5 SOIL AND PKODUCTS OF LOUISIANA. 



and its inundations, no longer devastating, would still further enrich, 

 and gradually though slowly elevate the adjacent region. I dis- 

 trust the permanent efficacy of any artificial Levees. It is not prac- 

 ticable to pile both banks of a great river for a full thousand miles ; 

 yet, without piling, nothing will surely pi-event the undermining 

 of the highest and firmest Levees, so that they will crumble into the 

 current and be swept away, causing crevasses which human power 

 is inadequate to close till the river falls. I predict, therefore, that 

 leveeing will fail to keep the Mississippi within its banks; and, 

 while I do not suggest any alternative, I submit that it were better 

 to bear existing evils than to seek their cure through agencies likely 

 to create evils still greater. 



I judge from what I have seen that the surface of most of the 

 acres of Louisiana accounted land, is lower than that of the adja- 

 cent rivers and bayous. Natui'ally, swamps and marshes abound, 

 mainly covered by thick forests of Live Oak, Cypress, and some 

 smaller trees, usually standing in six to twelve inches of water, and 

 intersected by small bayous, averaging four to six feet in depth of 

 water, the congenial home of the alligator, as they would be of* the 

 frog and the duck, if the alligator were not fond of a meat diet. 

 The gray moss which trails from most of the trees in these swamp- 

 forests is much admired by the inhabitants, and is gathered to fill 

 mattresses. Very little has yet been done toward draining these 

 vast morasses, because of their very slight inclination toward the 

 Gulf, in which direction alone can water be made to flow away 

 from them. Ultimately, they will be severally leveed or dyked, and 

 then pumped diy by steam ; but not these many years. Mean- 

 time, the relatively dry land which separates them, being two or 

 three feet higher, has been largely improved and cultivated, thotigh 

 some of it has been neglected since the War. Cane and Cotton are 

 grown on a part of the plantations ; Corn quite generally ; Potatoes 

 and what we call sweet potatoes, with corn and some cotton, by the 

 Blacks on their petty holdings. I had been told that the Black 

 women no longer work in the fields ; but they loere at work on most 

 of the patches we passed between New Orleans and Brashear, eighty 

 miles westward on the Atchafalaya, where we took boat for Gal- 

 veston. In many places, husband, wife, and one or two children, 

 were hoeing side by side ; and, though this kind of agriculture is 

 not very efficient, their crops generally looked well. Where their 

 patches are easily flowed, part of each was often devoted to Rice, 



