he Atlantic coastal plain lies along the Atlantic coast from New York
southward to Florida and Alabama. It also forms a great embayment up the
Mississippi Valley as far as the Ohio River, and it extends along the
shore of the Gulf of Mexico to the Rio Grande. The chief characteristic
of this Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain is its belted nature. One layer
of rocks is sandy, another consists of limestone, and a third of clay.
When uplifted and eroded each assumes its own special topography and is
covered with its own special type of vegetation. Thus in South Carolina
and Georgia the crystalline Piedmont band of the Appalachian province
is bordered on the southeast by a belt of sandstone. This rock is so
far from the sea and has been raised so high above it that erosion has
converted it into a region of gentle hills, whose tops are six hundred
or seven hundred feet above sea-level. Its sandy soil is so poor that
farming is difficult. The hills are largely covered with pine, yielding
tar and turpentine. Farther seaward comes a broad band of younger rock
which forms a clayey soil or else a yellow sandy loam. These soils are
so rich that splendid cotton crops can be raised, and hence the region
is thickly populated. Again there comes a belt of sand, the so-called
"pine barrens," which form a poor section about fifty miles inland from
the coast. Finally the coastal belt itself has emerged from beneath the
sea so recently and lies so nearly at sea-level that it has not been
greatly eroded, and is still covered with numerous marshes and swamps.
The rich soil and the moisture are good for rice, but the region is so
unhealthy and so hard to drain that only small parts are inhabited.

Everywhere in the coastal plain this same belted character is more
or less evident. It has much to do with all sorts of activities from
farming to politics. On consulting the map showing the cotton production
of the United States in 1914, one notices the two dark bands in the
southeast. One of them, extending from the northwestern part of South
Carolina across Georgia and Alabama, is due to the fertile soil of
the Piedmont region. The other, lying nearer the sea, begins in North
Carolina and extends well into Alabama before it swings around to the
northwest toward the area of heavy production along the Mississippi. It
is due to the fertile soil of that part of the coastal plain known
as the "cotton belt." Portions of it are called the "black belt," not