Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/605

Rh Having outlined the sources of our knowledge of this interesting region, it may now be described from a geographical standpoint.

Okefinokee Swamp lies almost entirely in Ware and Charlton counties, Georgia, about fifty miles from the coast and 115 feet above sea level. (It will be noticed that in its elevation and distance from the

 showing the location of Okefinokee Swamp and the ridge east of it. Compiled from county maps in the Secretary of State's office in Atlanta, a map drawn for the Suwannee Canal Company in 1897; U. S. Coast Survey chart No. 157, 1901: field notes of the author, 1902-1904; Rand, McNally & Co.'s map of Georgia, 1906. and the U. S. Department of Agriculture soil map of the Waycross area, 1907.

The abandoned railroads are shown principally because they are convenient highways for exploring the almost trackless pine-barrens on foot. The location of the islands and other details within the swamp are not given here because too little is known about them at present.

coast it differs considerably from the two other great swamps of eastern North America, namely. Dismal Swamp and the Everglades.) The surrounding country belongs to the flat pine-barren region of the coastal plain, and is notable for the lack of diversity in its topography. Except in the vicinity of some of the creeks and rivers, the ground has scarcely any slope, and the channels of the smaller streams are ill-defined. At almost any point on a railroad within thirty or forty miles of the swamp one can see the rails stretching away in a straight line farther than the eye can reach, in one or both directions. The longest