154 APPLIED PHYSIOGRAPHY IN SOUTH CAROLINA 



the land ma}^ yet for a short time furnish a rather poor meadow, 

 since comparatively little of the rich alluvial surface has yet been 

 covered by the sand, most of which has been disposed of in filling 

 the stream channel. It is as though the stream realized its in- 

 ability to directly attack the surface at first and so turned its 

 attention to j^reparations for a more effective attack a little later 

 by filling its channel with sand and thus placing itself in a posi- 

 tion to rapidly complete the work of destruction when it has 

 once actively begun. When it has built up its bed almost even 

 with the flood-plain surface level this work of prejjaration ends 

 and the work of direct destruction begins. Every overflow now 

 cuts channels that lead away from the main stream, and spread 

 sand far and wide over the ]3lain, burying the fertile soil. As 

 the depth of the sand increases, the flood-plain becomes more 

 barren, until it is finally a waste of sand thinly overgrown with 

 nettles and other sand-loving plants, while willows fringe the 

 branching channels of the wandering stream, and here and there 

 along the margins of the wasted plain and in other chance low 

 places water collects and forms marshes that are soon overgrown 

 with reeds and rushes. The cycle of destruction is now complete. 



Thus in some sections much of the formerly fertile " bottom 

 land " has already been abandoned as worthless, much more can 

 scarcely be cultivated profitably, while but little is so favorably 

 situated as to escape entirely the ruinous effect of the continual 

 clean cultivation of the hill slopes. 



The remedy for this destruction is so simple and self-evident 

 to the student as hardly to require statement ; the cotton crop 

 must be rotated with some crop that will furnish an abundance 

 of root fibers to hold the soil together and prevent it from wash- 

 ing, and the hill slopes must be terrace-plowed. If this is 

 done the degradation of the hill fields and the aggradation on 

 the bottom fields will be checked; if this is not done all the 

 most fertile land will soon become but barren wastes. 



Mention may be made of a lake of aggradation of the Red 

 river (Louisiana) fatnily, to be found in the northwestern part 

 of Fairfield county, S. C, since it is due to the same general cause. 

 From a broad open valley there runs back into the upland a broad 

 side valley that contained a weak stream draining but a small 

 area. When the master stream began aggrading, it set a pace 

 with which the side stream could not keep up. Its mouth was 

 sealed up, and it was forced to lake itself before gaining an exit, 

 thus covering to a depth of eight or ten feet a considerable area 

 that before the war had been planted in corn. 



