swamps, stagnant ponds, and lagoons, tends to retard the progress of settlements in this quarter. At the rapids the river spreads to three hundred yards in width. The banks are thirty feet high, and never overflowed. Here has for many years been a settlement. The soil of the neighbouring country is extremely fertile.[52] A bed of soft sandstone, or indurated clay, crosses the river, causing a fall of ten feet {165} in fifty yards. "This stone, when exposed to the air, becomes as hard as freestone; but under water it is found as soft as chalk. A channel could, with very little labour or expense, be cut through any part of the bed of the river, and need not be extended more than two hundred yards. It appears to me that twenty men, in ten days, with mattocks only, could at low water open a channel sufficiently wide and deep for all the barges that trade in this river to pass with safety and ease."[53] Three quarters of a mile above this rapid is another, very similar in extent and magnitude. Thirty miles above the rapids we find the river divided into two beds, each having a high bold bank. The right-hand channel contains about one third of the volume of water of the whole river. They separate from each other four or five miles below Natchitoches, and unite again here, forming an island sixty miles long and five wide. The right-hand branch is called by the French Rigolet Bon Dieu, and the other Old river. Another island, commencing one-fourth of a mile below Natchitoches, extends parallel to that above mentioned, thirty-four miles and a half; this is about four miles wide. The current, in all the branches which lie between these islands and the main-shore, is rapid, but not equally so. The description already given of the valley of the river is applicable to this portion; on each side the surface descends from the river, terminating in a line of pools and cypress swamps, which extend along the base of the bluff. Settlements were here somewhat numerous in 1806. The small cottages are placed near the bank of the river, and the cultivated lands extend back but a little distance. "The inhabitants," says Freeman "are a mixture of French, Spanish, Indian, and Negro blood, the latter often predominating."[54] {166} The separation of the water of the river into three distinct branches, each confined within high and steep banks, raised twenty and even thirty feet above the medium elevation of the water, and their reunion, after traversing severally an extent of sixty and thirty miles, might at first view appear a matter of curious inquiry; but upon the slightest investigation it will be discovered that this whole country adjacent to the river has been made or raised to its present elevated position by frequent inundation and depositions from the water. This evidently appears from the great quantities of timber frequently seen as you ascend the river, deposited as low as low-water mark, under steep banks of different heights from twelve to thirty feet.