APPENDIX. 227 
thick set with cane, particularly on the banks of rivers and brooks ; and is 
extremely proper for agriculture. The mountains which I said these coun- 
tries have to the North, form nearly the figure of a chaplet, with one end 
pretty near the Missisipi, the other on the banks of the Modile. The inner 
part of this chaplet or chain is filled with hills; which are pretty fertile in 
grass, simples, fruits of the country, horse-chestnuts, and wild-chestnuts, as 
large and at least as good as those of Lyons. To the North of this chain 
of mountains lies the country of the Chicasaws, very fine and free of moun- 
tains: it has only very extensive and gentle eminences, or rising grounds, 
fertile groves and meadows. .... All the countries I have just mentioned 
are stored with game of every kind. The buffalo is found on the rising 
grounds; the partridge in thick open woods, such as the groves in meadows; 
the elks delight in large forests, as also the pheasant; the deer, which is a 
roving animal, is every where to be met with, because in whatever place it 
may happen to be, it always has something to browse on.” * 
Later he says in speaking of the country further north: “But to the east 
[of the Mississippi River], the lands are a good deal higher [than on the 
present Louisiana side], seeing from Manchac [near the present site of Baton 
Rouge] to the river Wabache [Ohio] they are between an hundred and two 
hundred feet higher than the Missisipi in its greatest floods. .... All 
these high lands are, besides, surmounted, in a good many places, by little 
eminences, or small hills, and rising grounds running off lengthwise, with 
gentle slopes. . . . . All these high lands are generally meadows and forests 
of tall trees, with grass up to the knees... .. Almost all these lands are 
such as I have described; that is, the meadows are on those high grounds, 
whose slope is very gentle; we also find there tall forests, and thickets in 
the low bottoms. In the meadows we observe here and there groves of very 
tall and straight oaks, to the number of fourscore or an hundred at most. 
There are others of about forty or fifty, which seem to have been planted 
by men’s hands in these meadows, for a retreat to the buffaloes, deer, and 
other animals, and. a screen against storms, and the sting of the flies... .. 
Those rising meadows and tall forests abound with buffaloes, elk, and deer, 
with turkeys, partridges and all kinds of game; consequently wolves, cata- 
mounts, and other carnivorous animals are found there.” 
* The History of Louisiana, Vol. II, pp. 251 — 253. 
+ The History of Louisiana, Vol. II, pp. 262-267. The last quotation reads in the original as follows: 
“Ces Coteaux en Prairies & ces futayes sont abondantes en Beeufs, Cerfs & Chevreuils, en Dindes, en 
Perdrix & en toute sorte de gibier,” ete. — Histoire de la Louisiane, Tom. I, p. 287. 
