Copyright, 1879, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Trow’s
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
205-213 East Twelfth Street,
New York.
[GEORGIA.]
Georgia, one of the thirteen original States of the American Union, has Tennessee and North Carolina on the N., South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean on the E., Florida S., and Alabama W. The Savannah river separates the State on the E. from South Carolina; the St. Mary’s, on the S., divides it in part from Florida; the Chattahoochee, on the W., flows between Georgia and Alabama for nearly half its course. Georgia lies between 30° 21′ 39″ and 35° N. lat., and between 81° and 85° 53′ 38″ W. long. It is 320 miles long from N. to S., and 256 miles in its greatest breadth from E. to W., with an area of 58,000 square miles.
Surface.—Georgia has three distinctly marked zones, varying in soil, climate, and productions. Her sea-coast is similar to that of the Carolinas, being skirted by fertile islands, separated from the mainland by narrow lagoons or by sounds. This section is essentially tropical. Beginning at the sea-coast, a gradually ascending sandy plain extends northward and westward as far as the head of navigation on the Savannah, Ogeechee, Oconee, and Ocmulgee rivers, where it meets a Primary formation. Augusta, Milledgeville, and Macon indicate the northern limit of this tract. Here begins the hilly and finally mountainous region, the most extensive, fertile, and salubrious of the State. A second plateau, 60 or 70 miles broad, stretches above the falls of the rivers until it meets the southernmost ranges of the great Appalachian chain of mountains which traverses Virginia, North Carolina, and northern Georgia under the name of the Blue Ridge, and is finally lost in Alabama. This picturesque district extends in Georgia from Rabun county in the north-east corner of the State to Dade in the extreme north-west, where the summit of Lookout Mountain dominates the valley of the Tennessee. Here are the sources of the two principal rivers of the State; here is the gold-producing region; and here is also the theatre of some of the most sanguinary battles of the civil war. The elevations of the Blue Ridge vary from 1,200 to 4,000 feet. In the south-east of the State is the extensive Okefinokee swamp, which has an estimated circumference of 180 miles, is filled with pools and islands, and is the congenial home of alligators, lizards, and other reptiles.
Rivers and Harbors.—There are many fine rivers in Georgia. A north and south line passing through Macon would nearly divide the streams flowing into the Atlantic from those discharging into the Gulf of Mexico. The Savannah, Ogeechee, Altamaha, Santilla, and St. Mary’s fall into the Atlantic, and the Chattahoochee, Flint, and tributaries of the Suwanee flow to the Gulf coast. The rivers are generally navigable for steamboats to the falls which occur on the great central plateau of the State—that is to say, the Savannah to Augusta, the Oconee and Ocmulgee (confluents of the Altamaha) to Milledgeville and Macon, and the Chattahoochee to Columbus. Besides their ordinary purposes as avenues of travel and commerce, her rivers have given to Georgia the character of a manufacturing State, and she is developing and increasing their abundant water-powers with energy and success.