30 



RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN ALABAMA. 



(For many years this ridge and others near it formed a bar- 

 rier between the Selma and Flomaton divisions of the L. & 

 N. R. R., which terminated at Pine Apple and Repton re- 

 spectively, and were not connected until about 25 years 

 ago.) 



The two large muddy rivers, the Alabama especially, 

 have steep banks and little or no swamp, meander through 

 broad alluvial bottoms, and are navigable for steamboats 

 most of the year. In the early history of the State, when 

 their drainage basins were mostly heavily wooded, naviga- 



FlG. 5. South end of tunnel on L. & N. R. R., in a Buhrstone 

 ridge about two miles north of Tunnel Springs, Monroe County. 

 Photographed by Dr. Eugene A. Smith, July 21, 1905. 



tion was seldom interrupted, but the clearing of the land 

 allows the rainfall to run off rapidly instead of soaking into 

 the leaf -mold and soil to reappear later in springs, with the 

 result that in the long dry spells of late summer and fall 

 the volume of water in the rivers may be insufficient. With- 

 in the last ten or twelve years this difficulty has been over- 

 come on the Tombigbee by the construction of several locks 

 and dams for slack-water navigation, which by the way are 

 practically the only such structures in the whole coastal 

 plain of the United States up to the present time. The 



