[8] 



Marion and Wilkinson wherever, in short, sand is found underlying 

 the subsoil at no great depth, which is the case of fully three-fourths 

 of the uplands in the State. 



THE PRAIRIES. 



As for the rest look at the prairies of Northeast Mississippi Mon 

 roe, Chickasaw and Lowndes the garden spot of Mississippi. Is not 

 the soil, which for thirty or forty years has unremittingly yielded mag 

 nificent crops, rapidly giving out? Were not lands that twenty years 

 ago, could not have been bought at $20, offered at $5 per a&amp;lt;jre just be 

 fore the war, without finding purchasers? I will not argue about their 

 present market value it is influenced by many outside circumstances ; 

 but through them all glare the stubborn fact, .that around the older 

 settlements say Okolona hundreds and even thousands of acres of 

 the richest looking prairie are thrown out of cultivation, because, not 

 withstanding their nearness to the market, the crops they yield have 

 ceased to be remunerative, both from their indifferent quantity and 

 quality, and from their liability to frequent failure. 



THE &quot;INEXHAUSTIBLE&quot; BOTTOM. 



From the growing infertility of the uplands, the large planters 

 especially have for years past sought refuge in the bottoms, particu 

 larly in that of the Mississippi. In these, indeed, many of them have 

 thought they had found that fabled soil that never wears out. They 

 pooh-pooh the idea of its ever becoming exhausted, and in some dark 

 corners, even now pitch their cotton-seed into the bayous, to get rid of 

 it. But the laws of nature are the same every where, and cannot long 

 be defied with impunity. It is true that the soil of the Mississippi bot 

 tom is very rich and very deep ; and that that of the Nile bottom is still 

 as fertile as it was three thousand years ago. But that is because of 

 the annual overflows, which continually bring down a fresh and very 

 rich soil from the table-lands of Abyssinia. 



But as it now turns out, the best soil of the Mississippi bottom (the 

 &quot;buckshot&quot;) is not an alluvial one, formed by the deposits of the 

 present river: but is analagous to the upland prairie soils. Moreover, 

 we are trying our best to shut out the annual overflows, and will doubt 

 less succeed in so doing. The time of exhaustion of the bottoms, then, 

 will surely come, and will be felt by some of the present generation * 

 the more, as one of the causes of the fertility of these lowlands is that 

 they now receive the cream of the soils of the uplands. 



