TOPOGRAPHY. 45 
Township 23 north, range 6 east, occupies the northeast corner of 
Hale County. Township 23 north, range 7 east and range 8 east, and 
township 22 north, range 8 east, and the northern half of township 22 
north, range 7 east, are in Bibb County. The southern half of town- 
ship 22 north, range 7 east, is in Perry County. 
Moundville, on the Alabama Great Southern Railroad, is about 6 miles 
west of the west boundary line of township 22 north, range 6 east. 
A branch line of the Mobile and Ohio, which crosses the Alabama 
Great Southern at Tuscaloosa and runs southeast to Montgomery, 
passes through township 24 north, range 7 east, about 2 miles north 
of the boundary of township 23 north, range 7 east. Centerville, the 
county seat of Bibb County, is located on this road about 12 miles 
due east from the east boundary line of township 23 north, range 7 
east. ‘The distance from Birmingham to Moundyville via the Alabama 
Great Southern Railroad is about 65 miles. 
TOPOGRAPHY. 
These townships are situated in what Dr. Charles Mohr calls the 
‘*Central Belt of Longleaf Pine,” which crosses the State almost cen- 
trally in a southeastern and northwestern direction from Russell 
County, on the east, to a short distance west of Tuscaloosa County, 
varying in width from about 10 toa little over 35 miles. The geolog- 
ical formation is sedimentary and is made up of ‘*‘the Tuscaloosa or 
Lowermost Cretaceous, a great fresh-water formation consisting of 
sands, clays, and pebble beds. Over this Tuscaloosa formation there 
is the usual mantle of red loam and pebbles of the Lafayette, which 
is distributed over the entire coastal plain.”“ In this particular part 
of the central pine belt the loam is lacking and is replaced by a quartz 
sand, occasionally slightly loamy,and in many places plentifully inter- 
mixed with quartz pebbles, but almost universally stained with iron 
oxide. 
The country has in the course of time become very much eroded, 
and now consists for the most part of a confused and irregular mass 
of steep ridges, capped with broken layers of the above-mentioned 
sandstone, and rising from 200 to 400 feet above the generat level of 
the country. Some ridges are long and winding, with many spurs 
running out from them, and others form small independent hills. (See 
Pl. ILI, fig. 1.) Ina few instances the tops are broad and flat, forming 
miniature plateaus, but, as a rule, they are narrow and rounded, often 
hardly wide enough for a wagon road, 
In those localities where the scarcity of iron in the soil and the 
absence of a clay or hardpan subsoil has prevented the formation of 
the sandstone, the erosion has been more regular and the topography 
has assumed a rolling character. 
« Prof. E. A. Smith, State geologist of Alabama. 
