below Collins's there is another small settlement, from whence the Mississippi takes a curve to the N. E. and then again turns to the left, where at the end of a short easterly reach, we saw over the trees, a cliff of the Walnut hills three miles {280} lower down, and soon after, two large, well cleared farms, cultivated from the bank to the top of the hills, where are seen the earthen ramparts of Fort M'Henry, now abandoned. These hills are about as high as the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, but differ from them by rising gradually with a gentle slope, having a most delightful effect on the eye after the level banks with which it has been fatigued, since passing the Bluffs.[197]
Five miles below the hills, we lost sight of them, having passed several new settlements on the right, but none on the left below the hills for seven miles, where we observed a good large framed house with a piazza. Two miles farther we landed at a farm with a good negro quarter, belonging to a Mr. Hicks from Tennessee, where we got some milk, and returning to our boat, we boarded in the way the barge Adventurer, twenty-nine days from New Orleans, bound to Nashville.
There are a few new settlements in the next seven miles, when on a point on the left we passed the first farm in Palmyra, and rowing strong in to prevent being carried to the right of Palmyra island, we stopped and moored at the bank.north latitude, was in contention between Spain and the United States from the treaty of 1783 until that known as Pinckney's treaty in 1795, when Spain consented to recognize the right of the United States to the disputed strip. Meanwhile, the local authorities refused to surrender the forts, and it was not until 1798 that a detachment of United States troops took possession of Fort Nogales (built on this site in 1789), and changed its name to Fort McHenry, in honor of the then secretary of war. This territory was part of the grant of the Yazoo Company, whose frauds caused so much contention over titles in the district. See Haskins, "The Yazoo Land Companies," in American Historical Association Papers (New York, 1891), v, pp. 395-437.—Ed.]
