Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/354

 Mississippi, some miles distant. I breakfasted at Smith's who keeps a tavern, and a ferry over Buffaloe creek, three miles below the toll bridge on the other road. I had three short miles of a bad and miry road to Ellis's plantation, and four from thence along a ridge to major Davis's, where I again came into the main road. A mile farther brought me to Big Jude's, a free negro woman, settled on one side of a broken plain, which seems to have been a plantation at some distant period back, but by the washing away of the soil, it now only affords nourishment to a short herbage, {317} seemingly very proper for sheep. From hence is a very extensive view over the surrounding forests—in which far to the westward may be seen a line formed by the Mississippi, making a great curve that way. Ellis's heights and the chain of hills running from thence to the eastward of Natchez terminate the view to the northward, while Loftus's heights do the same to the southward. Extensive prospects occur so rarely in this country of forests, that when a traveller happens to meet with one, he feels wonderfully cheered, although he sees nothing but a horizon of woods, which, particularly when without their leaf, in the winter season, have a very sombre and gloomy appearance, a little inequality of horizon where a hill happens to bound the view, being the only variety; but after emerging from the thick forests and cane brakes, in which he has been long buried, he feels an expansion of the whole system which is extremely pleasing.

The road is hilly but good, through a pleasant wood, chiefly of that superb tree the magnolia or American laurel, clear of underwood and cane, and passing several small plantations four or five miles from Jude's to the Homochito.

Being ferried across that charming little river, I had a good road through a pleasant country tolerably well settled five miles to Mr. Tomlinson's. I had a letter to him from