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 antennæ 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. Dervengé, 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° 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.