156 LAKE CONCORDIA. [CHAP. XXXII. 



thirteen similar lakes between the mouth of the Arkansas and 

 Baton Pvouge, all near the Mississippi, and produced by cut-offs ; 

 and so numerous are the channels which communicate from one 

 to the other, that a canoe may pass, during the flood season, 

 from Lake Concordia, and reach the Gulf of Mexico without once 

 entering the Mississippi. We were shown a cypress tree on the 

 borders of this deserted river bend, from under the roots of which, 

 a few days before the time of our visit, a she alligator had come 

 out on a warm day, the place of her hybemation appearing to be 

 half in the mud and half in the water. She brought out with 

 her two broods, one born in the preceding summer, which were 

 six inches long, and the others, an older set, about a foot long. 

 When Mr. Forshey approached them, the young ones yelped like 

 puppies, and the old one hissed. On the shore of the lake we 

 caught a tortoise, called here the snapping-turtle, and found that 

 all its feet had been bitten off devoured, our companions sup 

 posed, by predaceous fish. The fresh-water shells, of which we 

 obtained specimens from the lake, belong to the genera Lymnea, 

 Planorbis, Paludina, Anchylotus, Physa, Cyclas, and Unio. 

 W r e put up flights of water-fowl of various species, chiefly wild 

 ducks, which were swimming about. On the top of a pole, 

 driven into the mud near the margin of the lake, was perched a 

 kingfisher, and two cormorants were wheeling round it, one with 

 a fish in its mouth, which the other was trying to snatch away. 

 The water, although much clearer than the Mississippi, was not 

 transparent, for it had communicated, during the late inunda 

 tions, with the great river. In this manner sediment is annually 

 introduced into such basins, and in the course of ages Lake Con 

 cordia may become so shallow as to support a forest of swamp 

 timber. Some modern concretions of clay and lime, and of clay 

 containing iron, which I picked up from the mud of the Missis 

 sippi bordering this lake, were so like those associated with the 

 ancient buried forest at Port Hudson, and the shelly loam of 

 Natchez, as to confirm me in the opinion before expressed, that 

 the cliffs there, although of very high antiquity, correspond in 

 origin with the recent fluviatile formations of the alluvial plain. 

 March 17. We established ourselves in the wharf-boat at 



