COTTON CULTURE. 73 



State, an area equal to the whole of Georgia, is admirably 

 adapted to cotton, and capable, with due allowance for 

 grazing land and edible crops, of yielding a larger supply 

 of cotton than the whole South ever produced in one year. 



LOUISIANA AND ARKANSAS. 



Red River may be said, in a general way, to divide this 

 State into two distinct regions, one adapted to the raising 

 of cotton, the other of sugar. The part east of the Missis- 

 sippi River, and south of the line of the State of Missis- 

 sippi, commonly called the Florida parishes, having for- 

 merly made a part of West Florida, is to a great extent 

 composed of cotton counties, but the principal part of the 

 cotton crop of Louisiana, between two hundred thousand 

 and three hundred thousand bales, grows in the Red River 

 bottoms above Alexandria, and in the north-eastern corner 

 of the State, a triangular extent of inexhaustibly fertile 

 land, washed on the east by the Mississippi, and on the 

 west by the Washita, and penetrated by the Tensas, the 

 Little Tensas, Bayou. Macon, and Bayou Boeuf. 



This region is wholly alluvial, two hundred miles in 

 length, with an average width of about forty miles, thus 

 giving over five million acres, not more than one-tenth of 

 which is incapable of cultivation. A greater part of it is, 

 however, subject to overflow, the waters of the Mississippi 

 being kept from it during several months of every year by 

 high embankments, which are liable at any time, and at 

 almost any point, to burst. 



In a favorable season, these lands produce a bale and a 

 half to the acre, but this region, called " the swamp " of 

 Louisiana, is malarious, an^l, in winter, acute diseases of 

 the lungs are very frequent, so that when the- losses by 

 overflow, and the disadvantages of sickness and almost 

 impassable roads in winter, are taken into account, it may 

 be doubted whether cotton growing is not, on the whole, 

 4 



