208 VICKSBURG TO JACKSON. [CHAP. XXXII. 



it, so often had he witnessed the wreck of vessels 

 and the loss of lives. es If you fall overboard,&quot; he 

 said, &quot;in the middle of the Atlantic, you may rise 

 again and be saved ; but here you are sucked down 

 by an eddy, and the waters, closing over you, are so 

 turbid, that you are never seen again.&quot; 



March 19. At Vicksburg, where we next landed, 

 I found the bluffs, forming the eastern boundary 

 of the great plain, similar, in their upper part, to 

 those of Natchez j but beneath the freshwater loam 

 and sand were seen, at the base of the cliffs, a marine 

 tertiary deposit, of the Eocene period, in which we col 

 lected many shells and corals. (See fig. 10. p. 257 ; 

 and 3. fig. 11. p. 262.) 



Leaving my wife to rest at the hotel, I made 

 a rapid trip by railway, fifty-five miles eastward, 

 to Jackson, the capital of the State of Missis 

 sippi. For the first ten miles, the cars traversed 

 a table-land, corresponding in height with the sum 

 mit of the bluff at Vicksburg, and preserving an 

 even surface, except where gullies had been hollowed 

 out in the soft shelly loam or loess. These are nu 

 merous, and it had be^n necessary to throw bridges 

 over many of them so as to preserve the level of the 

 road. It was curious to observe, in the cuttings 

 made through the loam, that each precipitous face 

 retained its perpendicularity, as in natural sections, 

 although composed of materials wholly unconsoli- 

 dated. Farther to the east, the Eocene strata, be 

 longing to the same series, which are seen at the 

 bottom of the bluffs at Vicksburg, rise up to the 

 surface from beneath the freshwater loam, which 



