various trees and
shrubs already mentioned. In these swamps several rivulets take their
rise, which drain them and the adjoining savannas, and thence
meandering to the rivers through the forests, with their banks
decorated with shrubs and trees. The earth under this level plain may
be described after the following manner: the upper surface, or
vegetative mould, is a light sandy loam, generally nine inches or a
foot deep, on a stratum of cinereous coloured clay, except the
sand-hills, where the loose sandy surface is much deeper upon the clay;
stone of any sort, or gravel, is seldom seen.
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