CHAP. XXXI.] LITERARY CLERK. OLD LEVEES. 147 



They told me I must register my name at the office. The clerk 

 asked me if I was the author of a work on geology, and being 

 answered in the affirmative, wished to know if I was acquainted 

 with Mr. Macaulay. On my saying yes, he took out a late 

 number of the Edinburgh Review, and begged me to tell him 

 whether the article on Addison was written by my friend, for 

 he had been discussing this matter with a passenger that evening. 

 When I had confirmed this opinion he thanked me, expressing much 

 regret that he should not see me again, since I was to land next 

 day at Natchez before he should be up. This conversation lasted 

 but a few minutes, and in as many more I was in a good berth 

 under a musquito net, listening to a huge bell tolling in the fog, 

 to warn every flat-boat to get out of the way, on peril of being 

 sent instantly to the bottom. In spite of this din, and that of 

 the steam funnels arid machinery, I soon fell asleep for the third 

 time. 



When I carne on deck next day, all hands were at work, taking 

 in wood at a landing below Bayou Sara, where I saw on the top 

 of the river bank, now sixteen feet high, several striking memorials 

 of the ravages of former inundations. Besides the newest levee, 

 there was one which had given way previously to the great flood 

 of 1814, and a still older one, which, although once parallel, was 

 now cut off abruptly, and at right angles to the present course of the 

 river. They reminded me of the remnant of an oval intrench- 

 ment at the edge of the cliff near New Haven in Sussex, and of 

 those paths leading directly to the brink of precipices overhanging 

 the sea in many maritime counties in England. Farther on, at 

 another wooding station, in Adams County, Mississippi, I observed 

 a bank eighteen feet in perpendicular height, and said to be forty- 

 five feet high when the water is at its lowest. It was composed 

 of sand, or sandy loam, indicating a comparatively rapid deposi 

 tion. In such loam, no erect stumps and trunks of trees are met 

 with, the sediment having accumulated on the margin of the 

 river in a few years too fast to allow large trees to grow there. 

 But in other places, where the bank consisted of fine, stiff clay, 

 I saw here and there the buried stools of cypresses, and other 

 trees, in an upright position, with their roots attached, sometimes 



