THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 535 



manufactured lumber is shipped from here farther south than Baton Rouge, nearly the whole production being 

 consumed in the erection of small dwellings in the Mississippi and Yazoo bottoms. The logs received at these mills 

 average 25 inches in diameter, with a length of from 30 to 70 feet. 



"The hillsides in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, when thrown out of cultivation, are seen covered with a 

 stunted growth of locust, Chickasaw plums, and other shrubs. The original forests of the bluff hills consist of 

 extensive groves of stately magnolias, stretching down the slopes and mixing with large white oaks, Spanish oaks, 

 beeches, and towering poplars, covering the mossy ground of the small valleys with delightful shade. Many of the 

 magnolias are from 18 inches to 2 feet in diameter. The full-grown trees, however, show that they have already 

 passed their prime ; the upper limbs have begun to die, the base of their trunks being often rotten and hollow. 

 Small specimens and sapling or seedling trees I could not find. The large trees are cut down to supply the 

 neighboring city with fuel, and it is inevitable that in a comparatively short time these magnolia groves will have 

 disappeared, and that these delightfully-shaded hills must share the desolation which surrounds the town. 



" THE YAZOO DELTA. Indian bayou, one of the small water-courses between Pearl river, Deer creek, and 

 Sunflower river, has a sluggish current even in time of high water. As is the case with all the streams of the 

 Yazoo delta, its banks are elevated often to a height of 10 or 15 feet above the surface of the water, thus affording 

 excellent natural drainage for the adjacent country, which is covered with a yellow-brown loam of unsurpassed 

 fertility. As the land, however, recedes from the banks it gradually sinks down again toward the level of the bed 

 of the stream, and the water-courses, following the general direction of the Mississippi river, inclose corresponding 

 lines of depression nearly level with the beds of the streams. These troughs between the bayous and rivers are one 

 of the characteristic features in the topography of the Yazoo delta. They are of various extent, depth, and shape; 

 flat and wide, they form tracts of dark, wet forest swamp, more or less dry in summer; or, narrower and deeper, 

 they form swamps rarely ever entirely free from water; sometimes they are inundated wooded marshes and cane 

 brakes, or ponds and lagoons more or less shallow and studded with the mighty trunks of the cypress. When 

 these depressions are of considerable depth, lakes, presenting open sheets of water sometimes miles in extent, are 

 formed, their margins, only, overgrown with the cypress. Upon these features depend the great diversity of the 

 forest growth which yet covers the largest part of the Yazoo valley. Along the elevated ridges fronting the 

 streams the white oak, the willow oak, the shell-bark and mocker-nut hickories, the black walnut in great numbers, 

 the yellow poplar and the sassafras large enough to furnish canoes of great size, the mulberry, the Spanish oak, 

 the sweet and the black gums are the principal forest trees, with an undergrowth in the openings of dogwood, 

 various haws, crab apples, wild grapes, buckthorns, etc. In the forests covering the lower lands, which slope back 

 to the swamps and reservoirs, the cow oak takes the place of the white oak, while the over-cup white oak occurs 

 everywhere in the more or less saturated soil. Here the sweet gum reaches its greatest size, and here grow also 

 in great perfection the bitter-nut, the elms, hornbeams, white ash, box-elder, and red maples of enormous size. The 

 honey locust, water oaks, and red and Spanish oaks are equally common. Here, among the smaller trees, the holly 

 attains its greatest development, with hornbeans and wahoo elms, while papaws, haws, and privets form the mass 

 of the dense undergrowth, which, interspersed with dense cane-brakes, covers the ground under the large trees. 



" The region covered by these splendid forests of hard woods possesses a wealth of timber of the most valuable 

 kinds and in surprising variety. They occupy by far the greatest part of Sunflower and the adjoining counties 

 between the Mississippi river and the hills which border upon tke Yazoo to the east. Most of the clearings made 

 in this region before the outbreak of the war, by the planters settled lower down, have since been abandoned and 

 are again densely covered with the young growth of the trees of which the forest was originally composed. During 

 the last few years, however, the country has been entered again for cultivation by a class of small farmers, who 

 from being farm hands have now risen to the position of independent landholders. It is astonishing to see the 

 utter disregard of these settlers for the forest wealth of the country, which in a short time could not fail to be of 

 great commercial value. On the shores of Indian bayou may be seen clearings with hundreds of the finest 

 black walnuts among the deadened trees, while many of the noblest specimens of this valuable timber tree are 

 felled for fence rails or trifling purposes. The amount of oak and hickory timber destroyed here annually is 

 amazing. It is generally believed, however, that not one acre in fifty over this whole region of hard-wood forest 

 has yet been stripped of its tree covering. Quite different is the condition of the cypress growth in the great Yazoo 

 valley. This tree, confined to low and more or less inundated bottoms bordering on the Mississippi, the Lower 

 Yazoo, Big Sunflower, and their numerous tributaries, was once found in the greatest abundance in this region, and 

 immense quantities of cypress lumber have been furnished by the lower parts of Issaquena and Washington and 

 the western parts of Warren and Yazoo counties. The most valuable timber has now, however, disappeared from 

 the immediate neighborhood of the low river banks easily accessible at seasons of high water during every winter 

 and spring. Only groves .standing remote from the banks of the water courses, and which are only accessible to 

 the raftsman during exceptionally high stages of water, now supply this lumber. In the upper portions of die 

 valley, however, in the low depressions described as extending between the elevated banks of the streams, more or 

 less limited areas of undisturbed cypress forest are found. The shallow lagoons, covered with water except during 

 seasons of prolonged drought, and called cypress creeks, present in the spring of the year a strange sight. No 

 object meets the eye between the immense trunks of the mighty trees, as in these cypress groves no other tree nor 



