CHAP. XXIX.] WILLOWS ON RIVER BANK. 115 



The storm of the preceding night had driven many sea-gulls 

 up the river, which now followed our steamer, darting down to 

 the water to snatch up pieces of apple or meat, or whatever we 

 threw to them. After passing Fort Jackson, all trees disap 

 peared, except a few low willows. We then entered that long 

 promontory, or tongue of land, if such it can be called, which 

 consists simply of the broad river, flowing between narrow banks, 

 protruded for so many miles into the Gulf of Mexico. Each 

 bank, including the swamps behind it, is about 200 or 300 

 yards wide, covered with dead reeds, among which we saw many 

 tall, white cranes feeding, as in a flooded meadow, and as con 

 spicuous as sheep. The landscape on either side was precisely 

 similar, and most singular, consisting of blue sky, below which 

 were the dark-green waters of the Gulf, lighted up by a brilliant 

 sun ; then the narrow band of swamp, covered with dead reeds, 

 and, in the foreground, a row of pale-green willows, scarcely re 

 flected in the yellow, turbid water of the river. Occasionally 

 large merchant-vessels, some three-masted, were towed up by 

 steam-tugs, through the slack water, near the bank. How the 

 river can thus go to sea as it were, and yet continue for centuries 

 to preserve the same channel, in spite of storms and hurricanes, 

 which have more than once in the last hundred years caused the 

 waters of the Gulf to break over its banks, seems, at first, incom 

 prehensible, till we remember that we have here a powerful body 

 of fresh water flowing in a valley more than a hundred feet deep, 

 with vasts mounds of mud and sand on each side, and that the 

 sea immediately adjoining is comparatively shallow. 



The growth of willows on that side of the stream where the 

 land is gaining on the water, is often so formal and regular, that 

 they look like an artificial plantation. In the front row are 

 young saplings just rising out of the ground, which is formed of 

 silt, thrown down within the last two or three years. Behind 

 them is an older growth from four to eight feet high. Still far 

 ther back is seen a third row twenty-five feet high, and some 

 times in this manner five tiers, each overtopping the other, show 

 ing the gradual formation of the bank, which inclines upward, 

 because the soil first deposited has been continually raised during 



