484 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



their residences here, which give the place an air of 

 wealth and grandeur. 



We passed to-day a few miles north of this town, the 

 "old Indian boundary," where the traveller from New- 

 Orleans entered the wilderness that extended almost to 

 Nashville, Tennessee. This was less than forty years 

 ago. Port Gibson is now about 40 years old, and we 

 stopped all night near Cole's creek, with a man who has 

 lived 40 years upon the same spot — long enough to have 

 learned to live better, and have more of the comforts 

 and conveniences of life around him — but he did'nt take 

 the papers — and so there is neither fruit, nor flowers, 

 nor shrubbery, nor garden nor good cultivation, nor has 

 the land upon this "first choice in the country," improved 

 under the constant wearing that it has been subjected to. 

 Happily for the owner, his plantation is nearly level, or 

 after forty years subjection to his constant control, he 

 would now be at work upon the second soil, the top one 

 would have departed. This man is not much in favor of 

 improvement. His place used to be a noted "stand" upon 

 the "trail" from Natchez to Nashville, before the im- 

 provement in steamboats turned the tide, and stopped 

 the influx of cash into his pocket. 



After leaving his house we passed a remarkable stream 

 called "Cole's creek," which we were unable to cross the 

 evening before. When the country was first settled, as 

 our late host told us, "he had often fallen a tree from 

 bank to bank," which are now an hundred rods apart and 

 continually widening, as the soil is so loose that as soon 

 as the roots decay there is nothing to hold it together. 

 And the bed of the stream is so full of quicksands, that 

 crossing after a freshet is both difficult and dangerous, 

 and life and property have both been lost in the at- 

 tempt. If you ask why don't they bridge it, I beg you 

 to read in your bible that "a certain man built his founda- 

 tion upon the sands, and the floods came," &c, and so 

 would they come here, and neither bridge or mill dam 

 would stand any more chance to stand, than a cotton 



