A PLEISTOCENE PENEPLAIN IN THE COASTAL PLAIN 



HERDMAN F. CLELAND 

 Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts 



The Black Belt of Alabama is famous throughout the state, 

 and in the surrounding states, for its great fertility, its production 

 of cotton and corn, the levelness of its plantations, the large pro- 

 portion of negroes to whites, and its numerous ante-bellum man- 

 sions — the visible manifestations of its former wealth. 



As one rides over the gently undulating surface of the region, 

 with its deep black soil, and crosses the steep-sided gullies and the 

 bluff-bordered rivers, he is impressed with the aspect of topographic 

 youth. However, a more careful study in the field and of the 

 geological literature forces one to the conclusion that the region is 

 not in the youthful stage of a first cycle of erosion, nor in a mature 

 stage of erosion, but that the surface is a recently raised plain, so 

 flat as almost to make the term peneplain — ^almost a plain — 

 inappropriate. The following excellent description will assist one 

 in visualizing the region: 



The surface of the country, underlaid by the Rotten Limestone, is but 

 little diversified; it is, however, occasionally broken into rounded bald knolls, 

 as may be seen between Areola and Demopolis, and between Livingston and 

 SumterviUe. The summits of these hillocks are sometimes ornamented with 

 cedars, but more frequently they are quite bare, or covered with but a scanty 

 vegetation; even where the surface is but slightly undulating, bald spots 

 occur where the naked rock has come up. But the most remarkable feature 

 of this region is the extensive tracts of land covered with a deep, black soil of 

 great depth and extraordinary fertility, which may be seen in various parts 

 of Sumter, Greene, Marengo, Perry, and Dallas, but more particularly in the 

 "cane brake." The surface of these remarkable tracts has barely sufiicient 

 inclination to admit of easy drainage, without giving the water force enough 

 to remove the soil, so that, instead of excavating a channel at the bottom of 

 the trough-like depressions where this sort of land occurs, it is absorbed by 

 the soil, or spreads over a considerable space, where it loses all transporting 

 power. 



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