329

CHAPTER XXXTT.

TOUGH YAKXS.

STACK ISLAJSTJ. I remembered Stack Island ; also Lake Providence,
Louisiana—which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you
come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with
venerable grey beards of Spanish moss; * restful, pensive, Sunday
aspect about the place/ comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling—also
with truth.

A Mr. H. furnished some minor
details of fact concerning this region-
which I would have hesitated to
believe if I had not known him to
be a steamboat mate. He was a
passenger of ours, a resident of
Arkansas City, and bound to Ticks-
burg to join his boat, a little Sun-
flower packet. He was an austere
man, and had the reputation of
being singularly unworldly, for a
river man, Among other things, he

said that Arfc«n«ft« had been injured and kept back by generations of
^exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here. One may smile, said
he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing; but when you come
to look at the effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immi-
gration, and diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite
of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered
at. These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being £or-

MOSQUITOES.