Between three and four miles from Natchez we crossed the St. Catharine, a deeply bedded and narrow stream, winding through a fertile tract of country in a very serpentine course, for nearly thirty leagues before it empties into the Mississippi, twenty miles below Natchez. This stream is celebrated in the early history of this state, and still possesses interest from the Indian traditions with which it is associated. In numerous villages, formerly scattered along its banks, and spread over the beautiful hills among which it meanders, but not a vestige of which now remains, it is supposed, on the authority both of oral and written history, that more than two hundred thousand Indians but a few degrees removed from the refinements of civilized life, dwelt peaceably under their own vine and fig-tree. But where are they now? "Echo answers—Where!"
Between five and six miles from town the road passed through the centre of one of the most extensive plantations in the county. For more than a mile on either side, an immense cotton field spread away to the distant forests. Not a fence, except that which confined the road, (always degraded, in the parlance of the country, when running between two fences, to a "lane,") was to be seen over the whole cultivated surface of a mile square. The absence of fences is a peculiarity of southern farms. As their proprietors cultivate but one article as a staple, there is no necessity of intersecting their lands by fences, as at the north, where every farm is cut up into many portions, appropriated to a variety of productions. To a northern eye, a large extent of cultivated country, without a fence, or scarcely a dwelling, would present a singular appearance; but a short residence in the south will soon render one familiar with such scenery where no other meets the eye. The few fences, however, that exist on plantations, for defining boundaries, confining public roads, and fencing in the pasture lands—which, instead of broad green fields as in New-England, are the woods and cane-brakes—are of the most unsightly kind. With a gently undulating surface and a diversity of vale and wood scenery unrivalled, the natural loveliness of this state is disfigured by zigzag, or Virginia fences, which stretch along the sides of the most charming roads, surround the loveliest cottages, or rudely encroach upon the snowy palings that enclose them, and intersect the finest eminences and fairest champaigns. The Yankee farmer's stone and rail fences are bad enough, but they are in character with the ruder features of his country; but the worm fences and arcadian scenery of the south are combinations undreamed of in my philosophy. These crooked lines of deformity obtruding upon the eye in every scene—the numerous red banks and chasms caused by the "wash," and Congo and Mandingo nymphs and swains, loitering around every fountain, rambling through the groves, or reclining in the shades, are in themselves sufficient to unruralise even "Araby the blest." Yet with all these harsh artificial features, there is a picturesqueness—a quiet beauty in the general aspect of the scenery, not unfrequently strengthened into majesty, so indelibly stamped upon it by nature that nothing less than a rail-road can wholly deface it.
On the plantation alluded to above, through which lay our road, I noticed within the fence a young hedge, which, with an unparalleled innovation upon the prescriptive right of twisted fences, had recently been planted to supersede them. In a country where the "chickasaw rose," which is a beautiful hedge thorn, grows so luxuriantly, it is worthy of remark that the culture of the hedge, so ornamental and useful as a field-fence, is altogether neglected. Planters would certainly find it eventually for their interest, and if generally adopted, the scenery of this state would rival the loveliest sections of rural England. Delaware, without any striking natural beauties, by clustering green hedges around her wheat-fields and farm-houses, has created an artificial feature in her scenery which renders her naturally tame aspect extremely rural, if not beautiful. The hedge, however, will not be introduced into this state to the exclusion of the rail-fence, until the pine woods, dwindled here and there to a solitary tree, refuse longer to deform in the shape of rails, a country they were originally intended to beautify.
The "quarters" of the plantation were pleasantly situated upon an eminence a third of a mile from the road, each dwelling neatly white-washed and embowered in the China tree, which yields in beauty to no other. This, as I have before remarked, is the universal shade tree for cabin and villa in this state. It is in leaf about seven months in the year, and bears early in the spring a delicate and beautiful flower, of a pale pink ground slightly tinged with purple. In appearance and fragrance it resembles the lilac, though the cluster of flowers is larger and more irregularly formed. These after loading the air with their fragrance for some days, fall off, leaving green berries thickly clustering on every branch. These berries become yellow in autumn, and long after the seared leaf falls, hang in clusters from the boughs, nor finally drop from them until forced from their position by the young branches and leaves in the succeeding spring. The chief beauty of this tree consists in the richness and arrangement of its foliage. From a trunk eight or ten feel in height, the limbs, in the perfect tree, branch irregularly upward at an angle of about 45° or 50°. From these, which are of various lengths, slender shoots extend laterally, bearing at their extremities a thick tuft of leaves. These slender branches radiate in all directions, each also terminating in fine feathery tufts, which, being laid one over the other like scales on armour, present an almost impenetrable shield to the rays of the sun. These young shoots throughout the season are constantly expanding their bright parasols of leaves, and as they are of a paler hue than the older leaves, which are of a dark purple green, the variegated effect, combined with the singularly beautiful arrangement of the whole, is very fine. The rapid growth of this tree is remarkable. A severed limb placed in the ground, in the winter, will burst forth into a fine luxuriant head of foliage in the spring. From a berry slightly covered with soil, a weed, not unlike the common pig-weed, in the rapidity of its growth and the greenness of its stalk, shoots up during the summer four or five feet in height. During the winter its stalks harden, and in the spring, in a brown coat, and with the dignity of a young tree, it proudly displays its tufts of pale, tapering leaves. In three or four summers more it will fling its limbs over the planter's cottage—and cast upon the ground a broad and delightful shade. Divest a tree of the largest size of its top, and in the spring the naked stump will burst forth into a cloud of foliage. Such is the tree which surrounds the dwellings and borders the streets in the villages of the south-west—the "vine" and the "fig tree" under which every man dwells.
About two leagues from Natchez the road entered an extensive forest, winding along upon a ridge thickly covered with the polished leaved magnolia tree (M. grandiflora)—the pride of southern forests. This tree is an evergreen, and rises from the ground often to the height of seventy feet, presenting an exterior of evergreen leaves, and large white flowers. Its leaves appearing like "two single laurel-leaves rolled into one," are five or six inches in length, of a dark green colour, the under side of a rich brown, and the upper beautifully glazed, and thick like shoe leather. The flower is magnificent. In June it unfolds itself upon the green surface of the immoveable cone in fine relief. When full blown it is of a great size; some of them cannot be placed in a hat without crushing them. Its petals are a pure white, shaped and curved precisely like a quarter-section of the rind of an orange, and nearly as thick, and perfectly smooth and elastic. They are frequently used by boarding-school misses to serve as billets doux, for which, from their fragrance and unsullied purity, they are admirably fitted. They are so large that I have written upon one of them with a lead pencil in ordinary handwriting, a stanza from Childe Harold. It must be confessed that the writing as well as the material is of a very ephemeral kind; but for this reason the material is perhaps the more valuable when pressed into the service of Don Cupid. They are so fragrant that a single flower will fill a house with the most agreeable perfume; and the atmosphere for many rods in the vicinity of a tree in full flower is so heavily impregnated, that a sensation of faintness will affect one long remaining within its influence.
The remainder of our ride was through a fine forest, occasionally opening into broad cotton fields. Once on ascending a hill we caught, through a vista in the woods over broad fields, a glimpse of the cypress forests of Louisiana, spread out like a dark sea to the level horizon. The Mississippi rolled through the midst unseen. As we rode on we passed roads diverging to the right and left from the highway, leading to the hidden dwellings of the planters. A large gate set into a rail fence usually indicates the vicinity of a planter's residence in the south—but the plantation roads here turned into the forests, through which they romantically wound till lost in their depths. Any of these roads would have conducted us to the villa of some wealthy planter. There can be little ostentation in a people who thus hide their dwellings from the public road. Jonathan, on the other hand, would plant his house so near the highway as to have a word from his door with every passenger. Deprive him of a view of the public road, and you deprive him of his greatest enjoyment—the indulgence of curiosity. About nine miles from town the forest retreated from the road, and from the brow of a hill, the brown face of a cliff rose above the tops of the trees about a league before us. To the eye so long accustomed to the unvarying green hue of the scenery—the rough face of this cliff was an agreeable relief. It was one of the white cliffs alluded to in a former letter. Shortly after losing sight of this prominent object, we turned into a road winding through the woods, which conducted us for a quarter of an hour down and up several precipitous hills, across two deep bayous, through an extensive cotton field in which the negroes were industriously at work without a "driver" or an "overseer," and after winding a short distance bordered by young poplars round the side of a hill, passed through a first, then a second gateway, and finally brought us in front of the dwelling house of our host, and the termination of our interesting ride.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] The forests of Mississippi consist of oak, ash, maple, hickory, sweet gum, cypress, (in the bottoms) yellow poplar, holly, black and white flowering locusts, pecan, and pine on the ridges, with a countless variety of underwood, ivy, grape vines, (vitis silvestris) papaw, spice-wood, and innumerable creepers whose flexile tendrils twine around every tree.