182 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



tering through the handsomest foliage in the world. Col. 

 White, as well as his next neighbor below, Robert A. Wil- 

 kinson,^ and, in fact, nearly all the large planters on this 

 part of the coast, have to use draining machines. The 

 strip and tillable land is very narrow, though all the back 

 lands might be drained at less expense, in the aggregate, 

 than is now done to drain a small portion of each planta- 

 tion. Such a system as is in operation in Holland, would 

 soon make the swamps of Louisiana tillable, and bring 

 many thousands of acres of the finest sugar lands in the 

 world into use, which are now only fit for breeding alli- 

 gators, musquitos, and fevers. 



Mr. Wilkinson lifts his water five feet in an immense 

 volume, say 1,000 gallons a minute. This drains 400 ar- 

 pents. He has 1,000 arpents in the tract, 200 of which, 

 in front, has elevation enough to drain by ditches, and the 

 remainder by machinery. He designs to put the back 

 lands in order for rice, using the same water that he lifts 

 from his sugar land, to flood the rice fields, when needed. 



Mr. W. believes that all these lands could be drained by 

 windmill. His father, J. B. Wilkinson,- (son of the old 

 General,) has lived here, on the adjoining place, twenty- 

 eight years. The cane upon this plantation, and several 

 others near, is as green as in summer. Mr. W. makes re- 

 fined loaf sugar direct from it, by Relieux apparatus. So 

 does Mr. George Johnson,^ the next place below. Robert 



' Robert Andrews Wilkinson, grandson of General James AVilkin- 

 son, born December 16, 1809; died August 30, 1862, at second battle 

 of Manassas. In the forties, lived in Plaquemines Parish and main- 

 tained a summer home on the Island of Grand Terre. Contributor 

 to De Bow's Review, 1847-1848. Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 

 September 14, 1917, p. 165; Arthur and Kernion, Old Families in 

 Louisiana, 393. 



^Joseph Biddle Wilkinson, born December 4, 1785; died Novem- 

 ber 8, 1865. Ibid., 392. 



' George Johnson, owner of a fine plantation in the Plaquemines 

 region, forty-two miles below New Orleans; in 1844 he produced 

 there 530 hogsheads of sugar. Much of the Plaquemines region was 

 extensively developed. De Bow's Review, 2:334 (November, 1846), 

 3:118, 258 (February and March, 1847). 



