366 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Feb. 20. Cloudy—little rain in morning—then clear 
and cool. 
“ 21. Mild—somewhat cloudy, and rain at night. 
“ 22. Cloudy and some rain—mild. 
“ 23. Mild—flying clouds. 
“ 24, 25. Sunny and warm—“ coats off.” 
“ 26. Quite warm and dry—roads dusty—“jackets 
off.” 
“ 27,28—Clear and mild—fire needed morning and 
evening. 
March 1, 2, 3, I have noticed. 
March 4th, which many an office seeker at Washing¬ 
ton will be able to remember, and compare with what is 
past, present, and future, as he hopes it will be—if not 
warm, at least mild, certainly not stormy—certainly was 
stormy in Mississippi, in the morning, after which we 
started again southward over a hilly region composed of 
argillaceous alluvium, badly cultivated and full of gul¬ 
lies—the streams broad, and gravelly bottoms, deep sunk 
between high sandy banks that are rapidly working 
away to help extend our territory farther and farther into 
the gulf of Mexico. Passed through the town of Porti 
Gibson, which is the best town I have seen in the state. 
It is situated on a stream called Bayou Peire, a few 
miles from the Mississippi, from which steamers come 
in high water to carry out the cotton from the surround¬ 
ing rich country. Many of the owners of neighboring- 
plantations have their residences here, which give the 
place an air of wealth and grandeur. 
We passed to-day a few miles north of this town, ihe 
“ old Indian boundary,” where the traveller from New- 
Orleans entered the wilderness that extended almost to 
Nashville, Tennessee. This was less than forty years 
ago. Port Gibson is now about 40 years old, and we 
stopped all night near Cole’s creek, with a man who has 
lived 40 years upon the same spot—long enough to have 
learned to live better, and have more of the comforts and 
conveniences of life around him— but he did'nt take the 
papers —and so there is neither fruit, nor flowers, nor 
shrubbery, nor garden nor good cultivation, nor has the 
land upon this “ first choice in the country,” improved un¬ 
der the constant wearing that it has been subjected to. 
Happily for the owner, his plantation is nearly level, or 
after forty years subjection to his constant control, he 
would now be at work upon the second soil, the top one 
would have departed. This man is not much in favor of 
improvement. His place used to be a noted “ stand ” 
upon the “ trail” from Natchez to Nashville, before the 
improvement in steamboats turned the tide, and stopped 
the influx of cash into his pocket. 
After leaving his house we passed a remarkable stream 
called “ Cole’s creek,” which we were unable to cross 
the evening before. When the country was first set¬ 
tled, as our late host told us, “ he had often fallen a tree 
from bank to bank,” which are now an hundred rods 
apart and continually widening-, as the soil is so loose 
that as soon as the roots decay there is nothing to hold 
it together. And the bed of the stream is so full of 
quicksands, that crossing after a freshet is both diffi¬ 
cult and dangerous, and life and property have both 
been lost in the attempt. If you ask why don’t they 
bridge it, I beg you to read in your bible that “a cer¬ 
tain man built his foundation upon the sands, and the 
floods came,” &c., and so w-ould they come here, and 
neither bridge or mill dam would stand any more chance 
to stand, than a cotton planter stands to grow rich at 
the present price of the staple. 
In the course of the morning, we passed several other 
branches of this stream of the same character and began 
to find the country more hilly, the soil of alluvium, and 
having the same kind of beds of marly loam as noticed 
in Warren county, and nearly the whole of great fertility 
and extreme bad cultivation; full of awful gullies, and 
showing thousands of acres in sight of the road so past 
the power of a negro to raise cotton upon it, that it is 
thrown out to the common as utterly worthless. And 
yet much of this waste land is covered with Bermuda 
grass, of which I shall speak hereafter—and that in a 
southern clime affords the finest pasture in the world, and 
would sustain great numbers of sheep. Cotton—cotton— 
coUor~- till the land is cottoned to death, because cotton is 
the e ‘ great staple,” which in the opinion of a cotton plant¬ 
er, only needs to be sustained, anil that will sustain all the 
links of the great chain of commerce—forgetting that 
the support of that staple, into which it was driven pret¬ 
ty hard a few years ago, was nothing but a “ quick sand 
Bank,” and the floods came and the staple drew ou', ami 
down went the chain, dragging prosperity and improve¬ 
ment with it. And these cogitations bring us to a gang of 
160 negroes working the road, “because it is so wet 
they can’t work on the plantation.” And what will such 
a host do? Not half as much good, though perhaps more 
labor, as one-tenth the number of yankees with ayankee 
team, plow and scraper would do. 
Some curious features are seen upon this road—upon 
some of the hills it is worn down in a ditch like a deep 
cut in a railroad, 20 or 30 feet deep; while the apex is left 
so sharp that the forward wheels begin to descend before 
the hind ones have done ascending. 
SMOKY CHIMNEYS. 
“ Does smoking offend you?” said the landlord to his 
newly arrived boarder. “Not at all, sir.” “ I'm very 
glad to hear it, as you will find your chimney fire is 
constantly given to the practice.” Most, however, have 
little fancy for smoke even if largely diluted with air; 
those who spend half an hour every morning with wa¬ 
tery eyes over a perverse fire-place, and whose room is 
filled with smoke at every gust of wind, reg ird it as a 
decidedly positive evil. 
Hence there have been a thousand and one contrivan¬ 
ces to prevent it. Having had my own share of the 
evils of smoke, and in expedients to get rid of it, I pro¬ 
pose to give my experience for the benefit of others. 
The chimney which gave me the most trouble was one 
far below the others, rising from a roof much lower 
than that of the rest of the dwelling. When a strong 
wind swept over the house and down on the top of the 
chimney, the flame spouted out of the door of the kitch¬ 
en cook-stove, and the room was immediately filled to 
suffocation. I first adopted a cover 
similar to that recommended in Lou¬ 
don’s Suburban Gardener as infallible, 
represented in fig. 103, consisting of a 
cap of sheet iron in the shape of a low 
pyramid, supported a little above the top 
of the brick chimney on points at the 
corners, the smoke passing out just 
under the eaves of the cover. • I found 
it to answer the purpose whenever the 
wind swept down upon it uninterrupted- 
1<y , v,.— the house. But when the wind blew 
from an opposite course or towards the house, and was 
thus thrown into a confusion of eddies, first upwards, then 
downwards, this moment to the right and the next to the 
left, and then apparently all ways at once, it totally failed 
of answering the desired end; and when I saw in num¬ 
ber 9, vol. 10 of the Cultivator, Mott’s figure of a chim¬ 
ney cap, which would always draw the current upwards, 
I resolved to try it. I went to the 
tinker’s and had one made as repre¬ 
sented in fig. 104, consisting of an up¬ 
right piece of stove pipe, nine inches 
in diameter, made square at the lower 
end to fit the brick chimney, and con¬ 
nected at the upper end with a piece 
of horizontal slove-pipe, the same size, 
but considerably enlarged at its two 
open ends. The chimney now never 
smokes an atom. The tinker charged 
me about two dollars and a half for his work, which was 
about one dollar more than he ought to have done; but 
to come home and find smiling female faces, and a clear 
air within doors, as is now the case—in the place of eyes 
filled with smoky grief, and lungs with choking breath, 
as formerly_any decent man would of course consider 
himself repaid many times the amount of that little sum. 
I dont understand the rationale of it; but one thing I 
know, that whenever there is wind, let it be from above 
or beneath, or from whatever quarter, the current through 
the chimney is upwards. This is the case when there is 
Fig. 103 
