It Is A Change Which Threw
Vicksburg's Neighbor, Delta, Louisiana, Out Into The Country And Ended
Its Career As A River Town.
Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by
a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees - a growth which will
magnify itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely hide the
exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and reached
Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities - for Baton Rouge, yet to
come, is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under-
the-hill has not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect -
judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign
tourists - it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small,
straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the
old keel-boating and early steamboating times - plenty of drinking,
carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the
river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has
always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its
charms:
'At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by bluffs, as
they call the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is
beautifully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its
bright green hill forms with the dismal line of black forest that
stretches on every side, the abundant growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and
orange, the copious variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish
there, all make it appear like an oasis in the desert.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 324 of 539
Words from 89543 to 89817
of 148123
