RIVER ALLUVIONS. 



53 



us an instructive spectacle of all these grand opera- 

 tions. It is calculated by Liancourt, that in the 

 space of fourscore years, from 1720 to 1800, it has 

 encroached upon the sea about fifteen niiles ; thus 

 under the eyes of thi'ee generations it has created at 

 its mouth a new country, which it increases every- 

 day, and in which it lays up beds of coal for future 

 ages. Such is tiie celerity of its accumulative pro- 

 cess, that at New Orlearjs, a hundred miles* above 

 its present mouth, a canal lately cut by the gover- 

 nor, baron Carondelet, from the river to lake Pont- 

 Chartrain, has brought to view an interior bed of 

 earth, formed entirely of black mud and trunks of 

 trees, heaped together several feet deep, which have 

 T30t yet had time either to rot or to be converted 

 into coal. Both banks of the river wholly consist of 

 trunks of trees thus agglutinated by mud for a space 

 of more than three hun4red miles; and the waters 

 have heaped them up to such a height, that they 

 form a mound from twelve to sixteen feet higher 

 than the adjacent land, which is generally lower ; 

 and at the annual rise of the river, which is about 

 twenty-four feet, the exuberant water, being unable 

 to re-enter the channel, forms vast and numerous 

 marshes, which will some day become the source of 

 Vv^ealth, but are at present an obstacle to agriculture 

 and population.* 



Mr. Dunbar of Natchez, also observes, that in the 

 valley opposite to that town, upwards of thirty miles 

 wide, no ether soil isdiscovered but that which is daily 

 deposited by the waters of the Mississippi, and 



* See Volney's View;, p. 74. 



' F 



