CHAPTER XII 



IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES 



IN October, 1907, I spent a fortnight in the cane- 

 brakes of northern Louisiana, my hosts being Messrs. 

 John M. Parker and John A. Mcllhenny. Surgeon- 

 General Rixey, of the United States Navy, and Dr. Alex- 

 ander Lambert were with me. I was especially anxious 

 to kill a bear in these canebrakes after the fashion of the 

 old Southern planters, who for a century past have fol- 

 lowed the bear with horse, hound and horn in Louisiana, 

 Mississippi and Arkansas. 



Our first camp was on Tensas Bayou. This is in the 

 heart of the great alluvial bottom-land created during 

 the countless ages through which the mighty Mississippi 

 has poured out of the heart of the continent. It is in the 

 black belt of the South, in which the negroes outnumber 

 the whites four or five to one, the disproportion in the 

 region in which I was actually hunting being far greater. 

 There is no richer soil in all the earth ; and when, as will 

 soon be the case, the chances of disaster from flood are 

 over, I believe the whole land will be cultivated and 

 densely peopled. At present the possibility of such flood 

 is a terrible deterrent to settlement, for when the Father 

 of Waters breaks his boundaries he turns the country 

 for a breadth of eighty miles into one broad river, the 

 plantations throughout all this vast extent being from 



