204 LAKE CONCORDIA. [CHAP. XXXIL 



supposed, by predaceous fish. The freshwater shells, 

 of which we obtained specimens from the lake, belong 

 to the genera Lymnea, Planorlis, Paludina, Anchy- 

 lotus, Pliysa, Cyclas, and Unio. We put up flights of 

 water-fowl of various species, chiefly wild ducks, 

 which were swimming about. On the top of a pole, 

 driven into the mud near the margin of the lake, was 

 perched a kingfisher, and two cormorants were wheel 

 ing round it, one with a fish in its mouth, which the 

 other was trying to snatch away. The water, al 

 though much clearer than the Mississippi, was not 

 transparent, for it had communicated, during the late 

 inundations, with the great river. In this manner 

 sediment is annually introduced into such basins, and 

 in the course of ages Lake Concordia may become so 

 shallow as to support a forest of swamp timber. 

 Some modern concretions of clay and lime, and of 

 clay containing iron, which I picked up from the 

 mud of the Mississippi bordering this lake, were so 

 like those associated with the ancient buried forest 

 at Port Hudson, and the shelly loam of Natchez, as 

 to confirm me in the opinion before expressed, that 

 the cliffs there, although of very high antiquity, cor 

 respond in origin with the recent fluviatile formations 

 of the alluvial plain. 



March 17. We established ourselves in the wharf- 

 boat at Natchez, prepared for a start in the first 

 steamer which would take us to Grand Gulf, fifty 

 miles higher up. We amused ourselves by watching 

 a party of young negro boys, who collected the drift 

 wood which bordered the river, and, having tied it 

 together into a raft, heaped some dead branches of 



