176 LAKE EULALIE. [CHAP. XXXIII. 



I went to see one of them, three quarters of a mile to the west 

 ward. There I found a nearly circular hollow, ten yards wide, 

 and five feet deep, with a smaller one near it, and I observed, 

 scattered about the surrounding level ground, fragments of black 

 bituminous shale, with much white sand. Within a distance 

 of a few hundred yards, were five more of these &quot; sand-bursts,&quot; 

 or &quot; sand-blows,&quot; as they are sometimes termed here, and, rather 

 more than a mile farther west, near the house of Mr. Savors, 

 my guide pointed out to me what he called &quot; the sink-hole where 

 the negro was drowned.&quot; It is a striking object, interrupting 

 the regularity of a flat plain, the .sides very steep, and twenty- 

 eight feet deep from the top to the water s edge. The water 

 now standing in the bottom is said to have been originally very 

 deep, but has grown shallow by the washing in of sand, and 

 the crumbling of the bank caused by the feet of cattle coming to 

 drink. I was assured that many wagon loads of matter were 

 cast up out of this hollow, and the quantity must have been con 

 siderable to account for the void ; yet the pieces of lignite, and the 

 quantity of sand now heaped on the level plain near its borders, 

 would not suffice to fill one-tenth part of the cavity. Perhaps a 

 part of the ejected substance may have been swallowed up again, 

 and the rest may have been so mixed with water, as to have 

 spread freely like a fluid over the soil. 



My attention was next drawn to the bed of what was once a 

 lake, called Eulalie ; Mr. W. Hunter, the proprietor of the estate, 

 accompanying -me to the spot. The bottom, now dried up, is 

 about 300 yards long, by 100 yards in width, and chiefly com 

 posed of clay, covered with trees, the whole of them less than 

 thirty-four years old. They consist of cotton- wood (Populus 

 angulata), willows, the honey locust, and other species. Some 

 single cotton-wood trees have grown so fast as to be near two 

 and a half feet in diameter, and had not my guide known their 

 age accurately, I should have suspected their origin to have been 

 prior to 1811. All the species on the bottom differ from those 

 covering the surrounding higher ground, which is more elevated 

 by twelve or fifteen feet. Here the hickory, the black and white 

 oak, the gum, and other trees, many of them of ancient date, are 



