CHAPTER XXXI. 



Fontania near Port Hudson. Lake Solitude. Floating Island. Bony Pike, 

 Story of the Devil s Swamp. Embarking by Night in Steamboat. 

 Literary Clerk. Old Levees undermined. Succession of upright buried 

 Trees in Bank. Raccourci Cut-off. Bar at Mouth of Red River. Shelly 

 Fresh-water Loam of Natchez. Recent Ravines in Table-Land. Bones 

 of extinct Quadrupeds. Human Fossil Bone. Question of supposed co 

 existence of Man with extinct Mammalia discussed. Tornado at Natchez. 

 Society, Country-Houses, and Gardens. Landslips. Indian Antiqui 

 ties. 



AFTER I had examined the bluff below Port Hudson, I went 

 down the river in my boat to Fontania, a few miles to the south, 

 to pay a visit to Mr. Faulkner, a proprietor to whom Dr. Car 

 penter had given me a letter of introduction. He received me 

 with great politeness, and, at my request, accompanied me at 

 once to see a crescent-shaped sheet of water on his estate, called 

 Lake Solitude, evidently an ancient bed of the Mississippi, now 

 deserted. It is one of the few examples of old channels which 

 occur to the east of the great river, the general tendency of which 

 is always to move from west to east. Of this eastward movement 

 there is a striking monument on the other side of the Mississippi 

 immediately opposite Port Hudson, called Fausse Riviere, a sheet 

 of water of the usual horse-shoe form. One of my fellow pas 

 sengers in the Rainbow had urged me to visit Lake Solitude, 

 &quot; because,&quot; said he, &quot; there is a floating island in it, well wooded, 

 on which a friend of mine once landed from a canoe, when, to his 

 surprise, it began to sink with his weight. In great alarm he 

 climbed a cypress tree, which also began immediately to go down 

 with him as fast as he ascended. He mounted higher and higher 

 into its boughs, until at length it ceased to subside, and, looking 

 round, he saw in every direction, for a distance of fifty yards, the 

 whole wood in motion.&quot; I wished much to know what founda 

 tion there could be for so marvelous a tale. It appears that 



