had first endeavoured to make. This settlement appears to be nearly abandoned, and very undeservedly. I walked out two or three miles into the woods, and found the land considerably elevated above the reach of inundation, and of a good quality. Nearly opposite island 60, a few miles below, we were informed of the existence of hills within a quarter of a mile of the river.
How many ages may yet elapse before these luxuriant wilds of the Mississippi can enumerate a population equal to the Tartarian deserts! At present all is irksome silence and gloomy solitude, such as to inspire the mind with horror.
I was greatly disappointed to meet with such a similarity in the vegetation, to that of the middle and northern states. The higher lands produce black ash, elm (Ulmus americana), hickory, walnut, maple, {58} hackberry (Celtis integrifolia, no other species), honey-locust, coffee-bean, &c. On the river lands, as usual, grows platanus or buttonwood, upon the seeds of which flocks of screaming parrots were greedily feeding,[68] also enormous cotton-wood trees (Populus angulisans), commonly called yellow poplar, some of them more than six feet in diameter, and occasionally festooned with the largest vines which I had ever beheld. Here grew also the holly (Ilex opaca), A plectrum hiemale, (Ophrys hyemale, Lin.), Botrychium obliquum, and Fumaria aurea. Nearly all the trees throughout this country possessing a smooth bark, are loaded with misletoe (Viscum verticillatum).
8th.] About a mile below the place where we spent the last night, is the settlement called the Big Prairie, consisting of three or four log-cabins, and two families, but in
