The prairies which cover so large a portion of this State, are, for the most part, connected together, as if the waters from which they were originally deposited had been an immense chain of lakes, all fed from the same great source. And this was undoubtedly the fact. They were all supplied from the Mississippi, and their wonderful fertility is derived from the alluvial riches of those interminable regions, which are washed by the father of rivers and his countless tributaries. Those included under the general name of Attakapas, are the first which occur on the west of the Mississippi. It is an almost immeasurable plain of grass, extending from the Atchafalaya on the north, to the Gulf of Mexico, on the south. Its contents are stated to be about five thousand square miles. Being open to the Gulf, it is generally fanned by its refreshing breezes. To the traveller in those regions, who may have been toiling on his weary way through tangle, and swamp, and forest, there is something indescribably agreeable in this smooth and boundless sea of unrivalled fertility, whose dim outline mingles with the blue of the far off Gulf--the whole vast plain covered with tall grass, waving and rippling in the breeze, sprinkled with neat white houses, the abodes of wealth, comfort and hospitality, and dotted with innumerable cattle and horses grazing in the fields, or reposing here and there under the shade of the wooded points. The sudden transition from the rank cane, the annoying nettles, the stifling air, and the pestilent mosquitoes, to this open expanse, and the cool salubrious breath of the ocean, is as delightful and reviving as an oasis in the desert. In the midst of this immense prairie, is situated the parish of Attakapas. This word, in the language of the Aborigines, from whom it is derived, signified "man-eater," the region having been occupied by Cannibals. Strange indeed, that the inhabitants of a climate so bland, and a soil so fertile, should possess the taste, or feel the necessity for so revolting and unnatural a species of barbarism.