The population in the four river counties, at the time of which I write, was much more dense than of any other portion of the State: still there were numerous settlements in different parts of the State quite populous. That upon Pearl River, of these, perhaps, was most populous; but those eastern settlements were constituted of a different people: most of them were from the poorer districts of Georgia and the Carolinas. True to the instincts of the people from whom they were descended, they sought as nearly as possible just such a country as that from which they came, and were really refugees from a growing civilization consequent upon a denser population and its necessities. They were not agriculturists in a proper sense of the term; true, they cultivated in some degree the soil, but it was not the prime pursuit of these people, nor was the location sought for this purpose. They desired an open, poor, pine country, which forbade a numerous population. Here they reared immense herds of cattle, which subsisted exclusively upon the coarse grass and reeds which grew abundantly among the tall, long-leafed pine, and along the small creeks and branches numerous in this section. Through these almost interminable pine-forests the deer were abundant, and the canebrakes full of bears. They combined the pursuits of hunting and stock-minding, and derived support and revenue almost exclusively from these. They were illiterate and careless of the comforts of a better reared, better educated, and more intelligent people. They were unable to employ for each family a teacher, and the population was too sparse to collect the children in a neighborhood school. These ran wild, half naked, unwashed and uncombed, hatless and bonnetless through the woods and grass, followed by packs of lean and hungry curs, hallooing and yelling in pursuit of rabbits and opossums, and were as wild as the Indians they had supplanted, and whose pine-bark camps were yet here and there to be seen, where temporarily stayed a few strolling, degraded families of Choctaws. Some of these pioneers had been in the country many years, were surrounded with descendants, men and women, the growth of the country, rude, illiterate, and independent. Along the margins of the streams they found small strips of land of better quality than the pine-forests afforded. Here they grew sufficient corn for bread and a few of the coarser vegetables, and in blissful ignorance enjoyed life after the manner they loved. The country gave character to the people: both were wild and poor; both were _sui generis_ in appearance and production, and both seeming to fall away from the richer soil and better people of the western portion of the State.