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CHAPTER II.
BRAZOS COUNTY.

GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY.

Brazos county belongs to the great group of counties comprising Montgomery, Walker, Grimes, and others to the eastward, and Washington and others to the west, forming a great secondary plain or prairie lying to the north of the coastal or primary plain. This county lies in the form of a delta between the Navasota river on the east, and the Brazos river on the west. It is bounded on the north by Robertson county. Its whole area comprises 519 square miles.

The topographic features are simple in the extreme. Bordering the Navasota river on the east, there is a long narrow strip of low lying bottom lands, and the same feature characterizes the region along the Brazos river on the west. In the northwestern corner the whole of that portion lying between the Little Brazos and the Brazos rivers is low lying bottom lands, bordered on the east by a ridge of broken bluffs, rising toward the north into rounded gravel-covered hills having an altitude of 100 to 150 feet above the general level of the bottoms. In the northeastern and northern areas the county presents a continuation of the brown prairies so extensively developed throughout the southern portion of Robertson county. The central and southern portions are rolling, and present the appearance of a great plain rising gently to the north, with extensive tracts of prairie, cut here and there at irregular intervals by long narrow strips of a stunted growth of timber. This timber usually marks the course of the creeks. In the extreme south the land is low, level, and mostly subject to overflow.

The general altitude of the county does not exceed 350 feet above sea level, and the elevations of the principal points are: