92 
HOW TO RENDER SILK, CLOTH, &C., WATER PROOF. 
than that of springs or wells, though he has one 
50 feet deep of clear and cool, but hard water. 
Bitter coco is one of the greatest pests that the 
planters have to contend with, several of whom, in 
this vicinity, having abandoned the culture of cot¬ 
ton on account of the spread of this grass, which 
defies the art of men to exterminate. Nothing but 
freezing will kill it. Dr. M. penned and fatted a 
lot of hogs upon a patch of it, and they rooted 
down three or four feet after the nuts, which are 
about the size of large beans, black color, and 
strung upon a small tough black root, a dozen in a 
string; and he fully believed that the hogs had 
destroyed it; but lo! in the spring it started up 
thicker and faster than ever. It grows a small sin¬ 
gle blade of pale green grass, never growing high, 
is good for pasture, particularly for sheep, but is 
killed by the slightest frost. The smallest fibre of 
roots vegetate, and unless actually consumed, fire 
does not seem to destroy its vitality. It has been 
known to grow abundantly from ashes, taken from 
a kitchen fire where it had been thrown to destroy 
it! And I have myself seen it growing out of the 
lime mortar in the top of a sugar-house chimney, 
after the chimney had been used to boil a crop of 
sugar; and those who know anything of the in¬ 
tense fires used, can easily imagine that the top of 
a chimney is anything but a cool place ! 
Doctor Metcalf and his neighbor Dr. Mercer 
have some of the best stock in this part of the 
state. Though I am sorry to say that there is not 
much encouragement among the mass of Missis- 
sippians, for enterprising public-spirited men like 
these, to expend money in introducing good stock, 
except for their own use. I saw in Dr. Metcalf’s 
garden, a beautiful and efficient hedge of the Florida 
thorn, which I like better than the Cherokee rose, 
or the Osage orange, a specimen of which I have 
seen on Dr. Mercer’s place. That plant, in this 
climate, grows naturally to a tree, and in a hedge¬ 
row does not afford sufficient thorns on the lower 
part of the stems. Being deciduous, too, it is less 
beautiful in winter than the Loun-mundi, if planted 
for an ornamental hedge. 
On the day I left Dr. Metcalf’s, I crossed the 
Homochitto River, by a very good ferry, where 
was once a bridge, and in fact is now, over a part 
of the - swamp, which is traversed by a causeway 
some two miles long, from four to ten feet high, 
which will go to show some of the difficulties of 
bridging streams here, and an as item of excuse for 
the great neglect of the people to keep the roads 
passable. Though the excuse is by no means suf¬ 
ficient. For a few miles further on, I encountered 
another stream, called Buffalo Creek, where a new 
bridge was building, which I suppose was sufficient 
excuse for having no ferry—the boat formerly here 
having been sunk months ago. From the late, al¬ 
most incessant rains, the creek was sending an an¬ 
gry flood of muddy water fifteen or eighteen feet 
deep, to give its aid toward extending the lands of 
Louisiana across the gulf of Mexico, and present¬ 
ing to several travellers on the other side, almost 
as insurmountable a barrier as would the gulf itself. 
I found at the place a small “ dug out,” and several 
negroes, to whom I gave a couple of dollars, (of 
course they wanted five,) to assist me in taking my 
carriage apart and carrying it over a piece at a 
time;. and baggage, harness, and self in same way, 
and then swimming the horses over. Streams are 
very numerous and bridges few, and ferries almost 
always exorbitant in charges and often very badly 
kept. I have often paid 50 cents to $1 for toll 
over streams not twice as wide as some of the cot¬ 
ton teams are long. Tavern bills, too, are outrage¬ 
ously high, and the fare outrageously low; but of 
the hospitality of planters, and kindness with 
which I have been treated, without a single excep¬ 
tion, I cannot speak high enough. Such a recep¬ 
tion as I met with upon a late arrival, at the house 
of Mr Horatio Smith, near Woodville, is almost 
sufficient to make one forget such little items as 
the troublesome passage of Buffalo Creek. 
Of all the numerous and curious gullys I have 
yet seen in this curious country, one passed to-day, 
(December 8th,) north of Woodville, is perhaps 
the most so. The road for more than half a mile 
traverses a mere ridge, rising out of a gulf or suc¬ 
cession of gulfs on each side, near a hundred feet 
deep, in an earth of a reddish color, and much of 
it the tint of the peach blossom. Mr. Smith tells 
me that when this ridge tumbles down, as in time 
it surely will, that the old plantation adjoining is 
so full of gullies, that there will be no place for a 
road, without going several miles round. Mr. 
Smith, says, never plow nor dig the ground in the 
contemplated hedge row for Cherokee-rose cuttings. 
Scrape the surface clean, draw a line and mark the 
row, and then take a sharp pin, either wood or iron, 
the latter the best, and drive down six or eight in¬ 
ches, as thick as required for the plants, and drop 
the cuttings in these holes and hammer the earth 
around till it closes tight upon the stock. Planted in 
this way, not one in a hundred will fail, no matter 
how hard the ground—and it is not one half the 
labor as the mode in which they are usually planted. 
Mr. Smith gives as one of the reasons why pork 
is not made here to a greater extent, in these low- 
price times, the difficulty of having sufficiently 
cool weather at killing time, to save the meat. He 
has known hogs turned out again, after having 
been fatted, on account of the weather continuing 
so warm through the whole winter, that it could 
not be cured. 
Although the town of Woodville and vicinity 
contain many excellent people, the place has got 
an unenviable notoriety ; and “ the oak” is known 
more widely as a scene of bloodshed than that 
portion of the inhabitants who belong to the peace 
establishment. If alcohol were utterly banished 
from the place, then would the town soon wear an 
improving look, more pleasing to the stranger. 
Solon Robinson. 
Woodville , Miss., Dec. 8th , 1848. 
How to Render Cloth, Silk, &c., Water 
Proof. —Take one pound, each, of common alum, 
(sulphate of alumina,) and sugar of lead, (acetate 
of lead,) and dissolve them in six quarts of boiling 
water, well mixed by stirring. When cold, the top 
portion of the mixture should be poured off for use. 
as the sediment consists of sulphates of lead, pot¬ 
ash, &c. Any article of dress, no matter how 
slight the fabric, if well saturated with this liquid, 
and allowed to dry slowly, will bear the action of 
boiling water, and not permit it to pass through it 
