CHAP. XXITI.] LANDING AT CLAIBORNE. 51 



tomed to the best society of a large city, and the ladies of whose 

 family were refined and cultivated he felt it incumbent on him, 

 to my great discomfiture, to invite the driver of my gig, a half- 

 caste Indian, who traveled without any change of clothes, to sit 

 down with us at table. He was of a dark shade, but the blood 

 was Indian not African, ancHie was therefore one of the southern 

 aristocracy. TJje man was modest and unobtrusive, and scarce 

 ly spoke ; but it need scarcely be said, that his presence checked 

 the freedom of conversation, and I was glad when his duties in 

 the stable called him away. 



In the course of the night we were informed that the Ama 

 ranth had reached Claiborne. Here we found a flight of wooden 

 steps, like a ladder, leading up the nearly perpendicular bluff, 

 which was 150 feet high. By the side of these steps was a 

 framework of w r ood, forming the inclined plane down which the 

 cotton bales were lowered by ropes. Captain Bragdon politely gave 

 his arm to my wife, and two negroes preceded us with blazing 

 torches of pine- wood, throwing their light on the bright shining 

 leaves of several splendid magnolias which covered the steep. 

 We were followed by a long train of negroes, each carrying some 

 article of our baggage. Having ascended the steps, we came to 

 a flat terrace, covered with grass, the first green sward we had 

 seen for many weeks, and found there a small, quiet inn, where 

 we resolved to spend some days, to make a collection of the fossil 

 tertiary shells, so well known to geologists as abounding in the 

 strata of this cliff. About 400 species, belonging to the Eocene 

 formation, derived from this classic ground, have already been 

 named, and they agree, some of them specifically, and a much 

 greater number in their generic forms, with the fossils of the mid 

 dle division of the deposits of the same age of London and Hamp 

 shire.* 



The remains of the zeuglodon have been also found by Mr. 

 Hale in this cliff; but, although I met with many leaves of ter 

 restrial plants, I could neither obtain here, nor in any part of the 

 United States, a single bone of any terrestrial quadruped, although 



* They correspond with the middle or Bracklesham series of Prestwich s 

 triple division. See &quot;Quart. Journ. of Geol. Soc.&quot; vol. iii. May, 1847. 



