Part 10

After a great deal of trouble, by whipping, coaxing, and driving, nearly all the dogs were again collected, as it was in vain to pursue the deer to their retreats. Some of the old hunters slowly coming in at the last, laid themselves down by us panting and half dead with fatigue. By and by the driver again started into the "drive" with the dogs; but an engagement for the evening, precluding my participation in a renewal of the spirit-stirring scene, I reluctantly left my agreeable party who were out for the day, and proceeded homeward. They returned late at night with, I believe, a single deer as the reward of their patience and unwearied spirits, two most important virtues in a thorough-bred deer hunter. Uncommon nerve and great presence of mind are also indispensable qualifications. "Once," remarked a hunting gentleman to me, "while waiting at my stand the approach of a buck, which some time before seeing him I had heard leaping along in immense bounds through the thicket--his sudden appearance in an open space about a hundred yards in front, bearing down directly toward me at fearful speed, so awed and unnerved me for the moment, that although my rifle was levelled at his broad breast, I had not the power to pull the trigger, and before I could recover myself the noble creature passed me like the wind." Yet this gentleman was a tried hunter, and on other occasions had brought down deer as they came toward him at full speed, at the distance of from sixty to a hundred yards.

On my return from the hunting ground, I lingered on the romantic cliff we had crossed in the morning, delighted at once more beholding scenery that reminded me of the rude features of my native state. Dismounting from my horse, which I secured to the only tree upon the cliff, I descended, after many hair-breadth escapes a ravine nearly two hundred feet in depth, which conducted me to the water side and near the mouth of the beautiful St. Catharine, which, after a winding course of more than eighty miles, empties itself into the Mississippi through an embouchure ten yards wide, and as accurately defined as the mouth of a canal. Near this spot is a silver mine lately re-discovered, after the lapse of a third of a century. Its history, I believe, is this. Some thirty or forty years ago, a Spaniard who had been a miner in Mexico, passing down the Mississippi, discovered ore which he supposed to be silver. He took a quantity of it into his pirogue, and on arriving at a planter's house on the banks of the river in Louisiana, tested it as correctly as circumstances would admit, and was satisfied that it was pure silver. He communicated the discovery to his host, gave him a few ingots of the metal and took his departure. What became of him is not known. The host from year to year resolved to visit the spot, but neglected it, or was prevented by the intrusion of more pressing employments, till four or five years since. He then communicated the discovery to a Mexican miner, an American or an Englishman, who stopped at his house, and to whom, on hearing him speak of mines, he showed the masses he had received so many years before from the Spaniard. The man on examining them and ascertaining the metal to be pure silver, became at once interested in the discovery, obtained the necessary information to enable him to find the spot, and immediately ascended the river. On arriving at the cliffs he commenced his search, and after a few days discovered the vein, in one of the lowest strata of the cliffs. He found it difficult, however, to engage the neighbouring planters in his scheme of working it, for what planter would exchange his cotton fields for a silver mine? Yet they treated him with attention, and seconded his efforts by lending him slaves. More than a hundred weight of the ore was obtained, and sent on to Philadelphia to undergo the process of fusion. It probably is not rich enough for amalgamation, as it contains a superior bulk of iron pyrites, blende, lead and earthy matter. The amount of pure silver procured from the ore has not been ascertained, the result of the process not having yet been made known. I obtained several pieces, which make a very pretty show in a cabinet, and this is probably the highest honour to which it will be exalted, at least till the surface of the earth refuses longer to bear ingots of silver, in the shape of the snowy cotton boll.

The peculiar features of these cliffs are a series of vast concavities, or inverted hollow cones, connected with each other by narrow gorges, whose bottoms are level with the river, and surrounded by perpendicular and overhanging walls of earth, often detached, like huge pyramids, and nearly three hundred feet in height. There are five clusters of these cliffs in this state, all situated on the eastern shore of the Mississippi, from forty to one hundred miles apart, of which this is the most important in height and magnitude, as well as in grandeur and variety of scenery. They are properly the heads or terminations of the high grounds of the United States--the _antennae_ of the Alleghanies.[8] The hypothesis that they were promontories in past ages, with the waves of the Mexican Gulf breaking at their bases, has had the support of many scientific men. This opinion carries with it great probability, when the peculiar qualities of the Mississippi are considered in relation to its "forming effects." These effects are a consequence of the general truth of the proposition, that every mechanical destruction will be followed by a mechanical formation; hence the masses separated by the waters of the Mississippi, will be again deposited on the surface of the land, or its shores, about its mouth, and on the bottom of the sea. You are aware that one twelfth of the bulk of this vast volume of water is earth, as ascertained by its depositing that proportion in the bottom of a glass filled with the water. During the flood the proportion is greater, and the earthy particles are as dense as the water can hold in suspension. The average velocity of the current below the Missouri, is between one and two miles an hour, and it is calculated that it would require four months to discharge the column of water embraced between this point and its delta. Bearing constantly within its flood a mass of earth equal to one twelfth of its whole bulk, it follows that it must bear toward the sea, every four years, more than its cubical bulk of solid earth. Now where is this great column of earth deposited? Has it been rolling onward for centuries, without any visible effects? This will not be affirmed, and experience proves the contrary in the hourly mechanical depositions of the ochreous particles of this river, in its noble convexities, its extensive bottoms, and the growing capes at its mouth. But a small portion of the turbid mixture has been deposited in the bed of the river, particularly in its southern section, as moving water will not deposit at any great depth.[9]

Now when the general appearance and geological features of the South-West, including the south part of Mississippi and nearly the whole of Louisiana, are observed with reference to the preceding statements, the irresistible conviction of the observer is, that the immense plain now rich with sugar and cotton fields, a great emporium, numerous villages and a thousand villas, was formed by the mechanical deposits of the Mississippi upon the bed of the ocean, precisely as they are now building up fields into the Mexican Gulf. Do not understand me that the present fertile surface of this region was the original bed of the ocean, but that it rose out of it, as the coral islands come up out of the sea, by the gradual accumulation of deposits. The appearance of these inland promontories or cliffs, which suggested these remarks, and the fact that the highlands of the south-west, all terminate along the southern border of this region, from fifty to one hundred miles from the sea, leaving a broad alluvial tract between, and presenting a well defined _inland_ sea-board, go far to strengthen the opinion I have adopted.

The chain of cliffs along the eastern shore of the Mississippi, have a parallel chain opposite to them on the other side of the great savana, skirted by the Mississippi, about forty miles distant. This savana or valley gradually widens to the south until near the mouth of the river, where it is increased to one hundred and forty or fifty miles in breadth. It is this great valley which is of mechanical formation, and its present site was in all probability covered by the waters of a bay similar to the Chesapeake, extending many leagues above Natchez to the nearest approximation of the cliffs on either side, where alone must have been an original mouth of this great river. Where the spectator, in looking westward from these bluffs; now beholds an extensive and level forest, in ages past rolled the waters of the Mexican sea--and where he now gazes upon a broad and placid river flowing onward to mingle with the distant ocean, the very waves of that ocean rolled in loud surges, dashed against the lofty cliffs, and kissed the pebbles at his feet.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] There are five more cliffs above this state, between it and the mouth of the Ohio; and one on the western shore of the Mississippi at Helena, Arkansas.

[9] The following extract from a private letter in the author's possession, bearing date New Orleans 28th April, 1804, contains some interesting facts, relative to the depth of the lower Mississippi, and other characteristics of this river, which were obtained by the writer from actual observation.

"In Nov. 1800, when there was scarcely any perceptible current, in company with Mr. Benj. Morgan and Capt. Roger Crane, I set off from just above the upper gate of this city and sounded the river, at every three or four boats' length, until we landed opposite to M. Bernody's house on the right bank of the river. The depth of water increased pretty regularly; viz. 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 20 fathoms. The greatest depth was found at about 120 yards from Bernody's shore. This operation was accurately performed; and as the river rises about twelve feet on an average at this place, the depth at high water will be twenty two fathoms. A M. Dervenge, whose father was chief pilot in the time of the French, informed me that his father often told him that a little way below the English Turn there was fifty fathoms of water; and M. Laveau Trudo said that about the upper Plaquemine, there was sixty fathoms, or three hundred and sixty feet.

In the year 1791, during five days that I lay at the Balize, I learned from M. Demaron Trudo, who was then commandant of that place, that there was about three feet difference between the high and low waters. From the best information I have been able to collect, there is a declension of eight or nine feet from the natural banks of the river at this city, to the banks upon which is the site of the house where the Spanish commandant lived before they removed up to Plaquemine, at the distance of about three leagues from the sea. There is a gradual slope or descent of the whole southern region of the Mississippi river, from the river Yazoo, in lat. 32 deg. 30' N. to the ocean or Gulf of Mexico. The elevation of the bluff at Natchez is about 200 feet; at St. Francisville, seventy miles lower, it is a little more than 100 feet; at Baton Rouge, about thirty miles lower, it is less than 40 feet, at New Orleans, according to the above statement eight feet, and at the Balize less than two feet. This vast glacis, at a similar angle of inclination, extends for some leagues into the Gulf of Mexico, till lost in the natural bed of the ocean.

The river, whose current is said to be the most rapid at the period when it is about to overflow its banks, runs in its swiftest vein or portion about five miles an hour. I allude to the line of upper current, and not to the mass, which moves much slower than the surface. The average velocity of the river when not in flood is not above two miles an hour. This is easily ascertained, by the progression and regular motion of its swells, and not by its apparent motion.

In November, 1800, as before observed, the motion of the stream was so sluggish as to be scarcely perceptible. A vessel that then lay opposite the Government House, advanced against it with a light breeze. I was told by a respectable lady, Mdme. Robin, who lives about six leagues below the city, that the water of the river was so brackish that she was obliged to drink other water, and that there were an abundance of porpoises, sharks, mullet, and other sea-fish, even above her plantation, nearly one hundred miles from the Gulf. The citizens thought the water brackish opposite the town. It looked quite green like sea-water, and when held to the light was quite clear. Although I did not think it brackish, I found it vapid and disagreeable. This is a phenomenon of rare occurrence, and not satisfactorily accounted for."

XXXVI.

Geography of Mississippi--Ridges and bottoms--The Mississippi at its efflux--Pine and table lands--General features of the state--Bayous--Back-water of rivers--Springs--St. Catharine's harp--Bankston springs--Mineral waters of this state-- Petrifactions--Quartz crystals--"Thunderbolts"--Rivers--The Yazoo and Pearl.

Though not much given to theorising, I have been drawn into some undigested remarks in my last letter, upon a theory, which is beginning to command the attention of scientific men, to which the result of geological researches daily adds weight, and to which time, with correct observations and farther discoveries, must add the truth of demonstration.

This letter I will devote to a subject, naturally arising from the preceding, perhaps not entirely without interest--I mean the physical geography and geology of this state. In the limits of a letter it is impossible to treat this subject as the nature of it demands, yet I will endeavour to go so far into its detail, as to give you a tolerable idea of the general features of the region.

Besides the cliffs, or great head-lands, alluded to in my last letter, frowning, at long intervals, over the Mississippi, serrated ridges, formed of continuous hills projecting from these points, extend in various directions over the state. These again branch into lower ridges, which often terminate near the river, between the great bluffs, leaving a flat space from their base to the water, from a third of a mile to a league in breadth. These flats, or "bottoms," as they are termed in western phraseology, are inundated at the periodical floods, increasing, at those places, the breadth of the river to the dimensions of a lake. The forest-covered savana, nearly forty miles across, through which the Mississippi flows, and which is bordered by the mural high lands or cliffs alluded to in my last letter, is also overflowed at such seasons; so that the river then becomes, in reality, the breadth of its valley. The grandeur of such a spectacle as a river, forty miles in breadth, descending to the ocean between banks of lofty cliffs, too far distant to be within each other's horizon, challenges a parallel. But, as this vast plain is covered with a forest, the lower half of which only is inundated, the width of the river remains as usual to the eye of the spectator on the cliffs, who will have to call in the aid of his imagination to realize, that in the bosom of the vast forest outspread beneath him rolls a river, to which, in breadth, the noble stream before him is but a rivulet. The interior hills, or ridges, mentioned above, are usually covered with pine; which is found only on such eminences, and in no other section of the south or west, except an isolated wood in Missouri, for more than fifteen hundred miles. The surface of the whole state is thus diversified with hills, with the exception of an occasional interval on the borders of a stream, or a few leagues of prairie in the north part of the state, covered with thin forests of stunted oaks. These hills rise and fall in regular undulations, clothed with forests of inconceivable majesty, springing from a rich, black loam, peculiarly fitted to the production of cotton; though, according to a late writer on this plant, "it flourishes with equal luxuriance in the black alluvial soil of Alatamaha and in the glowing sands of St. Simon's."[10]

The general features of this state have suggested the idea of an immense ploughed field, whose gigantic furrows intersect each other at various angles.--Imagine the hills, formed by these intersections, clothed with verdure, whitened with cotton fields, or covered with noble woods, with streams winding along in the deep ravines, repeatedly turning back upon their course, in their serpentine windings, before they disembogue into the Mississippi on the west, or the Pearl on the east, and you will have a rude though generally correct idea of the bolder features of this state.

A "plain," or extensive level expanse, which is not a marsh, forms, consequently, no part of its scenery, hill and hollow being its stronger characteristics. For a hilly country it presents one striking peculiarity. The surface of the forests, viewed from the bluffs, or from some superior elevation in the interior, presents one uniform horizontal level, with scarcely an undulation in the line to break the perspective. Particularly is this observable about a mile from Natchez, from the summit of a hill on the road to the village of Washington. Here an extensive forest scene lies east of the observer, to appearance a perfect level. But as he travels over hill and through ravine, anticipating a delightful prairie to lie before him, over which he may pace, (or _canter_, if he be a northerner) at his ease, he will find that the promised plain, like the _mirage_ before the fainting Arabian, for ever eludes his path.

There is another remarkable feature in this country, peculiar to the whole region through which the lower Mississippi flows which I can illustrate no better than by resorting to the idea of a ploughed field. As many of these intersecting furrows, or ravines, terminate with the ridges that confine them, near the river, with whose medium tides they are nearly level, they are inundated by the periodical effluxes, which, flowing up into the land, find a passage through other furrows, and discharge into some stream, that suddenly overflows its banks; or winding sluggishly through the glens, cut deep channels for themselves in the argillaceous soil, and through a chain of ravines again unite with the Mississippi, after having created, by their surplus waters, numerous marshes along their borders, and leaving around their course innumerable pools of stagnant water, which become the home of the lazy alligator,[11] and the countless water-fowls which inhabit these regions. These inlets are properly bayous. They radiate from the Mississippi, in the state of Louisiana, in countless numbers, forming a net-work of inlets along its banks for fifty miles on either side, increasing in numbers and size near its mouth; so that, for many leagues above it, an inextricable tissue of lakes and inlets, or bayous, form communications and passes from the river to the Gulf,[12] "accessible," says Flint, "by small vessels and bay-craft, and impossible to be navigated, except by pilots perfectly acquainted with the waters." The entrance of some of these bayous, which are in the vicinity of Natchez, is fortified against the effluxes of the river by _levees_, constructed from one highland to another; and by this means the bottom lands in the rear are protected from the overflow, and, when cultivated, produce fine crops of cotton. Inundations are also caused when the Mississippi is high, by its waters flowing up into the small rivers and creeks, whose natural level is many feet below the high water mark, till they find a level.--The water of these streams is consequently forced back upon itself, and, rising above its banks, overflows all the adjacent country. This "back-water," as it is termed, is more difficult to be resisted by levees than the effluxes of the bayous; and for the want of some successful means of opposing its force, some of the finest "bottom lands" in the state remain uncultivated, and covered with water and forest.

The smaller rivers and streams in this state are wild and narrow torrents, wholly unlike those placid streams which flow through New-England, lined with grassy or rocky banks, and rolling over a stony bottom, which can be discerned from many feet above it, through the transparent fluid. Here the banks of the streams are precipices, and entirely of clay or sand, and cave in after every rain, which suddenly raises these torrents many feet in a few minutes; and such often is their impetuosity, that if their banks are too high to be inundated, they cut out new channels for themselves; and a planter may, not improbably, in the morning after a heavy rain, find an acre or more added to his fields from an adjoining estate; to be repaid, in kind, after another rain. In the dry season the water of these streams--which, with the exception of three or four of the large ones, are more properly conduits for the rain water that falls upon the hills, than permanent streams--is tolerably clear, though a transparent sheet of water larger than a spring, whether in motion or at rest, I have not seen in this state. After a rain they become turbid, like the Mississippi, impetuous in their course, and dangerous to travellers. Few of these streams are covered with bridges, as their banks dissolve, during a rain, almost as rapidly as banks of snow--so light is the earth of which they are composed--and the points from which bridges would spring are soon washed away. The streams are therefore usually forded; and as their beds are of the finest sand, and abound in quicksands, carriages and horses are often swallowed up in fording them, and lives are not unfrequently lost.

The roads throughout the state, with the exception of these fords, are very good, winding through fine natural scenery, past cultivated fields, and pleasant villages.