The Walnut hills and Fort M’Henry--Palmyra--Point Pleasant--Big
Black--Trent’s point--The Grand Gulph--Bayau Pierre.
A mile below Cuming’s island, is a settlement on the right, and four
others immediately below it, all within a quarter of a mile of each
other, and all apparently commenced last year. Three miles below
Cuming’s island, we passed the mouth of the river Yazoos on the
left. It is about two hundred and fifty yards wide, and affords a
fine view up it four or five miles. Opposite, on the right, is the
fine settlement of George Collins, with the Walnut hills in sight
over the trees at the end of the reach. Three quarters of a mile
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.
It is about seven years since several families from New England
commenced this beautiful settlement. The situation is almost a
peninsula, formed by a continued bending of the river in an extent of
four miles, the whole of which is cultivated in front, but the clearing
extends back only one hundred and fifty rods, where is a lake, and some
low swampy land, always inundated during the summer freshes. There are
sixteen families, who occupy each a front of only forty rods, so that
the settlement has the appearance of a straggling village. The soil
is very fertile, as a proof of which, Mrs. Hubbard, to whose house I
went for milk, informed me that last year she had gathered seventeen
thousand pounds of cotton in {281} seed, from nine acres, which,
allowing it to lose about three quarters in cleaning, left five hundred
pounds of clean cotton to the acre, which is a great excess of produce
over the West India or Georgia plantations, where an acre rarely yields
more than two hundred and seventy-five pounds. At this early season the
corn was well advanced, and I observed some in tassel.
Palmyra is one of the most beautiful settlements in the Mississippi
Territory, the inhabitants having used all that neatness and industry
so habitual to the New Englanders. They now complain that they have too
little land, and several of them have appropriated more on the banks
of a lake about a mile behind the opposite bank of the Mississippi, in
Louisiana. I think the lake and swamp behind Palmyra must render it
unhealthy, and the pale sallow countenances of the settlers, with their
confession that they are annually subject to fevers and agues, when the
river begins to subside, confirms me in my opinion. Indeed this remark
may be applied to the banks of the Mississippi in the whole of its long
course, between the conflux of the Ohio and the Gulph of Mexico.
June 6th.-We proceeded this morning through the 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 mile wide. The acute angle and the sudden
compression of the waters of the river, form what is called the Grand
Gulph, immediately below the narrows, making two great eddies, between
which the true current runs in so narrow a limit for about half a mile,
that some skill and dexterity are necessary to keep a boat in it,
and to prevent her being sucked into one or the other eddy, in which
case, particularly in that on the left, she will be carried round in
a circle of a mile or two, and require the greatest exertions of the
oars to extricate her. Delay is the only inconvenience attending the
getting engulphed, as there is no whirlpool of sufficient suction to
draw down even a skiff. Trent has a good house and farm, and a most
delightful situation on the right hand point, which is as high above
common inundation, {283} as any other part of the river level banks,
but the swamp approaching close behind, contracts the farm more than a
proprietor would wish.
I may here observe that the banks of the Mississippi form a natural
dam, barrier or levée, more or less broad, from fifty paces to three or
four miles, behind which the land slopes to nearly the level of the bed
of the river, so that in every summer flood, there is a general back
inundation, on the subsiding of which, so much stagnant water remains,
as to cause annual attacks of fever and ague, which accounts for the
sallow complexion of the inhabitants of the banks.
In the eight miles between the Grand Gulph and Bayau Pierre, there
are several settlements on the right, and but three or four on the
left bank of the river, the most conspicuous of which is that of Major
Davenport, began about a year ago.
At three, P. M. having cast off from Mr. Wells’s boats, we rowed into
the mouth of Bayau Pierre, up which we advanced a quarter of a mile,
and then fastened to a willow, in the middle of the river.
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?--D----n 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.”
FOOTNOTES:
[197] Walnut Hills is the site of Vicksburg, which was laid out as a
town in 1811. This territory, between 31° and 32° 30′ 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.
[198] This settlement on the Big Black was made by Connecticut
emigrants upon a grant to General Phineas Lyman (1775), when the region
was part of West Florida. Several journals detailing the hardships of
the colonists are extant, notably that of Captain Matthew Phelps.--ED.