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Updated: May 10, 2025
A little further on, the path began to ascend. We had passed out of the bottom-lands, and were crossing a ridge, which forms the divide between Mud Creek and the Obion River. The soil was now a dry gravel, with less signs of fertility, and covered with a pine-forest. The trees were of slender growth; and at intervals their trunks stood far apart, giving us an opportunity to ride side by side.
He suddenly shaded his brow with his broad palm to eye that significant line which marked the road among the pines on the eastern slope, beyond the Indian corn that stood tall and rank of growth in the rich bottom-lands. Ethelinda's heart sank.
No wind stirred the leaves of the far-reaching forests, or marred the bright waters of the quiet Bend that mirrored back the green, tree-fringed banks and blue-shadowed mountains. Faintly, through the hush, from beyond the bottom-lands on the other side of the stream, came the long-drawn "Wh-o-e-e! Wh-o-e-e!" of farmer Jackson calling his hogs.
This part of the trail traversed the heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy steeps of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It finally resolved itself into the air of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay with words in Cree.
The explanation of this nobody knew or could divine; but the fact was indisputable, and the farmers were in dismay, nobody more so than Farmer Weitbreck, who had miles of bottom-lands, in grain of one sort and another, all yellow and nodding, and ready for the sickle, and nobody but himself and his son John to swing scythe, sickle, or flail on the place.
The bluffs shone May-green in the western flood of light, and a haze hung over the bottom-lands. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the city receding to the northward, and the rain had washed the pall of smoke from over it. On the boat excited voices died down to natural tones; men smoked on the guards and promenaded on the hurricane deck, as if this were some pleasant excursion.
Eighteen hundred feet below, it might be more, the Tarn threaded lush bottom-lands, tilled fields, goodly orchards, plantations of walnut and Spanish chestnut, and infrequent, tiny villages that clung to precarious footholds between cliffs and water. A strange, bleak land, inhospitable, wind-harried, haunted, the home of seven howling devils of desolation...
"Many Waters" shone white and green under the bright May sunshine. Seen from the height of slope, the winding brooks looked like silver bands across a vast belt of rainy green and purple that bordered the broad river in the bottom-lands. A summer haze filled the air, and hints of gold on the waving wheat slopes presaged an early and bountiful harvest.
Down on the levee wheels rattled over the white stones washed clean by the driving rain. The drops pelted the chocolate water into froth, and a blue veil hid the distant bluffs beyond the Illinois bottom-lands. Down on the Levee rich and poor battled for places on the landing-stages, and would have thrown themselves into the flood had there been no boats to save them from the dreaded Dutch.
In South Carolina and in most parts of Georgia, it will appear that a good average crop will give one bale or bag of cotton, weighing 310 lbs. for each working-hand employed on the plantation; now, in Alabama, four or five bales, each weighing 430 lbs. is a fair average for an able-bodied slave engaged in the cultivation; and I have conversed with many planters, holding places upon the bottom-lands of the river, who assured me their crop was yearly ten bales of cotton for each full-grown hand.
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