Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/319

 parts of the Mississippi territory, and the adjacent part of the Spanish province of West Florida.

Bruinsbury was the property of judge Bruin,[199] until lately, that he sold it together with a claim to about three thousand acres of the surrounding land to Messrs. Evans and Overaker of Natchez, reserving to himself his house, offices and garden.

It is a mile below the mouth of bayau Pierre, the banks of which being low and swampy, and always annually overflowed in the spring, he projected the {285} intended town of Bruinsbury, where there was a tolerably high bank and a good landing which has only been productive of a cotton gin, a tavern, and an overseer's house for Mr. Evan's plantation, exclusive of the judge's own dwelling house, and it will probably never now become a town notwithstanding many town lots were purchased, as Mr. Evans means to plant all the unappropriated lots, preferring the produce in cotton to the produce in houses.

I was accompanied from the judge's by an elderly Presbyterian clergyman, a native of New England, who had been a missionary among the Chickasaw or Cherokee nations. He was a man of great simplicity of manners, and wonderfully ignorant of all established modes. During the short time we rode together, the characteristick feature of his country was displayed in the innumerable questions he asked me relative to whence I came, where I was going, and my objects and intentions, particularly in my present jour-*