[10] It has been said that cotton will thrive as well in a sandy soil, with a sea exposure, as in a rich loam in the interior.
[11] The alligator is found on the shores of the lower Mississippi, in bayous and at the mouths of creeks. It is seldom seen far above 32° north latitude. There has been much dispute as to the identity of the crocodile and alligator, nor are naturalists yet united in their opinions upon this point. The opinion that they belong to the same species is supported by the systema natura, as it came from the hand of Linneus, but it is positively contradicted in the last edition of this work, published by Professor Gmelin.
[12] "The experienced savage or solitary voyager, descending the Mississippi for a thousand miles, paddles his canoe through the deep forests from one bluff to the other. He moves, perhaps, along the inundated forests of the vast interval through which the Mississippi flows, into the mouth of White river. He ascends that river a few miles, and by the Grand Cut-off moves down the flooded forest into Arkansas. From that river he finds many bayous, which communicate readily with Washita and Red river; and from that river, by some one of its hundred bayous, he finds his way into the Atchafalaya and the Teche; and by this stream to the Gulf of Mexico, reaching it more than twenty leagues west of the Mississippi. At that time this is a river from thirty to a hundred miles wide, all overshaded with forests, except an interior strip of little more than a mile in width, where the eye reposes upon the open expanse of waters visible between the forests, which is the Mississippi proper."
[13] A bed of lime-stone has been recently discovered on the shore at Natchez below high water mark, two hundred feet lower than the summit level of the state of Mississippi. There are some extraordinary petrifactions in the north part of this state, among which is the fallen trunk of a tree twenty feet in length, converted into solid rock. The outer surface of the bark, which is in contact with the soil, is covered as thickly as they can be set, with brilliant brown crystals resembling garnets in size and beauty.
Thin flakes of the purest enamel, the size of a guinea and irregularly shaded, have been found in the ravines near Natchez. In the same ravines mammoth bones are found in great numbers, on the caving in of the sides after a heavy rain.
XXXVII.
Topography—Natchez—Washington—Seltzertown—Greenville—Port Gibson—Raymond—Clinton—Southern villages—Vicksburg—Yeomen of Mississippi—Jackson—Vernon—Satartia—Benton—Amsterdam—Brandon and other towns—Monticello—Manchester—Rankin—Grand Gulf—Rodney—Warrenton—Woodville—Pinckneyville—White Apple village.
In my last letter I alluded to the geological features of Mississippi, the peculiarities of its soil and rivers, or streams, and the characteristics of its scenery. In this I will give you a brief topographical description of the state, embracing its principal towns and villages. Were I confined to the details of the tourist, in my sketches, you might follow me step by step over hill and dale, through forest and "bottom," to the several places which may form the subject of the first part of this letter. But a short view of them, only, comes within my limits as a letter-writer. For the more minute information I possess upon this subject I am indebted to a gentleman,[14] whose scientific and historical researches have greatly contributed to the slender stock of information upon this state—its resources, statistics, and general peculiarities.