86 
At this time the value of land is only nominal, and commands no stated price.” 
Our Rapides correspondent says : “ Well improved sugar and cotton plantations 
have no fixed price; few sales; no persons here able to buy ; nearly all desiring 
to sell. Hundreds of thousands of well improved acres are now lying idle, 
there being no labor for them. The richest lands (no levees needed) are grow- 
ing up in weeds, trees, &e. On my own plantation, where I have made over 
1,000 hogsheads of sugar, 2,500 barrels of molasses, 15,000 bushels of corn, 
with hay, &c., with pastures for 506 head of horned cattle, large flocks of sheep 
and hogs, mares and colts, I have this year less than 200 hogsheads of sugar, 
and but little corn; stock of cattle, sheep, hogs, mares and colts all gone, de- 
stroyed during the war.” 
2. Under the heavy depreciation of plantations the market value of wild and 
unimproved lands must be but nominal, and our correspondents estimate them 
at from “but little value,” to $3 per acre, according to location and resources. 
These lands are varied in character and quality, from light sandy loam on up- 
land to heavily timbered bottoms and cypress swamps, the alluvial or red lands 
being of the richest kind when protected from overflow, and the light soil sus- 
ceptible of thorough cultivation, and capable of producing good crops of corn 
aud cotton. 
3. In the soil and timber are to be found the chief resources of this State, but 
few minerals, except salt, heaving as yet been developed or discovered, though 
some coal, iron, and copper are reported to exist in Union parish. Timber is 
abundant in all parts of the State, embracing many varieties of oak, ash, cotton- 
wood, cypress, gum, elm, sycamore, pecan, hackberry, pine, &c., and presenting 
great inducements for development, some of the pine forests capable of pro- 
ducing quantities of turpentine. In St. Mary’s parish alone it is estimated there 
is timber enough to make 10,000,000 cords of sugar wood, and swamps to the 
extent of 50,000 acres which may be reclaimed and converted into the richest 
rice fields. As an agricultural State Louisiana has great resources. In 
Union parish, in the northern part of the State, there are swamp lands which 
are said to have been in cultivation one hundred years, and the crops now taken 
from them will compare favorably with those gathered from fresh lands of the 
same quality. The parishes of St. Landry, Lafayette, Vermilion, St. Martin, 
and St. Mary, on the southern coast, forming a body of land about ninety miles 
in width, and running back from the coast about seventy-five miles, contain 
over 3,000,000 acres of tillable land, most of which is claimed to be of inex- 
haustible fertility, producing varied and abundant crops, and yielding garden 
vegetables, &c., all the year round. 
On one of the islands within the limits of St. Mary’s parish—Petite Anse or 
Salt island—there exists an immense bed of salt. By boring, parties have proved 
that the bed is half a mile square, and it may extend a mile or more. ‘They 
have gone thirty-eight feet into the solid salt, and find no signs of the bottom of 
the stratum. The surface is about on a level with tide-water, and the earth 
covers the salt from eleven to thirty feet. On the surface of the salt they found 
a soil like that of the surrounding marshes, and above this sedge or marsh grass 
in a good state of preservation. Above the latter the soil appears to be the 
workings of the hill-sides above. The Planter’s Banner says of this remark- 
able mine, “it is believed that, like the salt mine in Poza, in Harope, it was 
moulded in the erater of a voleano. The surface of the salt formation is ona 
dead level with the surface of the Gulf water. It is not at all improbable that 
about the time that the fires of the ancient voleano that burnt out the bowels of 
this island were nearly exhausted, a breach next to the water of the Gulf was 
made, and a flood of salt water entered the burning chasm and extinguished the 
fires at the same time that the heat evaporated the fresh water and left a deposit 
of salt. As the earth was heated for long distances below and around, it could 
not suddenly cool, but would continue for days, and, perhaps, weeks and months, 
