GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE PIEDMONT PLATEAU 
By W J McGee 
Monticello is the northernmost knob of a low mountain ran^e ; 
it overlooks a fair and fertile plain, glorious in vernal verdure 
and the promise of a rich harvest of golden grain and purple 
grapes in autumn. The plain is not monotonously smooth ; 
here it undulates in graceful swells, there it dips into rocky river 
gorges winding across its width, and elsewhere it rises into rugged 
ranges running j^arallel with the neighboring Blue Ridge. Such 
is the Piedmont plain within view of Monticello, and such is the 
province throughout its extent from New Y"ork to Alabama; 
everywhere it is bounded on the southeast by the coastward low- 
land and on the northw'est by the Appalachian mountains, and 
everywhere it rises so high above the coastal plain that it is fitly 
called a plateau. This undulant upland, with its transverse 
riverways, its parallel ranges, and its fertile soil, is a record of 
unwritten history stretching far into the wordless past. 
Consider the rivers and the tributaries by which they are fed : 
Rivanna river runs yellow with mud ; sometimes it is clearer, 
hut after the great storm or the vernal freshet it is still more 
heavily laden with earth matter washed in from the hills; thus 
the Rivanna with its tributaries, and all the neighboring rivers 
of the province are incessant!}^ carrying the debris of the land to 
the sea. How much the Rivanna carries has not been measured, 
but the burdens l)orne by the Mississippi and Potomac and 
many other rivers have been weighed and a rate for river woi’k 
has been fixed, and thus it is known that the Rivanna, with its 
tributary mill-streams and brooks and storm rills, robs the land 
on which its waters gather of a layer of soil a third of an inch in 
average thickness during each century. This is an initial point 
in the reading of geographic history. He who desires to com- 
prehend the record of the ages must realize that the land is not 
an indestructildc thing, that the hills are not eternal, that the 
streams work ever and in time accomplish much ; he must un- 
derstand that since Jamestown was founded an inch of soil or 
rock has been removed from every average acre ahout Rivanna 
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