486 LOUISIANA. 



town house, prison, barracks, hospital, convent and church, charity 

 hospital and church, government house and stores, and some others 

 of inferior note. New Orleans contained in 1814, 28,000 inhabitants. 

 Its trade is very considerable, and it is rapidly increasing in size and 

 importance. The first buildings were erected by the French in 1720. 

 After New Orleans there is scarcely any place which deserves the 

 name of town. There are a few irregular and straggling villages, 

 but none in a very flourishing state. Mechanics are rare in the coun- 

 try, and the planters are in the habit of supplying themselves with 

 almost every article of manufacture or merchandise from the city ; 

 and hence there is but little to encourage the growth of the country 

 towns. Baton Rouge, situate one hundred and twenty miles above 

 New Orleans, is the largest village in the state ; the situation is 

 beautiful on the first high land to be seen on ascending the river. 

 The bank is at least forty feet above the highest floods, and the land 

 is covered in the rear with a heavy growth. It is yet but a poor place ; 

 there are no good houses; its inhabitants are a few retailers of mer- 

 chandise on a small scale. It must undoubtedly in time become a 

 considerable town. It contains about five hundred souls, is in latitude 

 30° 26', and is the seat of justice of the parish of East Baton Rouge. 



La Fourche, a small village, situate at the outlet of the bayou of 

 that name, about forty miles below Baton Rouge, is a lively place ; 

 in its population, Sec. resembling the place just mentioned. Alex- 

 andria, situate at the rapids, on Red river ; Natchitoches, on Red 

 river, 75 miles above Alexandria ; St. Francisville, forty miles above 

 Baton Rouge ; the Opelousas church ; the Attakapas church', and New 

 Iberia, below on the Teche, are all small villages like those de rf 

 scribed, and are the seats of justice for the parishes in which they 

 are situated. 



Face of the country. ...The surface, although in general level, 

 is much diversified in its appearance. The section to the north-east 

 of Red river, is a high and even hilly country, constituting nearly a 

 third of the whole state; it may in general be termed broken upland, 

 covered chiefly with pines, the land sandy, and in some places stony. 

 On the margins of the streams, which are limpid and beautiful, the 

 soil is rich and covered with good timber. The tract which lies 

 parallel with the Mississippi river, and which may be considered 

 twenty or thirty miles in width, is low, flat, and fertile, inter- 

 spersed with numerous lakes, whose banks are as high, if not 

 higher, than those of the Mississippi. This tract is nearly all inun- 

 dated in extraordinary floods, but not by one sheet of water, as has 

 been represented, excepting in the space enclosed by Black river and 

 the Mississippi and Red river. The tract extending from Red river 

 to the gulf, along the banks of the Mississippi, is on an average not 

 less than forty miles in breadth, and singularly cut up by currents 

 which make out Irom the river, and carry off its waters to the sea by 

 numerous channels. It is also interspersed with lakes, some of 

 considerable magnitude, as has been already mentioned. The whole 

 presents a singular compound of sunken lands, morasses, prairies, 

 deep cane breaks, refluent currents, (whose black and nauseous wa- 

 ters flow, through deep and ugly channels,) lagoons, swamps, and 

 lakes embosomed in dark and gloomy woods. Tracts of considerable 

 magnitude are almost inaccessible. It is a singular feet, that a few 

 years ago a large herd of buffaloe was discovered on one of these 

 detached tracts within thirty miles of New Orleans. West of thi& 



