THE GNEISSIC REGION OF THE COTTON BELT. 79 



clayey matter, are too porous for profitable cultivation, and do not re- 

 tain the fertilizers that may be applied to them. 



The greater part of the soils of the Coal-measures are sandy and 

 rather deficient in vegetable matter and in lime. In topography this 

 region is varied. On the table lands of Tennessee and North Alabama 

 the surface is slightly rolling, sloping off gradually to the water-courses. 

 In the upturned fields of the Coosa, Cahaba, and part of the Warrior 

 Basins in Alabama, the alternation of harder and softer strata gives 

 rise to some of the most rugged topography to be seen in the State. 



The timber consists chiefly of the upland oaks, and, in some of the 

 lower latitudes, short-leaf pine. In some parts of Alabama areas of 

 considerable extent with a prevailing timber of long-leaf inne are known. 



In Arkansas, it has already been seen that the chief soil of the Coal- 

 measures is a red loam derived from the shales, but the red uplands 

 are traversed by ridges capped with sandstones, or millstone grit. The 

 soils on these ridges are thin and generally sterile 5 except, where the 

 ridges are broad, the soil becomes thick and is tolerably fertile. The 

 characteristic growth here is much the same as that on the cherty 

 ridges of the Subcarboniferous formation above described, viz., yellow 

 pine, Spanish, post, black-jack, white, red, and black oaks, hickory, 

 chestnut, and chinquapin. 



Agriculturally this soil is inferior to that of the red loam uplands. 



c. Sandy prairies. — In the Indian Territory, the Carboniferous is 

 mostly a prairie region, interspersed with i)rominent ridges of the sand- 

 stone. The soil is a sandy loam, brownish in color and not very dura- 

 ble or fertile. Along the rivers are timbered belts of quaternary sands, 

 sometimes very deep, underlaid by reddish clays and furnishing some 

 good lands. The river bottoms are the chief cultivable land. (Lough- 

 ridge.) 



8. THE GNEISSIC REGION. 



The metamorphic region of the Cotton States is comprised in a belt 

 sometimes 150 miles in width, extending from central Alabama north- 

 eastward through Georgia, South Carolina, and Korth Carolina into 

 Virginia. By far the greater part of the cultivated soils of this region 

 is derived from gneissic rocks — under which name we include not only 

 the gneiss itself, but the kindred rocks, not excepting granite, with 

 which the gneiss is connected by all gradations. 



This metamorphic area includes most of the really mountainous re- 

 gion of the Cotton States, but the southeastern slopes of the mountain 

 ranges are undulating and hilly rather than mountainous. The mount- 

 ain ranges are composed of quartzites, mica schists, aud other indestruc- 

 tible rocks, while the gneissic rocks are more prevalent along the south- 

 eastern border, which is also the part of this area that is to any con- 

 siderable extent in cultivation. Among the mountains the farms are 

 small, and cotton forms a small proportion only of the cultivated crop. 



The typical gneissic soil is a gray soil of considerable fertility, whose 



