THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 527 



large tracts in the delta between tbetn, follows northward the course of these streams, and covers the extensive 

 swamps which border their banks and the mouths of their numerous tributaries. Upon the Alabama the cypress 

 swamps extend to the lower part of Clarke county. Next to the Mobile River region the largest supply of cypress 

 can be drawn from the extensive bottoms of the Tombigbee, about the mouth of Bassett creek, near Jackson. 

 Duriug the freshet of the present year (1880) a large number of logs from this vicinity will be sent to the mills on 

 the Tensas. 



" Baldwin county. A quarter of .a century ago a pine forest, unequaled in the magnificence of its tree growth, 

 and supposed atihat lime to contain an inexhaustible supply of timber, covered Baldwin county through its whole 

 extent. To-day this forest, from the line of the Mobile and Montgomery railroad, along the eastern shore of Mobile 

 bay, and along all the water-courses as far as Bonsecours bay, upon the Gulf, is entirely destroyed, and presents a 

 picture of ruin and utter desolation painful to behold. 



" The production of naval stores has been carried on in this region without regard to any of its future interests, 

 and, the forest being exhausted, manufacturers have been driven to seek new fields of operation. In the old 

 turpentine orchards, long abandoned, no young trees have sprung up. Too far remote to make it possible to get 

 their timber to the saw-mills, the large trees which have sufiicient strength to withstand the effects of the barbarous 

 process of boxing drag out their precarious existence for years after the smaller and weaker trees have been laid low, 

 and shade the ground sufficiently to prevent the start of a young growth. The wood of these old boxes, as dead pines 

 are called, is, after the loss of their vitality, charged throughout with an excess of resinous matter, and is in that 

 condition sold as 'fat' or 'light' wood, being greatly esteemed as fuel for the generation of steam. For this 

 purpose this final product of the pine forest is carried to the city of Mobile in broad flatboats, propelled by one huge 

 square sail, and steered by a ponderolis horizontal beam serving as a rudder. In a few years, however, this, the least 

 valuable and the last product of the pine forest, will have forever disappeared, and with it the last remnant of the 

 original forest growth of this part of the state. Occasionally, under the shade of the trees left standing, a young 

 growth of pine is found, and on the high and undulating table-land between Mobile bay and Fish river, where the 

 soil is light and very porous, a low and scanty oak scrub has taken possession of the ground. Toward the banks of 

 the water-courses, however, where the largest trees were first cut to furnish timber to the mills once situated on Fish 

 river, thus early leaving the ground open to atmospheric influences, fine and promising groves of long-leaved pine 

 now often cover areas of wide extent. I measured many trees in these young second-growth pine forests, grown up 

 within the last twelve to twenty-five years, standing from 15 to 30 feet in height with a diameter of trunk of from 

 4 to 6 inches, of thrifty growth, and rapidly overcoming the small oak growth with which it had to contend for the 

 possession of the soil. It is the turkey and the upland willow oak alone which occur in these thin soils, too poor to 

 support the Spanish and black oaks. 



" The banks of the North Branch of the Fish river are composed of marsh or white drift sand. The arid, sandy 

 ground is covered with a dwarf growth of live oak and myrtle live oak, observed here for the first time, and which 

 farther east formed by far the largest part of the oak scrub covering the shore-lines of the large bays of western 

 Florida. Two or three miles beyond the forks of Fish river a belt of pine forest is reached, not yet destroyed by 

 the mutilations of the 'box-cutter' nor bereft of its best growth by the log-gatherer; it covers the highlands and 

 declivities between Fish river and the waters which find their way into Perdido bay. This may be regarded as a 

 virgin forest, only slightly invaded up to the present time along the Blackwater creek, Hollenger's creek, the 

 Perdido river, and the bay shore. The mills situated on Perdido river and bay depend entirely for their present 

 and future supply of logs upon this forest of southern Baldwin county, although I learn that it is expected to supply 

 them during the next five years only, even if their production of lumber does not increase. This forest extends 

 over six townships and covers an area estimated at from 125,000 to 150,000 acres. 



"THE FORESTS OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE IN EASTERN ALABAMA, MIXED FOREST GROWTH, ETC. 



"The forests which once covered the wide bottom lands of the Chattahoochee in the neighborhood of Franklin, 

 Alabama (opposite Fort Gaines), are now reduced to small patches of woodland confined to the base of ranges of 

 low hills bordering the plain valley to the southeast. The tree growth was found here to differ in no way from 

 that found lower down, except that the short-leaved pine {Pinns mitis) occurs more frequently. The crab apple 

 and the cockspur thorn are frequent along the borders of the woods, but the pond pine (PiwMs serotina), which 

 might have been expected here, was not observed. In the sandy, wet, and deeply-shaded bottoms of a sluggish 

 stream winding along the base of these hills I found the spruce pine {Pinus glabra) abundantly associated with 

 the loblolly bay, red and sweet bays, and stately magnolias. The live oak is not found here, and it is doubtful if 

 it extends in this part of the Gulf region more than a few miles north of the thirty-first degree of latitude. The 

 low hills do not rise more than 150 feet above the plain; in entering them the second division of the sylvan 

 vegetation characteristic of the eastern Gulf states is reached a forest of mixed growth, which must be regarded, 

 on account of its extent as well as the variety of its vegetation, as one of the important natural features of the 

 region. I am of opinion that the deciduous-leaved trees have an equal representation in this forest with the 



