242 ROLAND M. HARPER 



than most of the Altamaha Grit region. In this part the streams 

 have cut down very little below the general level, and shallow 

 ponds full of trees are common. 



Just south of the Satilla River the railroad — as one travels 

 northward — descends rather suddenly, as if leaving a plateau, 2 

 and from there to Swainsboro and beyond the topography is mostly 

 what might be called submaturely dissected by normal erosion, 

 except that ponds, which probably have nothing to do with 

 recent erosion, are still seen every few miles at least. Near 

 Douglas some of the valleys of the smallest streams are as much 

 as thirty or forty feet deep. About midway between Douglas 

 and Hazlehurst the country is rather flat and ponds are common 

 again for several miles, presumably representing an interstream 

 area not yet dissected by branches. Along the Altamaha River 

 and within a few miles of Swainsboro the erosion cycle seems 

 to have progressed a little farther than in other parts of the same 

 region, for there some of the valleys show a tendency to depart 

 from the characteristic broad V-shape and become flat-bottomed, 

 and ponds are scarce. 



The only muddy river crossed by the Georgia and Florida 

 Railway south of Swainsboro is the Altamaha, which forms the 

 boundary between Toombs and Jeff Davis Counties. The Ohoo- 

 pee, crossed in Emanuel County, rises in the upper third of the 

 coastal plain, and its water is presumably a little calcareous. 

 The other streams crossed all rise within the Altamaha Grit region, 

 and of these the only ones large enough to be bordered by ham- 

 mocks and sand-hills are the Allapaha River, separating Berrien 

 and Coffee Counties, the Satilla River and Seventeen-Mile Creek, 

 in Coffee, Tiger Creek, in Toombs, and Pendleton's Creek in 

 Emanuel. 3 (The two last-named creeks are only about two 

 miles apart, with Normantown on the divide between them.) 



The soil is rather sandy nearly every mile of the way, but 

 Pliocene loam seems to be within a few feet or inches of the sur- 



J In the Altamaha Grit region, unlike the neighboring lime-sink region, flat 

 surfaces, other than river bottoms, seem to be bordered always by valleys, never 

 by hills. 



3 See classification of streams in Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 17: 28. 1906. 



