The western part of this country is more fertile, says our author, than that on the east side of the Missisippi; in which part, however, says he, the lands are very fertile, with a rich {vii} black mould three feet deep in the hills, and much deeper in the bottoms, with a strong clayey foundation. Reeds and canes even grow upon the hill sides; which, with the oaks, walnuts, tulip-trees, &c. are a sure sign of a good and rich soil. And all along the Missisippi on both sides, Dumont tells, "The lands, which are all free from inundations, are excellent for culture, particularly those about Baton Rouge, Cut-Point, Arkansas, Natchez, and Yasous, which produce Indian corn, tobacco, indigo, &c. and all kinds of provisions and esculent plants, with little or no care or labour, and almost without culture; the soil being in all those places a black mould of an excellent quality." [Footnote: Memoires, I. 16.] These accounts are confirmed by our own people, who were sent by the government of Virginia in 1742, to view these the western parts of that province; and although they only went down the Ohio and Missisippi to New Orleans, they reported, that "they saw more good land on the Missisippi, and its many large branches, than they judge is in all the English colonies, as far as they are inhabited;" as appears from the report of that government to the board of trade. What makes this fertile country more eligible and valuable, is, that it appears both from its situation, and from the experience the French have had of it, [Footnote: See p. 120, 121.] to be by far the most healthful of any in all these southern parts of North America; a thing of the last consequence in settling colonies, especially in those southern parts of America, which are in general very unhealthful. All the sea coasts of our colonies, to the southward of Chesapeak bay, or even of New-York, are low and flat, marshy and swampy, and very unhealthful on that account and those on and about the bay of Mexico, and in Florida, are withal excessively hot and intemperate, so that white people are unfit for labour in them; by which all our southern colonies, which alone promise to be of any great advantage to the nation, are so thin of people, that we have but 25,000 white people in all South Carolina. [Footnote: Description of South Carolina. by----, p. 30.] But those lands on the Missisippi are, on {viii} the contrary, high, dry, hilly, and in some places mountainous at no great distance from the river, besides the ridges of the Apalachean mountains above mentioned, that lie to the northward of them; which must greatly refresh and cool the air all over the country, especially in comparison of what it is on the low and flat, sandy and parched sea coasts of our present colonies. These high lands begin immediately above the Delta, or drowned lands, at the mouth of the Missisippi; above which the banks of that river are from one hundred to two