PART II. 



HISTORY OF' BOTANICAL EXPLORATION OF THE 

 ALTAMAHA GRIT REGION. 



Before enumerating the known flora of the region a sketch of 

 the explorations on which our knowledge of it is based will be in 

 order. 



Probably the first explorer to visit the region under consider- 

 ation was Hernando DeSoto, who with a large party entered 

 what is now Georgia at its southern border in the spring of 1540, 

 and proceeded northward toward the mountains, probably 

 leaving the state somewhere near its northwest corner. But 

 DeSoto was looking mainly for gold, and the descriptions of geo- 

 graphical features in the extant narratives of his expedition are 

 so vague and infrequent that it is impossible to trace his route 

 through South Georgia with any degree of accuracy. The "des- 

 erts" mentioned by his chroniclers were doubtless pine-barrens, 1 

 but nothing is said about their vegetation. 



After DeSoto's memorable but ill-fated expedition nearly 2co 

 years seem to have elapsed before South Georgia was again ex- 

 plored. The colony of Georgia was founded by Oglethorpe at 

 Savannah in 1733, and the new settlers soon pushed inland from 

 there into the new country, some going up the Savannah River 

 to the fall-line, where they established the city of Augusta, and 

 others migrating southward along the coast. From Augusta a 

 chain of settlements gradually extended westward along the fall- 

 line, but the interior of South Georgia, including the pine-barrens, 

 was long avoided, because it was considered almost a desert. 

 Catesby and John Bartram, who were in Georgia about the time 

 of Oglethorpe or a little later, probably did not go into the 

 Altamaha Grit region, for it was then uninhabited, or nearly so. 

 William Bartram, in 1773 and a few subsequent years, and Andre 

 Michaux and his son about 14 years later, passed more than once 



1 For this interpretation I am indebted to the first chapter of Joel 

 Chandler Harris's Stories of Georgia, a small popular historical treatise 

 published in 1896. 



