168 VIEWS OP LOUISIANA* 
described, being but little subject to overflowing : the proportion 
of sunken ground, is scarcely equal to the part which may be 
cultivated, and the proportion altogether irreclaimable, is very 
small. The best cotton of the United States is produced here* 
and brings in market, generally, one cent more in the pound.-— 
Tobacco and indigo are also amongst the articles of culture. 
The principal settlements, are those of Natchitoches, bayou 
JRapide, bayou Robert, bayou Boeuf, and Atchafalaya. 
The greater part of the tract between the Atchafalaya, bayou 
Plaquemine, and the Mississippi, is low and uninhabitable 
land, of which no use can be made in its present state. The set¬ 
tlements of Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, and Plaque* 
mine, form trifling exceptions The route to the Attakapas and 
Opelousas, usually taken by boats, is through the bayou 
Plaquemine. 
The last and the largest body of alluvion in the state, is en¬ 
closed by the bayou Plaquemine, Atchafalaya, a bayou which 
makes out from it, (and forms the grand lake, connected with 
the lac d’eau Sal6e,) the sea, and the Mississippi. This tract 
is interspersed with a number of very large lakes, connected 
with the sea. Bayou la Fourche and Atchalafaya pass through 
it: the latter is lost in a variety of lakes and bayoux before it 
inters the gulph. This land is rapidly gaining from the sea ; 
the large lakes are shallow, and perceptibly filling up every 
year, by the sediment of the Mississippi. There is some land 
around them susceptible of being cultivated, but generally, there 
is no habitable land on this tract, except on the bayou la Fourche* 
and Mississippi. The bayou la Fourche is a beautiful natural ca¬ 
nal, admitting of settlements on its banks for eighty miles front 
where it issues from the Mississippi. When the Mississippi is 
high, it is about one hundred and fifty yards in width, its banks, 
Ivhich rarely overflow, are guarded by a slight levee of two feet 
high: it is free from obstructions the whole way to the gulph, 
and there are said to be sixteen feet of water on the bar. For the 
distance of sixty miles, a single horse might draw a large boat, so 
clean and even are its banks. In riding along it, the idea of a mag¬ 
nificent artificial canal was continually occurring to my mind : 
art cannot surpass it. The lands are in many places a mile and 
