Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/99

91 of about one hundred and seventy miles. Here the beauty of the Mississippi and prospect of the country exhibit a view so enchantingly delightful, as scarcely to admit of description. On the side of this elevated, artificial bank, is a range of handsome, neatly built houses, appearing like one continued village, as far as the city of Orleans. They are one story, framed buildings, elevated on piles six or eight feet high, and well painted; the paint generally white. The houses for the slaves are mostly placed on straight lines and nicely white-washed. The perpetual verdure of numerous orange trees, intermixed with fig trees surrounding the houses, and planted in groves and orchards near them, highly beautify the prospect; while the grateful fragrance of constant blossoms, and the successive progress to plentiful ripened fruit, charm the eye, and regale the senses.

Baton Rouge, a very fine, flourishing settlement, is about thirty miles below Point Coupee, on the eastern side of the river. Here the high lands terminate in an elevated bluff, thirty or forty feet above the greatest rise of the water in the river. And here commences the embankment or Levee, which is continued, like that on the western side, to Orleans; and a range of houses, ornamented with orange and fig trees, the same distance, perfectly similar to that on the opposite bank. Baton Rouge settlement extends about twenty miles on the river, and to a considerable distance