The magnolias and poplars, with linn, red oak, and black walnut, are the principal trees. There is no pine, but occasionally an enormous sassafras, such as are found in no other section on this continent. There is no stone, and no running water except streams having their rise in the interior, passing through these hills to their debouchment into the river. The entire formation is a rich compost, and in great part soluble in water; this causes them to wash, and when not cultivated with care, they cut into immense gullies and ravines. They are in some places almost mountainous in height and exceedingly precipitous. They are designated at different localities by peculiar names--as the Walnut Hills, Grand Hills, Petit Gulf Hills, Natchez Hills, and St. Catherine Hills. In primitive forest they presented a most imposing appearance. Large and lofty timber covered from base to summit these hills, increasing their grandeur by lifting to their height the immense vines found in great abundance all over them. The dense wild cane, clothing as a garment the surface of every acre, went to the very tops of the highest hills, adding a strange feature to hill scenery. The river only approaches these hills in a few places and always at right angles, and is by them deflected, leaving them always on the outer curve of the semicircle or bend in the stream. From these points and from the summit of these cliffs the view is very fine, stretching often in many places far up and down the river and away over the plain west of the river, which seems to repose upon its lap as far as the eye can view. The scene is sombre, but grand, especially when lighted by the evening's declining sun. The plain is unbroken by any elevation: the immense trees rise to a great height, and all apparently to the same level--the green foliage in summer strangely commingling with the long gray moss which festoons from the upper to the lower limbs, waving as a garland in the fitful wind; and the dead gray of the entire scene in winter is sad and melancholy as a vast cemetery. There is a gloomy grandeur in this, which is only rivalled by that of the sea, when viewed from a towering height, lazily lolling in the quiet of a summer evening's calm.