book review: The Story of Georgia's Boundaries: A Meeting of History and Geography

摘要

Ever since I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author, I've had "Georgia on my mind." Actually, I don't recall much of the history of Georgia he relates, but the geography of the state haunts me. I can picture the original shape of the state, its various transformations, and its final shape. I can name the rivers that, along with the ocean, bound it along two thirds of its perimeter. I can account for the straight lines connecting the rivers. I can name the five states that border it. The history comes back too: the fact that there were five attempts to found the colony before the one that succeeded, the fact that the land of the colony west of the Mississippi was ceded by the mother country to France, the fact that the surveys of the northern boundary of Florida at one time or another added to and subtracted from the state, the fact that the survey of the northern boundary of the state is a total disaster, and finally the fact that the creation of Alabama and Mississippi reduced it to its present size and shape (map p. 95).