University of Virginia Library

35. XXXV.

The morning after my arrival at the plantation,
which suggested the subject of my last letter, two
gentlemen, with their guns and dogs, arrived at the
house, to proceed from thence, according to a previous
arrangement, on a deer hunt. This noble
and attractive game abounds in the “bottoms” and
river hills in this region; though the planters, who
are in general passionately fond of hunting, are fast
thinning their numbers. The branching antlers of a
stag, as in the old oaken halls of England, are found
fixed, in some conspicuous station, in almost every
planter's habitation—trophies of his skill, and testimonials
of his attachment to the chase.

Having prepared our hunting apparatus, and assembled
the dogs, which, from their impatient movements,
evidently needed no intimation of our design,
we mounted our horses, and, winding through
the cotton fields, entered a forest to the south, and
proceeded, in fine spirits, toward the “drive,” four
or five miles below, as the hunting station is technically

termed by deer hunters. There were, exclusive
of a servant, four in our party. One of them,
my host, formerly an officer in the navy, having,
some years since, left the service, and settled himself
down as a cotton planter, presented in his person
the anomalous union, in Mississippi, of the sailor
and farmer: for in this state, which has little intercourse
directly with the sea, sailors are rare birds.
Till recently a ship could not be seen by a Mississippian
without going to New-Orleans, or elsewhere
out of the state: but since Natchez became a port
of entry, and ships have ascended here, the citizens
who flocked in from all the country round, to gaze
upon them, are a little more au fait to this branch
of nautical knowledge. It would be difficult to say
which predominates in this gentleman, the bluff and
frank bearing of the sailor, or the easy and independent
manner of the planter. In the management
of his plantation, the result of his peculiar
economy has shown, that the discipline with which
he was familiar in the navy, with suitable modifications,
has not been applied unsuccessfully to the
government of his slaves. What a strange inclination
sailors have for farming! Inquire of any New-England
sea-captain the ultimatum of his wishes,
after leaving the sea—for sailors in general follow
the sea as the means of securing them a snug
berth on shore—and he will almost invariably reply—“a
farm.” Another of our party was a
planter, a native of Mississippi, and the son of a
gentleman whose philosophic researches have greatly
contributed to the advancement of science. He
was a model of a southern planter—gentlemanly,
companionable, and a keen hunter. The government
of his plantation, which is one of the finest in
the state, is of a parental rather than an imperious
character. He rules rather by kindness than severity,
and his slaves obey from the principle of a desire
to please, rather than from fear. And the result
of his discipline has fully overthrown the
sweeping assertion, which it is the fashion to repeat
and believe, that “the more kindly slaves are treated
the worse they are.” A favourite theory of philanthropists,
in relation to master and slave, is more
practically illustrated on the estate of this gentleman,
than the most sanguine of its framers could
have anticipated. As I have, in a former letter, alluded
to that branch of the domestic economy of
this plantation, relating to the religious privileges of
the slaves, and shall again have occasion to refer to
its discipline, I will pursue the subject here no
farther.

The third individual of our party was a gentleman
originally from New-Jersey; a state which
has contributed many valuable citizens to Mississippi.
But he had been too long in the south to
preserve his identity as a Jersey man. The son of
a distinguished barrister, he had been a lawyer himself;
but, like all professional men, who have remained
here a short time, he had taken his third
degree as a cotton planter. He is a gentleman of fine
taste and a chastened imagination; and besides
some beautiful tales, contributed to the periodicals,
he is the author of that delightful story, the “Fawn's

leap,” published in the Atlantic Souvenir of 1830.
The literary world will have reason to feel regret,
in which the subject of my remark will, no doubt,
be far from sympathising, that fortune has placed
him among her protegés. He possesses an independent
property, and resides on an estate called
“Woodbourne,” eight or nine miles from Natchez.
With true Mississippi taste, he has placed his handsome
villa in the midst of a forest; but the majestic
beauty of the lofty trees, as surveyed from the gallery,
and the solemn grandeur of the primeval forests
which inclose his dwelling on all sides, struck
me, at the moment, as far superior to any display of
art in ornamental grounds, and nearly unhinged my
predilection for artificial scenery. In this charming
retirement, and in the quiet enjoyment of private
life, he has laid aside the gown of the author to assume
the capote of the planter, and become an indefatigable
devotee to the lordly pleasures of the
chase. Few men, who hunt merely en amateur,
and especially, few literary men, can boast that
they have killed twenty-seven deer, and been at the
death of fifty-two—yet this gentleman can do so
with truth: and a row of notches, cut in his hunting-horn,
which I found suspended from an antler
in the gallery of the house we had just left, recorded
the fact. Besides this gentleman, there are but
few individuals who are known out of this state as
cultivators of literature. Mississippi is yet too
young to boast of her authors, although she is not
deficient in men of talent and learning. But the
members of the learned professions are too much
involved in schemes of wealth to have leisure or
inclination for the cultivation of general literature.

Half way through the forest into which we entered
on leaving the plantation, we came to a rude
dwelling, inhabited by a ruder old hunter, who was
to officiate as “driver.” He accompanied us with
his dogs for a while, and then turned aside into the
woods to surround the deer in their place of resort
and drive them toward the river, between which
and them we were to take our “stands,” for the
purpose of intercepting them, as they dashed by to
the water. For if alarmed while feeding upon the
high grounds back from the Mississippi, they at
once bound off to the shelter of the swamps or bottoms
near the river—and the skilful hunter, whose
experience teaches him by what paths they will seek
to gain the lowlands where the hounds cannot follow
them, takes his stand with his rifle behind some
tree by which he is tolerably sure the deer will
pass, and as the noble and terrified animal bounds
past him, he levels the deadly rifle with unerring
aim, and buries a bullet in his heart.

Emerging from the forest a mile or two above
our hunting ground, we came suddenly upon an
amphitheatre of naked hills nearly surrounded by
forests of dark pine. Winding through romantic
defiles thickly bordered with cedars, we gradually
ascended to the summit of the highest of this cluster
of treeless hills, when all at once the Mississippi,
rolling onward to the sea, burst upon our sight in
all its majesty. There is a grand and desolate character
in those naked cliffs which hang in huge terraces

over the river, to the perpendicular height of
three hundred feet. The view from their summits
is one of the most sublime and extensive in the
south-west. To the north and south the broad river
spreads away like a long serpentine lake, its western
shore presenting a plain, clothed even to the
horizon with a boundless forest, with a plantation
here and there breaking the uniformity of its outlines,
near the water's edge.

After a farther ride of a mile, over a hilly road
through woods alternately exposing and hiding the
river, we arrived at the “deer-stand,”—a long ridge
nearly parallel with the river, and covered with a
very open forest with a low “bottom,” between the
ridge and the water, and an extensive “drive,” or
forest frequented by deer, extending two miles inland.
Our “driver” with the whole pack, had
turned off into the “drive” some time before, and
having examined the ground, we took our “stands”
about a hundred yards apart, each behind a large
tree commanding an opening, or avenue, through
which the deer were expected to pass. Several of
these “stands,” and many more than we could occupy,
were on the ridge, all of which should have
been occupied to insure a successful issue to our
sport. A few moments after we had taken our
stands, and while listening for the least token of
the “driver's” presence in the depths of the forest
—the distant baying of dogs, in that peculiar note
with which they open when they have roused their
game, fell faintly upon our ears. The chorus of
canine voices, however, soon grew louder and more

violent—and as they awoke the echoes of the
forests, and came down upon us like a storm—my
heart leaped and the blood coursed merrily in my
veins. All at once the deep voices of the hounds
ceased as though they were at fault; but after a
few moments' pause, a staunch old hunter opened
again far to the right, and again the whole pack
were in pursuit in full cry, and the crashing of trees
and under-brush directly in front of us about a quarter
of a mile in the wood, with the increased roar of
the pack, warned us to be ready. The next moment
the noise moved away to the right, and all at
once, with a crash and a bound, a noble stag, with
his head laid back upon his shoulders, crossed our
line at the remotest stand, and disappeared in the
thick woods along the river. The dogs followed
like meteors. Away to the left another crashing
was heard, and a beautiful doe leaped across the
open space on the ridge, and was lost in the thicket.
The sounds of affrighted deer, passing through the
forest at a great distance, were occasionally heard,
but these soon died away and we only heard the
wild clamour of the dogs, which the driver, who
was close at their heels, in vain essayed to recall by
sounding his horn long and loud, and sending its
hoarse notes into the deepest recesses of the wood.

After a great deal of trouble, by whipping, coaxing,
and driving, nearly all the dogs were again collected,
as it was in vain to pursue the deer to their
retreats. Some of the old hunters slowly coming
in at the last, laid themselves down by us panting
and half dead with fatigue. By and by the driver

again started into the “drive” with the dogs; but
an engagement for the evening, precluding my participation
in a renewal of the spirit-stirring scene,
I reluctantly left my agreeable party who were out
for the day, and proceeded homeward. They returned
late at night with, I believe, a single deer as
the reward of their patience and unwearied spirits,
two most important virtues in a thorough-bred deerhunter.
Uncommon nerve and great presence of
mind are also indispensable qualifications. “Once,”
remarked a hunting gentleman to me, “while waiting
at my stand the approach of a buck, which
sometime before seeing him I had heard leaping
along in immense bounds through the thicket—his
sudden appearance in an open space about a hundred
yards in front, bearing down directly toward
me at fearful speed, so awed and unnerved me for
the moment, that although my rifle was levelled at
his broad breast, I had not the power to pull the
trigger, and before I could recover myself the noble
creature passed me like the wind.” Yet this gentleman
was a tried hunter, and on other occasions
had brought down deer as they came toward him at
full speed, at the distance of from sixty to a hundred
yards.

On my return from the hunting ground, I lingered
on the romantic cliff we had crossed in the morning,
delighted at once more beholding scenery that
reminded me of the rude features of my native state.
Dismounting from my horse, which I secured to the
only tree upon the cliff, I descended, after many hairbreadth
escapes a ravine nearly two hundred feet in

depth, which conducted me to the water side and
near the mouth of the beautiful St. Catharine, which,
after a winding course of more than eighty miles,
empties itself into the Mississippi through an embouchure
ten yards wide, and as accurately defined
as the mouth of a canal. Near this spot is a silver
mine lately re-discovered, after the lapse of a third
of a century. Its history, I believe, is this. Some
thirty or forty years ago, a Spaniard who had been
a miner in Mexico, passing down the Mississippi,
discovered ore which he supposed to be silver. He
took a quantity of it into his pirogue, and on arriving
at a planter's house on the banks of the river in Louisiana,
tested it as correctly as circumstances would
admit, and was satisfied that it was pure silver. He
communicated the discovery to his host, gave him
a few ingots of the metal and took his departure.
What became of him is not known. The host from
year to year resolved to visit the spot, but neglected
it, or was prevented by the intrusion of more pressing
employments, till four or five years since. He
then communicated the discovery to a Mexican miner,
an American or an Englishman, who stopped
at his house, and to whom, on hearing him speak of
mines, he showed the masses he had received so many
years before from the Spaniard. The man on examining
them and ascertaining the metal to be pure
silver, became at once interested in the discovery,
obtained the necessary information to enable him to
find the spot, and immediately ascended the river.
On arriving at the cliffs he commenced his search,
and after a few days discovered the vein, in one of
the lowest strata of the cliffs. He found it difficult,
however, to engage the neighbouring planters in his
scheme of working it, for what planter would exchange
his cotton fields for a silver mine? Yet
they treated him with attention, and seconded his efforts
by lending him slaves. More than a hundred
weight of the ore was obtained, and sent on to Philadelphia
to undergothe process of fusion. It probably is
not rich enough for amalgamation, as it contains a
superior bulk of iron pyrites, blende, lead and earthy
matter. The amount of pure silver procured from
the ore has not been ascertained, the result of the
process not having yet been made known. I obtained
several pieces, which make a very pretty
show in a cabinet, and this is probably the highest
honour to which it will be exalted, at least till the
surface of the earth refuses longer to bear ingots of
silver, in the shape of the snowy cotton boll.

The peculiar features of these cliffs are a series
of vast concavities, or inverted hollow cones, connected
with each other by narrow gorges, whose bottoms
are level with the river, and surrounded by perpendicular
and overhanging walls of earth, often
detached, like huge pyramids, and nearly three hundred
feet in height. There are five clusters of these
cliffs in this state, all situated on the eastern shore
of the Mississippi, from forty to one hundred miles
apart, of which this is the most important in height
and magnitude, as well as in grandeur and variety of
scenery. They are properly the heads or terminations
of the high grounds of the United States—the antenna

of the Alleghanies.[8] The hypothesis that they were
promontories in past ages, with the waves of the Mexican
Gulf breaking at their bases, has had the support
of many scientific men. This opinion carries
with it great probability, when the peculiar qualities
of the Mississippi are considered in relation to its
“forming effects.” These effects are a consequence
of the general truth of the proposition, that every
mechanical destruction will be followed by a mechanical
formation; hence the masses separated by
the waters of the Mississippi, will be again deposited
on the surface of the land, or its shores, about its
mouth, and on the bottom of the sea. You are aware
that one twelfth of the bulk of this vast volume of
water is earth, as ascertained by its depositing that
proportion in the bottom of a glass filled with the
water. During the flood the proportion is greater,
and the earthy particles are as dense as the water
can hold in suspension. The average velocity of
the current below the Missouri, is between one
and two miles an hour, and it is calculated that it
would require four months to discharge the column
of water embraced between this point and its delta.
Bearing constantly within its flood a mass of earth
equal to one twelfth of its whole bulk, it follows that
it must bear toward the sea, every four years, more
than its cubical bulk of solid earth. Now where is
this great column of earth deposited? Has it been
rolling onward for centuries, without any visible ef
fects? This will not be affirmed, and experience
proves the contrary in the hourly mechanical depositions
of the ochreous particles of this river, in its
noble convexities, its extensive bottoms, and the
growing capes at its mouth. But a small portion of
the turbid mixture has been deposited in the bed of
the river, particularly in its southern section, as moving
water will not deposit at any great depth.[9]

Now when the general appearance and geological
features of the South-West, including the south part
of Mississippi and nearly the whole of Louisiana,
are observed with reference to the preceding statements,
the irresistible conviction of the observer is,
that the immense plain now rich with sugar and
cotton fields, a great emporium, numerous villages
and a thousand villas, was formed by the mechanical
deposits of the Mississippi upon the bed of the

ocean, precisely as they are now building up fields
into the Mexican Gulf. Do not understand me that
the present fertile surface of this region was the original
bed of the ocean, but that it rose out of it, as
the coral islands come up out of the sea, by the gradual
accumulation of deposits. The appearance of
these inland promontories or cliffs, which suggested
these remarks, and the fact that the highlands of the
south-west, all terminate along the southern border
of this region, from fifty to one hundred miles
from the sea, leaving a broad alluvial tract between,
and presenting a well defined inland sea-board, go
far to strengthen the opinion I have adopted.

The chain of cliffs along the eastern shore of the
Mississippi, have a parallel chain opposite to them
on the other side of the great savana, skirted by
the Mississippi, about forty miles distant. This
savana or valley gradually widens to the south
until near the mouth of the river, where it is increased
to one hundred and forty or fifty miles in
breadth. It is this great valley which is of mechanical
formation, and its present site was in all probability
covered by the waters of a bay similar to
the Chesapeake, extending many leagues above
Natchez to the nearest approximation of the cliffs
on either side, where alone must have been an
original mouth of this great river. Where the spectator,
in looking westward from these bluffs; now beholds
an extensive and level forest, in ages past
rolled the waters of the Mexican sea—and where
he now gazes upon a broad and placid river flow

ing onward to mingle with the distant ocean, the
very waves of that ocean rolled in loud surges,
dashed against the lofty cliffs, and kissed the pebbles
at his feet.