The contrast between our situation now, and while in the Mississippi was very striking. From a noble, majestick, stream, with a rapid current, meandering past points, islands, plantations and wildernesses, and bearing the produce of the inland states, in innumerable craft of every kind, to New Orleans and the ocean. To find myself suddenly in a deep, dark, narrow stagnate piece of water, surrounded closely by a forest of tall willows, poplars, and other demi aquatick trees, and not a sound to be heard, except the monotonous croakings of frogs, interrupted occasionally by the bull like roaring of an alligator—the closeness of the woods excluding every current of air, and hosts of musquitoes attacking one in every {284} quarter. The tout ensemble was so gloomy, that a British seaman, one of Wells's boat's crew, who had volunteered to assist in getting our boat into the bayau, looking round, exclaimed emphatically—
"And is it here you stop, and is this the country to which so many poor ignorant devils remove, to make their fortunes?—Dn my precious eyes if I would not rather be at allowance of a mouldy biscuit a day, in any part of Old England, or even New York, Pennsylvania, or Maryland, than I would be obliged to live in such a country as this two years, to own the finest cotton plantation, and the greatest gang of negroes in the territory."
CHAPTER XLIX
Commence my tour by land—Bruinsbury—A primitive
clergyman—Bayau Pierre swamp—Hilly country—Plantations—Thunder
storm—A benevolent shoemaker—Norris's—Cole's
creek—A consequential
landlord—Greenville—Union town—A travelling
painter.
On Monday 22d August, I set out from Bruinsbury on horseback, for the purpose of visiting the most improved
