SOUTHWESTERN PINE HILLS. 63 



marked by a bold escarpment facing inland. (The outlying 

 areas are higher than the surrounding country, too.) This 

 is especially conspicuous about four miles southwest of Mon- 

 roeville, where one journeying northward on the Gulf, 

 Florida & Alabama Railway would pass suddenly out of a 

 flattish piney woods country and descend into a hilly oak 

 and short-leaf pine country, the railroad making a loop 

 two miles long and only about a quarter of a mile across 

 the neck to get down the slope 100 feet or so. (The gov- 

 ernment soil survey of Monroe County, published in 1919, 

 shows the location of this loop but gives very little idea of 

 the topography.) 



FIG. 21. Desolate cut-over land with no young pines, about four 

 miles southeast of Grand Bay, on road to Bayou La Batre, Mobile 

 County. June 15, 1912. Much of the land sold to farmers in this 

 region in recent years is in this condition, but it requires very little 

 preparation for planting the first crop. 



From the point just mentioned one could follow the di- 

 vide between the Escambia and Perdido Rivers on one side 

 and the streams flowing into Mobile Bay on the other, south- 

 west to Bay Minette and thence approximately south to the 

 coast, and imagine himself in a level plain most of the way, 

 so uniform is the seaward slope of this smooth divide, along 

 which a part of the "Federal Road" was located about 100 

 years ago. 



This region is also remarkable for the high elevations 

 close to tide-water. The steep bare bluffs facing the bays 

 on both sides of Baldwin County are about 65 feet high in 



