The outer levee was damaged by the unusually high floods which had brought destruction to so many enterprising planters from the North; and for some hundreds of yards our ambulances cut deep into the rich mud over which the Mississippi had been depositing fresh alluvial soil. An inner levee had been hastily heightened, and when we passed this, the sodden, desolate aspect of the country changed. A few cabins, surrounded by small inclosures, seemed to have been used in the old times for trusty negroes sent to work or watch at the landing. Beyond these, the road led us through a broad field of cotton, unbroken by hill or valley, fence or tree, save here and there a single cotton-wood, whose position by the roadside had saved it. The whole face of the country, almost as far as the eye could reach, was plowed into what a Northern farmer would have taken for low sweet-potato ridges. On the tops of these ridges, in separate hills, grew the soft and still tender cotton-stalks, beginning to be well covered with the white and red flowers; for even cotton wore the Rebel colors. The petals were soft and flabby, and the flower was like a miniature hollyhock. For these “earliest blooms” planters keep eager watch, and to have the first in a neighborhood is a distinction, prized as a Northern farmer would prize a premium for the best crop of wheat in a county. Occasionally a few rows were found carefully tilled and free from weeds; but in very many more, weeds and cotton were struggling for the mastery, with the emancipated negroes reveling in their first taste of liberty, spectators rather than participants in the contest on which their support depended. Doubtless the plantation had looked better under Mr. Davis’ control, indifferent planter as he was.