CHARLES LYELL'S GEOLOGICAL EXCURSIONS IN ANTEBELLUM GEORGIA

In his travels and field excursions Charles Lyell (1797-1875) probably clocked more miles than any other nineteenth-century geologist. Four times he voyaged to the United States from his native Britain, and on two of those trips (1841-1842 and 1845-1846) he traveled in the South. Focused on his excursions into Georgia, this paper discusses the methods and strategies Lyell employed to cull geological information from a region where amenities were scattered, transportation limited, and rock exposures infrequent, and where the best local guidance he could obtain was knowledge of the land possessed by plantation owners, physicians, and other ameturs.