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APPEN'DIX. 



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 Mobile, 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 Chicasmvs^ very fine and free of moun- 

 tains: it has only very extensive and gentle eminences, or rising grounds^ 



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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, wdiich 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 Missisijn 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." t 



* The History of Louisiana, Vol II, pp. 251 - 253. 

 > f The History of Louisiana, Yol. II, pp. 262 - 267. The last quotation reads in the original as follows : 

 *'Ces Coteaux en Prairies & ces futayes sont abondantes en Boeufs, Cerfs & Chevrcuils^ en Dindcs, en 

 Perdrix & en toute sorte de gibler/' etc. — Hlsioire de la Louislane, Tom. I, p. 287, 



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