Page:A Physical and Topographical Sketch of the Mississippi Territory, Lower Louisiana, and a Part of West Florida.djvu/23

 the Maurepas; during which time it inundates a very large tract of country. The frequent alternations which the earth and vegetables undergo at this place, in passing from a moist to a dry state, render it one of the greatest laboratories of noxious effluvia any where on the Mississippi. Certain it is, that it is more uniform the year round; for it continues to produce its effects long after the common causes in other situations have ceased to exist.

As the object of these pages is neither to instruct the geographer, nor amuse the traveller, but for the perusal of the pathologist, I will quit the banks of the Mississippi, and penetrate the interiour of the country; with a view of developing such of its features as can, in a medical consideration, influence the salubrity of its atmosphere, without having any regard to minute geographical description.

A chain of hills, six or seven miles in width, and near two hundred miles in length, extends the whole distance between the mouth of the Yazow river and Baton Rouge, immediately in contact with the valley of the great river on the eastern side. They are of immense irregularity, and clad in such impenetrable brakes of the arundo gigantea, that they are almost inaccessible with man's most fertile inventions. The cane here, instendinstead [sic] of being what Virgil has described,

arrogates some of the prerogatives of the more stately