Southern Trips 115 



grow older they fall each way, and mat together, finally 

 forming a confused, sprawling, slovenly thicket, often ten 

 feet in breadth and four to six feet high. Trumpet creepers, 

 grape-vines, green-briers, and in very rich soil, cane, grow up 

 through the mat of roses, and add to its strength. It is not 

 as pretty as a trimmer hedge, yet very agreeable, and the 

 road being sometimes narrow, deep, and lane like, delightful 

 memories of England were often brought to mind. 



THE BLUFF 



. . . The grand feature of Natchez is the bluff, terminat- 

 ing in an abrupt precipice over the river, with the public 

 garden upon it. Of this I never had heard, and when, after 

 seeing my horse dried off and eating his oats with great 

 satisfaction, — the first time he has ever tasted oats, I sup- 

 pose, — I strolled off to see the town, I came upon it by sur- 

 prise. I entered a gate and walked up a slope, supposing 

 that I was approaching the ridge or summit of a hill, and 

 expecting to see beyond it a corresponding slope and the 

 town again, continuing in terraced streets to the river. I 

 found myself, almost at the moment I discovered that it was 

 not so, on the very edge of a stupendous cliff, and before 

 me an indescribably vast expanse of forest, extending on 

 every hand to a hazy horizon, in which, directly in front of 

 me, swung the round, red, setting sun. 



Through the otherwise unbroken forest, the Mississippi 

 had opened a passage for itself, forming a perfect arc, the 

 hither shore of the middle of the curve being hidden under 

 the crest of the cliff, and the two ends lost in the vast ob- 

 scurity of the Great West. Overlooked from such an 

 eminence, the size of the Mississippi can be realized, — a 

 thing difficult under ordinary circumstances ; but though the 

 fret of a swelHng torrent is not wanting, it is perceptible only 

 as the most deHcate chasing upon the broad, gleaming ex- 



