LIFE ON T21£ MISSISSIPPI*

CHAPTER XXXIX,
MANUFACTURES AND MISCREANTS.
WHERE the river, in ohe Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed,
it is now comparatively straight—made so by cut-off; a former
distance of seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. It is a change
which threw "Vicksburg's neighbour, Delta, Louisiana, out into the
country and ended its career as a river town. Its whole river*
frontage is now occupied by a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with
young trees—a growth which will magnify itself Into a dense forest
by-and-bye, and completely hide the exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Hodney, of war fame, and
reached Katchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities—for Baton Bouge,
yet to come, is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous
ITatchez-under-the-hiil has not changed notably in twenty years; in
outward aspect—judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession
of foreign tourists—it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small,
straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in
the old keel-boating and early steamboating times—plenty of drinking,
carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the
river, in those days. But I^Tatchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive;
has always been attractive, Evep. Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to
confess its charms;
* At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by bluffs, as
they eaH the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is beauti-
fully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its bright green
hiH forms with the dismal line of "black forest that stretches on every side,
tfee abundant growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and orange, the copious
variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, all m«ike it appear like