THE COTTON-TREE. 
399 
Chap. XXIV.—B.P.J 
most eligible site for a plantation on the river, a creek 
runs in on each side of the house, and the clayey 
earthen banks begin to show symptoms of a firmer 
foundation, for rocks crop out, forming little stony 
points, the soundings also decrease in depth, and the 
direction of the river from this place is to the north¬ 
ward of west, instead of due west as heretofore. 
After passing this reach and another nearly as 
long, we came to Dixon’s house, the farthest up the 
river. It is at least twenty feet above the water, and 
yet was inundated at the time of the great storm. 
The owner was present at the time, but fortunately he 
and his family were able to escape in their canoe. 
Just beyond Dixon’s we sighted the Eama hill 
(bearing S.S.W.), so called because it points out the 
entrance to the Kama, the first affluent which enters 
the Blewfields. About six miles higher up we passed 
Saw-house Creek, where formerly a saw-mill for cut¬ 
ting mahogany was at work, I found the water still 
disagreeable to the taste, not even the Caribs would 
drink it. 
The gigantic cotton-trees are quite a feature about 
this part of the river; their gaunt, bare, white stems, 
denuded of branches and shortened by the head, look 
like so many monoliths, giving the idea of an immense 
graveyard with colossal tombstones, nature’s tribute to 
the memory of thousands of unburied denizens of the 
forest, destroyed in the late furious war of the ele¬ 
ments. 
The country now became hilly; in one place a cliff 
rose up on the right bank to a height of fifty feet, the 
