Of late, I have been exploring words of which I was not familiar and in a variety of topics. Today, I bring you words dealing with geography. Many we are hearing something of on a daily basis on TV with many sounding the alarm for climate change. Mother Earth. Whose demise we can foresee. Most of us know, for example, something of a rainforest, a valley, topography, a mountain, a lagoon, and even a fjord (thank you to Disney for adding this word to kids’ vocabulary via “Frozen”). Yet, of late, I have heard some geographical terms of which I was not so familiar, as well as some I had not considered for more years than I can to confess. Perhaps you, also, could use a refresher course. Some of these I knew. Some are new to me and perhaps to you.
Ria – a drowned river valley, forming a long, narrow, funnel-shaped inlet at right angles to the sea. Likely the most famous one of which I can think is Port Jackson, also referred to as Sydney Harbour. It is a ria, or drowned river valley. The deeply indented shape of the ria reflects the dendritic pattern of drainage that existed before the rise in sea level that flooded the valley.
Pingo – A hillock produced in polar regions by an underground ice “blister” pushing up the surface above.
Talga – An area of coniferous evergreen forest lying south of the tundra in Europe and Asia.
Karst – Limestone landscape with a largely bare, rocky surface and rivers that flow through underground caves.
These next two are closely connected, so I will add them together.
Karst – A high block of land between parallel faults, caused by the block having risen or the land on either side having sunk.
Graben (or Rift Valley) – A long narrow trough where land has sunk between two in-facing parallel faults (also known as a graben).
Guyot – A flat-topped submarine mountain formed by a subsiding volcanic island.
Hogback – A long narrow ridge which is steep on both sides.
Desertification (I could have figures this one out with the word “desert” at the beginning . . .) – The process by which land that has been farmed or inhabited becomes changed into desert, usually through climatic change or over-farming.
Cirque – A mountain hollow eroded by snow and ice. It may contain snow or a lake.
Cuesta – A ridge with a steep slope on one side and a gentle dip slope on the other.
Glaciation – The effects on land of ice sheets or glaciers that erode rocks and deposit the rock debris.
Llano – A large area of usually treeless, grassy plain in South America or the southern U.S.
Drumlin – A half-egg-shaped hill of glacial deposits, formed under moving glacial ice.
Erg – An area in the desert where there are shifting sand dunes, for example in the Sahara.
This last one, most of us know, but the Coriolls force appears to be more in the news these days with excessive rain, snow, tornadoes, etc. The Coriolls force refers to the tendency of the Earth’s rotation to turn winds and currents to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere.
Along comes Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE, who in 1898 had written a book entitled To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which was the groundwork for Howard’s first Garden City, a utopian city in which people lived harmoniously together with nature. Other Garden Cities followed: Welwyn Garden City, also in Hertfordshire, (1920), and those in other countries, Forest Hills Gardens (in the borough of Queens, New York), designed by F. L. Olmsted, Jr. (1909), Radburn, New Jersey, (1923), and the Suburban Resettlement Programs towns of the 1930s, including Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; Greenbrook, New Jersey; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Canberra, Australia (1913). [Stern, Robert (1981). The Anglo American Suburb. London: Architectural Design Profile. pp. 84, 85.]
Colonel Matthew Locke was a Revolutionary War leader, as well as a member of Congress, who just happened to have been born in Northern Ireland. Like many in the present day North Carolina, Locke’s ancestors first settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. A few years after his father died, his mother married a man by the name of John Brandon and moved to Anson County, North Carolina. Anson is the next county over from I live outside of Charlotte, and I can tell you there is LOTS of history to found in this area. Later, around 1752, the Brandons moved to Grants Creek, which was part of Mecklenburg County at that time, but is now part of Rowan County, North Carolina. 
Carolina’s first state constitution was drafted. He was in charge of the militia pay of six frontier counties. He procured supplies for the Continental Army. He served in the North Carolina House of Commons on and off from 1777 to 1793. He was known to support universal manhood suffrage, an idea to remove owning property as a right to vote and holding office, in other words, removing the stipulation of ownership of 50 acres of property or the payment of taxes as a prerequisite to vote. He also supported the endowment of Queen’s Museum (later Queen’s College and now Queen’s University) in Charlotte, which is considered the first institution of higher learning in North Carolina. [Just as a side note, my daughter-in-law earned her masters degree at Queens, and my son was an assistant track and cross country coach at the college. It is still a vibrant piece of Charlotte’s history.] In the vote to ratify the U. S. Constitution, Locke took a stand for the new country’s many farmers, who could not afford an expensive, nor oppressive, government. 
On Friday, May 19, I presented you a piece on the first Declaration of Independence, a year before Thomas Jefferson’s document. Today, permit me to introduce you to the hero of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, Captain James Jack. 
In 1766, James Jack married Margaret Houston, and the couple soon moved to Charlotte, where the elder Mr. Jack had purchased lots on the south side of West Trade Street. The family built a house on one of the lots and operated a tavern out of it. James Jack earn a fortune from real estate speculation. He was later appointed as a tax collector, as well as an overseer of the poor in Mecklenburg County. [Note: The county of Mecklenburg and the city of Charlotte were named after King George III’s queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg.]
Captain James Jack returned to his home in Charlottetowne on July 7 of the same year. He rode an average of 30 miles each day—hard riding for the time and the geographic challenges—completing his journey of some 1100 miles in 38 days.
With the war’s end, Jack moved his family to the western part of North Carolina, which at the time stretched all the way to present-day Nashville. He signed the petition to the North Carolina Assembly to make North Carolina a separate state. Later, he moved to what is now Wilkes County, Georgia, where he was not so successful as a farmer. Finally, he and his wife Margaret moved again to neighboring Elbert County, to live with their son William and live out their days. James Jack died in December 1822. His obituary lists his age at death as being 84, but in December 1819, he wrote of being 88 years of age. Therefore, he was like 91 years old at his death. 
After the French and Indian War, King George and the British Parliament sometimes ignored the American colonies and sometimes saw them as a source of income for the numerous wars in which they engaged. The Stamp Act and the taxes on tea, however, provoke the colonists into breaking with Great Britain. When the British Army occupied Boston and close the port, word of the aggression quickly spread, even to the backwoods of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. Not liking what they heard, those within the county authorized Colonel Thomas Polk, the commander of the county militia, to call a meeting where the “aggression” might be discussed. Two representatives were named by each of the nine militia companies within the county. Whatever decision theses men would make would be binding on the county’s citizens. These men met at the county courthouse, which was located in Charlotte, a town named for King George III’s queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
The five resolutions explained how Great Britain had “wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.” It went on the say, we “dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother country” and declare ourselves “a free and independent people.” The laws were to remain the same but “The Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.” To read the complete text of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 
“Even as they were debating and approving what came to be known as The Mecklenburg Declaration, the delegates had realized that it lacked coherence and organization and they appointed a committee to revise it. By May 31st the committee had completed their work which was not a revision but rather a completely new document, and which came to be called the Mecklenburg Resolves. This new document was less emotional, more logical, and much better organized than the original:
“In short, finding themselves declared outlaws by the King, they set up their own government and prepared to defend themselves. And note that they did this not just for Mecklenburg County, but for the whole thirteen colonies. To read the complete text of the Mecklenburg Resolves, 
“Gibbets were not removed once the condemned finally became reduced to a skeleton. They were left up for years at a time. They became landmarks, and a few even had
“Because gibbeting was so rare, blacksmiths had little to go on when called upon to make a gibbet. Some were heavy, some were very loose, some were adjustable. One had a notch where a nose would go. In some cases, the gibbet held only the torso, allowing the arms and legs to dangle outside its confines. After a gibbet was removed (or fell down from wear) the gibbet and its components were sometimes turned into souvenirs, such as a post that was carved up into tobacco bowls.”
Every Woman Dreams... 
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