Big Bottom in "The Old People" (Location)

Sam Fathers teaches the boy who narrates "The Old People" to hunt in "the big bottom" (205), the "unpathed woods" that surround Major de Spain's hunting camp (208). It is described as primeval wilderness, a mixture of "tremendous gums and cypresses and oaks where no axe had ever sounded" (206), interspersed with brakes of cane and brier, and paw-paw trees. The Big Bottom is situated on the southern bank of the large bend in the river in the northwestern corner of Yoknapatawpha County.