The road was well opened, but hilly, through the woods, for two miles farther, when on crossing a water course (now dry) and rising a hill, I had a view on the right, over the extensive plantation of colonel West,[202] who has upwards of two hundred acres in one field in cultivation. The soil seems very thin, as in the whole neighbourhood of Greenville, but the crop of cotton and corn now looked luxuriant, from the wetness of the season.
Two miles farther I passed on the right Parker Cardine’s delightfully situated plantation, with an excellent dwelling house, and good apple and peach orchards, with the south branch of Cole’s creek, winding round on the right below, and which I crossed soon after. The soil however is very light, and is soon washed off, and worn out, where it has been cultivated a few years, on the whole tract between Greenville and Natchez.
The country here is well opened and inhabited to a little beyond Uniontown, which is a small village of three or four houses in decay, about a mile beyond Cardine’s.[203]
I stopped at Uniontown to feed my horse. (I make use of the active verb feed, instead of the passive one, to have my horse fed, as travellers in this country, who will not take the trouble of giving corn and fodder to their horses themselves, may expect to have them soon die of famine, although they pay extravagantly for food and attendance.) I was here joined by a trig looking young man mounted on a mule, who requested to accompany me on the road towards Natchez. {291} In riding along, he entertained me with his history. He said his name was Jackson—that he was born in London—was bred a painter, and was sent to a rich uncle in St. Vincents, when only fourteen years old. That aided by his uncle, he had traded among the West India islands, until he was seventeen, when being concerned with a son of colonel Haffey, in a contraband adventure to Martinique, he lost every thing, and then came to the continent, where he had supported himself as an itinerant house and landscape painter, in which capacity he had travelled over most parts of the United States. Unfortunately for the credit of his veracity, he described my old friend colonel Henry Haffey, as a native French Creole of Martinique, when in reality, he was born in the North of Ireland, and had nothing of the Frenchman, either in manner or character. Besides, having no children himself, he had adopted Henry Haffey Gums, a nephew of his wife’s. On this discovery I humoured my companion, and affected to believe all he said, which betrayed him into many laughable absurdities and contradictions.
FOOTNOTES:
[199] Judge Peter Bryan Bruin was an Irishman, who having come to America while yet young, became a patriot in the Revolution, joined Morgan’s riflemen, and was captured at the siege of Quebec. He entered Morgan’s New Madrid land scheme, but proceeding to Natchez settled as a planter at the mouth of Bayou Pierre, where he was alcalde under the Spanish régime. Upon the organization of Mississippi Territory, Bruin was appointed one of the three territorial judges, which office he held until his resignation in 1810. The site of his plantation is noted as the point where Grant crossed the Mississippi and began his march against Vicksburg.—Ed.
[200] Joseph Calvit served as lieutenant in Clark’s Illinois campaign, and was with him at Kaskaskia in 1779. Later going to the Natchez country, he became a prominent and respected citizen of Mississippi.—Ed.
[201] Greenville was laid out as the seat of Jefferson County, in 1802, being named in honor of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame. When the county-seat was removed to Fayette in 1825, Greenville declined in importance, and the site is now a cotton-field.—Ed.
[202] Colonel Cato West was a Virginian who removed to Georgia at an early day, and subsequently left the Holston Valley to join George Rogers Clark in Kentucky. Finding the current of the Ohio difficult to stem, he floated down to Natchez, secured a Spanish grant, and became a leading citizen of early Mississippi. Colonel West was secretary of the territory from 1802-09, and member of the Constitutional Convention in 1817.—Ed.
[203] Parker Carradine was a Mississippian who came thither during the English rule, and belonged to the party who opposed Willing and Gayoso, the American and Spanish invaders of the Natchez district.