Some parts of the prairies of Opelousas are of great fertility, and those of Attakapas are still more so. As a general feature, they are more level than those of the upper country. An extensive belt of these prairies, bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, is low and marshy, and subject to be wholly inundated in any extraordinary swell of the river. A considerable portion of them have a cold clayey soil, the surface of which, under the influence of a warm sun, hardens into a stiff crust. In other portions, the soil is of an inky blackness, and often, in the hot and dry season, cracks in long fissures some inches in width. The bottoms are generally rich, but in very different degrees. Those of the Mississippi and Red Rivers, and the bayous connected with these streams, are more fertile than those on the western border of the State. The quality of the richer bottoms of the Mississippi, as well as those of the Red River, is sufficiently attested by the prodigious growth of timber in those parts, the luxuriance of the cane and the cotton, the tangles of vines and creepers, the astonishing size of the weeds--which, however, find it difficult to over-top the better products of the soil--and the universal strength of the vegetation. The most productive district of this State, is a belt of land, called "_the Coast_," lying along the Mississippi, in the neighborhood of New Orleans. It consists of that part of the bottom, or alluvion, of the Great River, which commences with the first cultivation above the Balize, about forty miles below the capital, and extends about one hundred and fifty miles above it. This belt on each side of the river, is secured from an overflow by an embankment, called "_the levee_," from six to eight feet in height, and sufficiently broad, for the most part, to furnish an excellent highway. The river, in an ordinary rise, would cover the greater part of these beautiful bottoms, to a depth of from two to six feet, if they were not thus protected. This belt is from one to two miles in width; a richer tract of land, of the same extent, cannot probably be found on the face of the globe.