"16 On the Cypress Timber of Mississippi and Louisiana. 
IL. Of the local causes which determine the distribution and 
growth of cypress timber, the most essential one is, that the soéd 
in which it grows should jor the greater portion of the year, be 
completely saturated with water. 'The country abounds in basin- 
like depressions of the general surface, into which flow the sur- 
plus waters of the surrounding forests; and there are also elon- 
gated depressions, through which the waters from such basins 
find difficult outlets. Of such positions the cypress seems always 
to have availed itself; and where they are the most ro devel- 
oped, there it obtains its maximum perfection. But much defec- 
tive cypress growth is found also along the margins of ccheuaes 
sluggish batons through which the superabundant waters of the 
forests find difficult egress, on account of the undergrowth, drift 
wood, limbs, leaves or other obstructions. Such basin-shaped de~ 
pressions containing cypress timber, are usually denominated “ cy- 
in brakes ;” they are of various magnitudes, containing from 
ne hundred to eight thousand “ders” or cypress trees, of the 
lengths of forty, fifty, sixty and seventy feet, fit for rafting, and 
varying in diameter, at the top, from twenty to sixty inches. 
The largest and smallest are usually left in the forest. The greater 
number of these brakes are found near the Mississippi river and 
its branches, and the bayous which intersect the alluvial lands. 
hese bayous are in great part formed by the efflux of the wa- 
ters from such woodland basins; which by their depressions are 
constituted filtering receptacles, and through which, drain all the 
waters from the surrounding lands of greater comparative elevation. 
Such basins are found variously depressed below the general sur- 
face level of the surrounding country, the depression varying from 
a few inches to twenty-five feet or more. They are, in every in- 
stance, the ancient channels of the Mississippi river and its tribu- 
taries, or their tributary bayous, which have, from time to time, 
been more or less cut away. They intersect, (as it were,) their 
own channels, and close the mouths of such portions as are thus 
cut off, thus forming lake-basins more or less elongated ; and from 
year to year, they are subject to a certain though imperceptible 
change in conformation, by receiving from 
floods and overflows of the rivers. “The matter thus washed in, 
depositing itself more immediately around their margins, serves 
to lessen the declivity of their banks, and gives them, more 
more, the slope of a basin, of variable curvatures. Vegetable matter 
enriches the margins of such lakes, which being retentive of mois- 
ture, soon become surrounded by a growth of cypress that con- 
tinues to project itself into the basins as fast as the sedimentary 
matter elevates their margins, or the water recedes by any depres- 
sion of the outlets through which wag ioe are drained. These out- 
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