CHAP. XXXII.] VICKSBURG TO JACKSON. 159 



of forests on its banks, it may be truly characterized as &quot; strong, 

 without rage ;&quot; absorbing, as it does, in its course, one great 

 tributary after another, several of them scarcely inferior in width 

 to itself, without widening its channel, and in this manner car 

 rying down noiselessly to the sea its vast column of water and 

 solid matter, while the greater part of its alluvial plain is left 

 undisturbed. 



A settler at Natchez told us he had lived on the great river 

 long enough to admire it, for the ease with which it performs its 

 mighty work ; and to fear it, so often had he witnessed the wreck 

 of vessels and the loss of lives. &quot; If you fall overboard,&quot; he said, 

 &quot; in the middle of the Atlantic, you may rise again and be saved ; 

 but here you are sucked down by an eddy, and the waters, closing 

 over you. are so turbid, that you are never seen again.&quot; 



March 19. At Vicksburg, where we next landed, I found 

 the bluffs, forming the eastern boundary of the great plain, similar, 

 in their upper part, to those of Natchez ; but beneath the fresh 

 water loam and sand were seen, at the base of the cliffs, a marine 

 tertiary deposit, of the Eocene period, in which we collected many 

 shells and corals. (See fig. 10, p. 193 ; and 3, fig. 11, p. 196.) 



Leaving my wile to rest at the hotel, I made a rapid trip by 

 railway, fifty-five miles eastward, to Jackson, the capital of the 

 State of Mississippi. For the first ten miles, the cars traversed 

 a table-land, corresponding in height with the summit of the bluff 

 at Vicksburg, and preserving an even surface, except where gullies 

 had been hollowed out in the soft shelly loam or loess. These 

 are numerous, and it had been necessary to throw bridges over 

 many of them so as to preserve the level of the road. It was 

 curious to observe, in the cuttings made through the loam, that 

 each precipitous face retained its perpendicularity, as in natural 

 sections, although composed of materials wholly uriconsolidated. 

 Farther to the east, the Eocene strata, belonging to the same 

 series, which are seen at the bottom of the bluffs at Vicksburg, 

 rise up to the surface from beneath the fresh-water loam, which 

 attains an elevation of about 250 feet above the sea, and then 

 gives place to older rocks. 



We passed through large forests of oaks and beeches, just 



