CHAP. XXX.] BLUFFS OF PORT HUDSON. 181 



unctuous clay, and partly of loam, but with no chalk, 

 as stated by Bartram. A small streamlet, artificially 

 led to the top of the bluff, had, within the last four 

 years, cut out a ravine no less than sixty feet deep 

 through the upper loamy beds. In the sections thus 

 laid open, I saw precisely such deposits as a river 

 would form in its bed, or in the swamps which it had 

 occasionally flooded. Near the bottom was a layer 

 of leaves, resembling those of the bay, with numerous 

 roots of trees and wood in a fresher state than I ever 

 saw them in any tertiary formation. Taking a canoe, I 

 afterwards proceeded to examine that part of the 

 cliff which extends about a mile down the river s left 

 bank, immediately below Port Hudson, where it is 

 between seventy and eighty feet high. The deposits 

 laid open to view were divisible into three groups, the 

 topmost consisting of brown clay, the middle of 

 whitish siliceous sand, and the lower of green clay. 

 I found some men digging the middle or sandy stratum 

 for making bricks, and they had just come upon a 

 prostrate buried tree, black and carbonized, but not 

 turned into lignite. I counted in it 220 rings of 

 annual growth. Near it I found two other smaller 

 fossil trunks, all lying as if they had been drift wood 

 carried down by a river and buried in sand. One 

 of the men pointed out to me that the structure of 

 the wood showed distinctly that they belonged to 

 three different species, one being oak, another hickory, 

 and the third sassafras. Their texture seemed cer 

 tainly that of distinct genera of trees, but for the 

 accuracy of my informant s determination I cannot 

 vouch. At this point they told me the bluff has, in 



