CHAP. XXV.] TUSCALOOSA. 79 



the navigation on these southern rivers in the rainy 

 season, contrasts remarkably with the want of similar 

 facilities of water communication in Texas and the 

 more western countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico. 

 We admired the canes on the borders of the river 

 between Tuscaloosa and Demopolis, some of which I 

 found to be thirty feet high. Whether this mag 

 nificent reed, which is said sometimes to grow forty 

 feet high, is a distinct species, or merely a variety of 

 Miegia macrosperma, which I had seen from six to 

 ten feet high, as far north as Kentucky and North 

 Carolina, botanists are not yet agreed. 



Tuscaloosa is situated, like Augusta, Milledgeville, 

 and Columbus, at the falls of a river, though, in this 

 instance, the falls do not occur, as usual at the junc 

 tion of the granitic rocks, with the tertiary or cre 

 taceous strata, but at the point where the latter first 

 meet the carboniferous formation. The lower beds 

 of the horizontal cretaceous series in contact with the 

 inclined coal-measures, consist of gravel, some of the 

 quartzose pebbles being as large as hen s eggs, and 

 they look like an ancient beach, as if the cretaceous 

 sea had terminated here, or shingle had been accu 

 mulated near a shore. 



There is a nourishing college at Tuscaloosa, stand 

 ing upon a hill 450 feet above the level of the sea. 

 Here I was welcomed by the professor of chemistry, 

 Mr. Brumby, who had the kindness to set out im 

 mediately with me (Feb. 10.) to examine the coal 

 fields lying immediately north of this place. Starting 

 in a north-easterly direction, we first entered a hilly 

 country formed of sandstone, grit, and shale of the 



E 4 



