170 COTTON CULTURE. 



These facilities for cotton growing and attractions to 

 capitalists in the two States which lie to tbe right and to 

 the left of the region that drains into the lower Mississippi 

 Valley have been first discussed, in order to show that the 

 last mentioned section presents decidedly a more attrac- 

 tive field than either. 



Let us turn now to this teeming valley and examine that 

 part of it which lies below Memphis, with a view to in- 

 vestments in cotton planting. From the mouth of the 

 Mississippi up to where it receives the waters of Red Riv- 

 er, the banks of the stream, though inexhaustibly fertile, 

 are unsuited to cotton. That part of Louisiana which lies 

 south of Red River, is the sugar bowl of the Union ; the 

 soil is not sufficiently light and sandy for cotton. It is a 

 firm, strong, tenacious, clayey loam, rich in vegetable 

 mould, the natural growth of which is cypress, live oak 

 and palmetto, and cotton, when planted there, presents a 

 rank and luxurious growth ; but the vigor of the plant 

 does not expend itself upon the fruit, as is the case a hun- 

 dred miles farther north. At Red River the cotton lands 

 commence ; the lowest part of the Red River valley, for 

 seventy-five miles before it empties into the Mississippi, is 

 almost an unbroken swamp. The land is of the greatest 

 fertility, but is covered almost every year by inundations, 

 the water standing upon it in some places three inches 

 deep, and in others twenty feet, and depositing annually a 

 layer of fine fertilizing mud. If some way could be de- 

 vised for redeeming this part of the Red River valley from 

 annual overflow, several hundred thousand acres of land, 

 as rich as the bottoms of the Nile, would be added to the 

 cotton lands of Louisiana. Ascending the stream we find, 

 in the vicinity of Alexandria, and for a short distance up 

 the valley, a group of sugar plantations ; above these, as 

 far up as Shreveport, and for a hundred miles beyond, in 

 Arkansas and Texas, cotton alone is planted. Among the 

 superior cotton lands of the South, those of Red River 



