{278} June 5th, having lashed the boats together again, we cast them loose from their moorings at an early hour, and trusted them to the current, but after floating six miles we had to use our oars with the utmost exertion, to avoid some broken and hanging trees, with a whirling eddy just below them, occasioned by a point on the left projecting far into a bend on the right, and being rendered rapid by the channel above being narrowed by island 101. Inside of these broken trees, the canes were burnt, as if with intention to make a settlement. The canes or reeds, which grow to an immense size on the river banks, had now began to take the place of brush or copse wood, but they do not prevent the growth of the forest trees, which appear to gain in size the lower we descend.
A mile below the intricate pass, we came to a settlement commenced this spring by a Mr. Campbell from Bayau Pierre, who has made a good opening. The family which had commenced near the whirlpool above, were residing with him. The river in general at its greatest height never rises more than a foot higher than it was now. It is ten miles from hence to Yazoos river, and twenty to the Walnut hills, eighteen below the last three new settlements, and one hundred below Ville Aussipot.
A mile and a half lower, is a beautiful situation on the right, partly cleared, with a cabin on it, but no inhabitants. The river trenches from hence E. S. E. and a mile lower is another new settlement on the right, from whence is a fine reach of the river downwards E. ½ S. In the next half league, are three more new settlements also on the right, all commenced this spring.
A mile lower is a charming situation for a settlement, at present unoccupied. It is opposite island No. 103, and continues three miles to a point where the river resumes its S. S. W. direction, at the end {279} of that island, which is itself a delightful and most eligible situation for an industrious and tasty farmer.
There are some settlements opposite the end of the island on the right bank, and on the left, opposite, is discernible the bed of an old schute of the Mississippi, or rather a mouth of the Yazoos, as the low willows which mark this old bed join that river two miles above where it enters the Mississippi. From my admiration of No. 103, my fellow voyagers named it Cuming’s island, and indeed I should have been tempted to have settled on it, had every thing been perfectly convenient for that purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[196] Noted in the seventh edition of the Navigator.—Cramer.
CHAPTER XLVIII
The Walnut hills and Fort M’Henry—Palmyra—Point Pleasant—Big Black—Trent’s point—The Grand Gulph—Bayau Pierre.
A mile below Cuming’s island, is a settlement on the right, and four others immediately below it, all within a quarter of a mile of each other, and all apparently commenced last year. Three miles below Cuming’s island, we passed the mouth of the river Yazoos on the left. It is about two hundred and fifty yards wide, and affords a fine view up it four or five miles. Opposite, on the right, is the fine settlement of George Collins, with the Walnut hills in sight over the trees at the end of the reach. Three quarters of a mile below Collins’s there is another small settlement, from whence the Mississippi takes a curve to the N. E. and then again turns to the left, where at the end of a short easterly reach, we saw over the trees, a cliff of the Walnut hills three miles {280} lower down, and soon after, two large, well cleared farms, cultivated from the bank to the top of the hills, where are seen the earthen ramparts of Fort M’Henry, now abandoned. These hills are about as high as the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, but differ from them by rising gradually with a gentle slope, having a most delightful effect on the eye after the level banks with which it has been fatigued, since passing the Bluffs.[197]