channel between Palmyra and Palmyra island, which at low water is almost dry.
The Mississippi has a westerly course past Palmyra, from which it crooks gradually to the southward, and then to the eastward, so that Point Pleasant in Louisiana, fifteen miles by the river below Palmyra, is only two miles distant by a road across the swamp from the opposite bank. There are some islands in the river in that distance, but few settlements on either bank, until we came to Point Pleasant, from whence downwards the banks gradually become more thickly inhabited.
{282} Let it be remarked that the river is generally from half to three quarters of a mile wide, except in such parts as I have particularized its breadth.
Big Black river, which is deep, but only forty yards wide at its mouth, after a S. W. course from the Chickasaw nation, discharges itself into the Mississippi on the left, seven miles below Point Pleasant. There are several settlements on the banks of Big Black, for forty miles above its mouth, and a town was laid out on it which has not succeeded, and on account of its unhealthy situation, probably never will.[198] A quarter of a mile below Big Black, a ridge of hills called the Grand Gulph hills, terminates abruptly at a bluff on the left bank. At the base of the bluff, are a heap of loose rocks, near which is a quarry of close granite, from which some industrious eastern emigrants have cut some excellent mill and grindstones. These hills form a barrier which turns the river suddenly from the eastern course it had held for a few miles above, to a S. W. direction, and it is at the same time narrowed by a projecting point on the right, called Trent's point, to about a quarter of a
