The coast of North Carolina is skirted by a range of low, sandy islands, thrown up by the sea. They are long and narrow, and inclose several bays or sounds. They are generally barren. The southern part of South Carolina exhibits a similar range, separated from the main land by narrow channels, which afford a steam-boat navigation. These islands, like the neighboring continent, are low and flat, but are covered with forests of live oak, pine, and palmetto. Before the cultivation of cotton, many of them were the haunts of alligators, and their thick woods and rank weeds rendered them impenetrable to man. At present, they are under cultivation and well inhabited; and as the voyager glides along their shores in a steam-boat, he is enchanted with the prospect of their lively verdure, interspersed with thick clumps of palmettoes, live oak, and laurel, and flowering groves of orange trees. The long sandy beaches which border these islands towards the sea, are covered with thousands of water-fowl. Georgia is also bordered with a range of small islands and marshy tracts, intersected by channels and rivulets which are navigable for small vessels. These islands consist of a rich gray soil called _hammoc land_. In their natural state, they are covered with forests of live oak, pine, and hickory, but under cultivation they produce the best cotton in the world, called _Sea-Island_ cotton. There are many small islands scattered along the coast of Florida; and off the southern extremity, at some distance from the land, lies a cluster, on one of which, Key West, the United States have established a naval station. The _Chandeleur Islands_ lie on the eastern coast of Louisiana; they are little more than heaps of sand, covered with pine forests. West of the Mississippi are many others scattered along the coast. Here is the island of _Barataria_, formerly noted as a nest of pirates. It lies in a bay which receives the waters of a lake of the same name. The soil of these islands is generally rich; most of them are low and level. There are some very fertile islands in the _Mississippi_,[26] and in the Great Lakes. The Island of _Michilimackinac_, in the strait connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, is important in a political point of view, being the Gibraltar of the north-west. It is of an elliptical form, about seven miles in circumference, rising gradually to the centre; its figure suggested to the mind of the Indians its appropriate name, _Michi Mackina_,[27] (Great Turtle.) The greater part of the island is almost an impenetrable thicket of underwood and small trees, which contribute materially to the defence of the garrison. Fort Holmes stands on a summit of the island, several hundred feet above the level of Lake Huron, and is now one of the most formidable positions in the western country. The French were the first settlers, and their descendants, to a considerable number, reside near the Fort.