74 COTTON CULTURE. 



less profitable here than in the hill lands, where the aver- 

 age production is considerably less than a bale to the acre, 



It will be observed that the Washita and its tributaries 

 extend for a hundred miles or more into the southern part 

 of Arkansas. This part of the State, embracing, perhaps, 

 half of what lies south of the Arkansas River, is an excel- 

 lent cotton region, not liable to overflow, except imme- 

 diately on the Mississippi, and having a climate precisely 

 adapted to the growth of the great staple. In the south- 

 west corner of Arkansas, the lands on Red River, and the 

 streams which empty into it, are also excellent as cotton 

 lands. 



They are, however, very imperfectly developed, never 

 having produced more than one-tenth of the amount they 

 are capable of producing. Their average production, the 

 same with that of the Louisiana lands, is seven hundred 

 pounds per ac*re of seed cotton. 



This part of the State has an unenviable reputation with 

 regard to health, but this difficulty may be greatly modi- 

 fied, and, perhaps, wholly removed, when the land is more 

 extensively cleared, and reduced to cultivation. 



Although most of the cotton of Louisiana and of Arkan- 

 sas grows in the district bounded north by the Arkansas, 

 and south by the Red, including the bottom lands of those 

 streams, there is quite a breadth of land suitable to this 

 crop on the south side of the Red. In the parish imme- 

 diately south of this river, Pointe Coupee, which extends 

 from the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya, the soil, one of 

 great fertility, is about equally adapted to cotton or sugar, 

 but the former is replacing the latter on a great number 

 of farms. Cotton is raised nearly down to New Orleans, 

 but the tendency is to a rank growth of the plant, and 

 late development of the bolls. 



From the result of some experiments made a few years 

 ago on the Houmas lands, and communicated to the author 

 by their former owner, Hon, John S. Preston, of South 



