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cutters. This pine and oak ridge extends into Arkansas and is 

 bounded on the east by Prairie Mer Rouge and Prairie Jefferson, 

 both rich alluvial plantations, and on the west by Bayou Bartholo- 

 mew. The soil beyond its immediate banks ranks among the best 

 cotton lands in the State. 



Bastrop is a small village of about five hundred inhabitants and 

 has some good residences in the outskirts. It has two churches, 

 several stores and a weekly newspaper. About two miles from town 

 Bayou Bartholomew is reached, where the uplands change into 

 alluvion. The bayou is rather a muddy stream, confined within its 

 banks by the same brown crumbling loam of the Ouachita and Red 

 river banks. Bayou de Siard, which, during the summer, is per- 

 fectly dry, is merely formed from the backwaters of Bayou Bartholo- 

 mew. It is a kind of outlet to relieve the main channel of the great 

 volume of water poured into it by the Ouachita at its spring rise. 



At the mouth of Bayou Bartholomew the Ouachita river was at 

 least a quarter of a mile wide at the time I crossed it in the Ouachita 

 City ferryboat. Ouachita City is an insignificant place in Union 

 parish, composed of a few houses built on the immediate banks of the 

 river. Here the orange sand intermingled with iron stone pebbles be- 

 gins, which is the characteristic formation of the whole of North Lou- 

 isiana west of Ouachita river. The land in Union parish is rather 

 of an inferior quality, producing but one-third of a bale of cotton, 

 even when the land is fresh, which becomes entirely valueless for 

 cultivation in the course of three or four years. This part of Louis- 

 iana is inhabited by a great number of small planters, who, for the 

 most part, work themselves, raise their own meat, and are not de- 

 pendent on the labor of the freedmen. They make a comfortable 

 living, support their families in their own simple way, but have 

 always money enough left to send their children to school at least a 

 portion of the year, when their labor can be dispensed with. 



In Northwest Louisiana stores are found at almost every crossroad. 

 They are a great convenience to the small planters. They form the 

 central point of the settlement, where all the neighborhood roads 

 converge, and here are the school houses and meeting houses, as 

 well as the groceries; and here public gatherings are held for 

 political and other purposes. Occasionally these small places receive 

 some high-sounding name, and on this account it may sometimes 



