To give a general view of those countries, we should consider them as they are naturally divided into four parts; 1. The sea coast; 2. The Lower Louisiana, or western part of Carolina; 3. The Upper Louisiana, or western part of Virginia; and 4, the river Missisippi.
I. The sea coast is the same with all the rest of the coast of North America to the southward of New York, and indeed from thence to Mexico, as far as we are acquainted with it. It is all a low flat sandy beach, and the soil for some twenty or thirty miles distance from the shore, more or less, is all a pine barren, as it is called, or a sandy desart; with few or no good ports or harbours on the coast, especially in all those southern parts of America, from Chesapeak bay to Mexico. But however barren this coast is in other respects, it is entirely covered with tall pines, which afford great store of pitch, tar, and turpentine. These pines likewise make good masts for ships; which I have known to last for twenty odd years, when it is well known, that our common masts of New England white pine will often decay in three or four years. These masts were of that kind that is called the pitch pine, and lightwood pine; of which I knew a ship built that ran for sixteen years, when her planks of this pine were as sound and rather harder than at first, although her oak timbers were rotten. The cypress, of which there is such plenty in the swamps on this coast, is reckoned to be equally serviceable, if not more so, both for masts (of which it would afford the largest of any tree that we know), and for ship building. And ships might be built of both these timbers for half the price perhaps of any others, both on account of the vast plenty of them, and of their being so easily worked.
In most parts of these coasts likewise, especially about the Missisippi, there is great plenty of cedars and ever-green oaks; which make the best ships of any that are built in North America. And we suspect it is of these cedars and the American cypress, that the Spaniards build their ships of war at the Havanna. Of these there is the greatest plenty, immediately; to the westward of the mouth of the Missisippi where "large vessels can go to the lake of the Chetimachas, and nothing hinders them to go and cut the finest oaks in the world, with which all that coast is covered;"[1] which, moreover, is a sure sign of a very good, instead of a bad soil; and accordingly we see the French have settled their tobacco plantations thereabouts. It is not without reason then, that our author tells us, the largest navies might be built in that country at a very small expence.
From this it appears, that even the sea coast, barren as it is, from which the whole country has been so much depreciated, is not without its advantages, and those peculiarly adapted to a trading and maritime nation. Had these sandy desarts indeed been in such a climate as Canada, they would have been of as little value, as many would make them here. It might be difficult indeed to settle colonies merely for these or any other productions of those poor lands: but to the westward of the Missisippi, the coast is much more fruitful all along the bay of Mexico; being watered with a great number of rivers, the banks of which are very fertile, and are covered with forests of the tallest oaks, &c. as far as to New Mexico, a thing not to be seen any where else on these coasts. The coast alone will supply all the products of North America, and is as convenient to navigation as any part of it, without going nigh the Missisippi; so that it is with good reason our author says, "That country promises great riches to such as shall inhabit it, from the excellent quality of its lands,"[2] in such a climate.
These are the productions of the dry (we cannot call them high) grounds: the swamps, with which this coast abounds, are still more fruitful, and abundantly compensate the avidity and barrenness of the soil around them. They bear rice in such plenty, especially the marsh about New Orleans, "That the inhabitants reap the greatest advantage from it, and reckon it the manna of the land."[3] It was such marshes on the Nile, in the same climate, that were the granary of the Roman empire. And from a few such marshes in Carolina, not to be compared to those on the Missisippi, either in extent or fertility, Britain receives at least two or three hundred thousand pounds a year, and might vend twice that value of their products.
But however barren or noxious these low lands on the sea coast may be, they extend but a little way about the Missisippi, not above thirty or forty miles in a straight line, on the east side of that river, and about twice as far on the west side; in which last, the lands are, in recompence, much more fruitful. To follow the course of the river indeed, which runs very obliquely south-east and north-west, as well as crooked, they reckon it eighty-two leagues from the mouth of the river to the Cut-Point, where the high lands begin.
II. By the Lower Louisiana, our author means only the Delta of the Missisippi, or the drowned lands made by the overflowing of the river. But we may more properly give that appellation to the whole country, from the low and flat sea coast above described, to the mountains, which begin about the latitude 35°, a little above the river St. Francis; that is, five degrees of latitude, or three hundred and fifty statute miles from the coast; which they reckon to be six hundred and sixty miles up the Missisippi. About that latitude a continued ridge of mountains runs westward from the Apalachean mountains nigh to the banks of the Missisippi, which are thereabouts very high, at what we have called the Chicasaw Cliffs. Opposite to these on the west side of the Missisippi, the country is mountainous, and continues to be so here and there, as far as we have any accounts of it, westward to the mountains of New Mexico; which run in a chain of continued ridges from north to south, and are reckoned to divide that country from Louisiana, about 900 miles west from the Missisippi.
This is one entire level champaign country; the part of which that lies west of the Missisippi is 900 miles (of sixty to a degree) by 300, and contains 270,000 square miles, as much as both France and Spain put together. This country lies in the latitude of those fruitful regions of Barbary, Syria, Persia, India, and the middle of China, and is alone sufficient to supply the world with all the products of North America. It is very fertile in every thing, both in lands and metals, by all the accounts we have of it; and is watered by several large navigable rivers, that spread over the whole country from the Missisippi to New Mexico; besides several smaller rivers on the coast west of the Missisippi, that fall into the bay of Mexico; of which we have no good accounts, if it be not that Mr. Coxe tells us of one, the river of the Cenis, which, he says, "is broad, deep, and navigable almost to its heads, which chiefly proceed from the ridge of hills that separate this province from New Mexico,"[4] and runs through the rich and fertile country on the coast above mentioned.
The western part of this country is more fertile, says our author, than that on the east side of the Missisippi; in which part, however, says he, the lands are very fertile, with a rich black mould three feet deep in the hills, and much deeper in the bottoms, with a strong clayey foundation. Reeds and canes even grow upon the hill sides; which, with the oaks, walnuts, tulip-trees, &c. are a sure sign of a good and rich soil. And all along the Missisippi on both sides, Dumont tells, "The lands, which are all free from inundations, are excellent for culture, particularly those about Baton Rouge, Cut-Point, Arkansas, Natchez, and Yasous, which produce Indian corn, tobacco, indigo, &c. and all kinds of provisions and esculent plants, with little or no care or labour, and almost without culture; the soil being in all those places a black mould of an excellent quality."[5]
These accounts are confirmed by our own people, who were sent by the government of Virginia in 1742, to view these the western parts of that province; and although they only went down the Ohio and Missisippi to New Orleans, they reported, that "they saw more good land on the Missisippi, and its many large branches, than they judge is in all the English colonies, as far as they are inhabited;" as appears from the report of that government to the board of trade.