LEVEES.—BOOK II, 
!ty$ 
much higher degree than any other, the streams of happiness, 
and of pleasure unalloyed! a nearer approach dispels what the 
distant prospect had promised, and he is at length taught by ex¬ 
perience, that the gifts of heaven are equally dispensed, at least 
that it is not in this world we are to expect a paradise. 
The dwellings on the Coast are generally frame, of one sto¬ 
ry in height, but there are many constructed with tolerable ele¬ 
gance. The sugar houses, on either side, at intervals consider¬ 
ably distant, were easily distinguished, by the vafct columns of 
smoke which they sent up into the air. Within thirty or forty 
miles'of the city there are but few of the fie tits habitants , the 
lands being engrossed by the wealthy planters: this is continu¬ 
ally progressing downwards, and the disproportion of the whites 
to the blacks of course increasing. Below the place, where the 
insurrection commenced in 1811 , to the city, the distance of 
thirty miles, there is scarcely one white person to twenty blacks. 
When the lands on the coast shall be principally occupied by 
the larger planters, which will be the case at no distant period, 
it will be found absolutely necessary to station an armed force 
at intervals, as far up as Pointe Couple. 
The settlements of Fausse riviere, on the old bed of the riv¬ 
er, behind Pointe Coupee, is considered one of the wealthiest in 
the state. In high water, Fausse riviere, is filled from the Mis¬ 
sissippi, and is as wide as that river; after the flood subsides, 
the water in this place stagnates, and the settlement is render¬ 
ed unhealthy. The banks are high, and there is greater safety 
from inundation and the breaking of the levee than on the Mis¬ 
sissippi. 
LEVEES. 
IT may be thought that 1 have represented this country, In 
slime respects, in too favorable a light: that I have endeavored 
to represent the difficulties which oppose themselves to its im¬ 
provement, as less considerable than they really are. Certainly 
those difficulties are many and great, and when contemplated, 
without reflecting on what man can effect, they appear insur¬ 
mountable; but when we examine what he has done m other 
