Opelousas prairie is still more extensive than Attakapas, being computed to contain nearly eight thousand square miles. It is divided by bayous, wooded grounds, points, and bends, and other natural boundaries, into a number of smaller prairies, which have separate names, and characteristics more or less distinctive. Taken in its whole extent, it is bounded by the Attakapas prairie on the east, pine woods and hill on the north, the Sabine on the west, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. The soil though in many places extremely fertile, is generally less so than that of Attakapas. It has, however, a compensating advantage, being deemed the healthiest region in the State. It embraces several large cotton plantations, and a considerable region devoted to the cultivation of the sugar cane. The parish which bears its name is one of the most populous in Louisiana. It is the centre of the land of shepherds, the very Arcadia of those who deal in domestic animals. To that employment, the greater part of the inhabitants are devoted, and they number their flocks and herds by thousands. On one estate five thousand calves were branded in the spring of 1845. The people of this district are distinguished for that quiet, easy, unostentatious hospitality, which assures the visitor of his welcome, and makes him so much at home, that he finds it difficult to realize that he is only a guest. Bellevue prairie lies partly in Opelousas, and partly in Attakapas. Calcasieu and Sabine prairies are only parts of the great plain, those names being given to designate some of the varied forms and openings it assumes in its ample sweep from the Plaquemine to the Sabine. They are, however, though but parts of a larger prairie, of immense extent. The Sabine, seen from any point near its centre, seems, like the mid-ocean, boundless to the view. The Calcasieu is seventy miles long, by twenty wide. Though, for the most part, so level as to have the aspect of a perfect plain, the surface is slightly undulated, with such a general, though imperceptible declination towards the streams and bayous by which it is intersected, as easily to carry off the water, and prevent those unhealthy stagnations which are so fatal in this climate. There is also a gentle slope towards the Gulf, along the shore of which the vast plain terminates in low marshes often entirely covered with the sea. These marshes are overspread with a luxuriant growth of tall reedy cane grass.