A
TOPOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION
OF
RED RIVER.
This river enters the Mississippi on the western side, at the first great bend below Fort Adams, about nine miles distant from the crossing of the line of demarkation. It is large, and one of the most beautiful rivers in Lower Louisiana. Its waters are brackish, of a reddish colour, turbid, and deposit a sediment collected from the red banks, far up the river. The banks are overflowed in the spring to a great extent, and in places to the depth of fifteen or eighteen feet. The freshets begin to fall in June, and by August the water retires to the channel of the river and lagoons. In the low lands the growth is principally willow and cotton wood, and on the higher, large elms, ash, and hickory ; where the grape vine greatly abounds. About six miles from the mouth of the river is a bayau, leading from Lake Long, which is a narrow lake, two or three miles in
