and blazes like hish-oclane gasoline You can make lines from 

 its threads, and you can make a horrible broih out of it that 

 will prevent you from starving if you can swallow it It is 

 actually a flowering plant related to the pineapple. 



FLATLANDS AND BOTTOMS 



The pine flatlands, as they are called, continue west right to 

 the Mississippi valley in the neighborhood of Natchez. Their 

 southern border sometimes fringes the Gulf: otherwise it stands 

 a little back from the coast, whidi here supports a rather luxu- 

 riant mixed forest of oaks, oleanders, and other broad-leafed 

 trees, a variety of conifers, and many introduced palms and aca- 

 cias, flowering shrubs and bushes. Off this coast are many long, 

 sandy islands, some of which support masses of sea grapes and 

 buttonwood trees of a stunted variety. At the mouth of the Pearl 

 River one "drops" out of this forest and down onto the delta- 

 lands, while the pine parklands continue onward to the north 

 side. From this point also they swing due north, bordering the 

 Western Appaladiian Piedmont. In that direction, they appear 

 originally to have continued uninterrupted to the confluence of 

 the Ohio River. This is a flat plain of modest elevation bounded 

 now on the east by the continuing fall line, and ending on the 

 west along the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River and its 

 tributary the Yazoo River. 



The pines start again west of the Mississippi valley, south of 

 the Interior Highlands, and readi to the Grand Prairie somewhat 

 west of Dallas. Texas. Their southern limit in this area is the 

 edge of the deltaic flood plain west to Port Arthur and thence 

 northwestward. The parklands increasingly give way to open 

 prairies both to the south and west, and in those directions 

 junipers, live oaks, and even some mesquite gradually replace 

 the pines. This area is commonly known as the Western Timber- 

 lands (but Texans call it the East Timherlands). These are a 

 series of low uplands of what is rather delightfully called, in 



gcotcchnlcal parlance, subdued reliej. comprising some 70.000 

 square miles of landlocked territory This is today for the most 

 part cleared of its original vegetative cover, but It still supports 

 some pine stands and fairly extensive, meandering belts of 

 scruffy live oaks and other hardwoods that follow the water- 

 drainage channels It is comprised of the drainage basins of the 

 Red, Sabine, and Trinity rivers; the upper waters of the Brazos 

 River; and the western drainage of the Ouachita River, which 

 joins the Red to make a linked but subsidiary effluent of the 

 Mississippi. To the northwest it has fairly extensive prairies of a 

 blackish color, and the eastern strip is very appropriately called 

 the Red Rolling Lands. The southeast is an almost pure stand of 

 typical pine "flatwoods." The area has little faunal significance, 

 being a transition zone between the Prairies, the outlying Ozark 

 Plateau, the Bottomlands of the Mississippi valley, the south- 

 eastern Chaparral, and to some extent the muck of the delta. 



There remain within the general compass of this province the 

 great Bottomlands of the lower Mississippi valley, comprising 

 the St. Francis. Yazoo, and Tensas basins lying between the 

 eastern bluffs and the foothills of the Interior Highlands, and the 

 narrow Atchafalaya Basin, which deboudies onto the delta. This 

 is a land of multiple rivers, creeks, and lakes, great and small, 

 including almost countless numbers of bow-shaped ones; these 

 are old twists in the rivers that were silted up at either end 

 when the river cut a more direct channel. The waterways and 

 lakes are surrounded by extensive swamps covered with thidc. 

 tangled growth ranging from fields of tall sedges to semiaquatic 

 brush and dense forests with massed undergrowth, most of it 

 flooded. Between the waterways, the higher ground seems to 

 have been originally typical parkland, either dotted with isolated 

 trees or bestrewn with copses interspersed with grassfields. This 

 country merges with the foothills of the Interior Highlands to 

 the west and with the Timberlands to the southwest. This sub- 

 province has an exceedingly rich, varied, and abundant flora 

 and fauna, which in the Bottomlands is of a specialized nature. 

 This we will meet later when we explore the delta itself. 



