Of cultivated fruits, the principal are the apple, peach, and fig, the latter, below N. Lat. 32°, seems to flourish as if natural to the climate. The plum, nectarine, apri cot, &c. are cultivated, but not extensively.
Like all the southern states of the United States, meadows cannot be correctly said to exist in the state of Mississippi.
Though the winters are in general mild, the seasons are extremely variable. Frequently frosts occur in sufficient severity to destroy cotton, indigo, tobacco, and other tender plants, as early as the first week in October ; whilst perhaps, in the next season, the flowers of the same vegetables will be found blooming in December, and even in January, as was the case in 1805.
No winter, however, passes without frost, and very few without snow, at Natchez. In December, 1800, the thermometer of Fahrenheit fell to 12°, five miles south of Natchez ; and often since that period, the cold has been nearly if not altogether as intense. This casual severity prevents, to the utmost southern extremity of the state, the cultivation of either sugar cane or the orange tree ; vegetables which are, in fact, confined in the Delta of the :Mississippi to a latitude south of most parts of the state of Mississippi.
The bluff lands are followed by the river alluvion, which, though less in quantity, is still more productive, where above annual or casual overflow. From the bluffs confining, and of consequence causing the accumulation of the surplus water of the Mississippi in the spring and summer, there exists less arable soil on the left bank of the Mississippi river, in the state of that name, than on the right bank in Arkansaw territory, and in Louisiana. Some very wealthy settlements on the left bank do, how ever, exist, with a soil possessing the usual fertility of the Mississippi banks. The arable border varies from half a mile to two hundred yards, and is every where terminated in the rear by overflown grounds, submerged annually from one to ten or twelve feet.
The natural growth on the river arable border is, in general, sweet gum, different species of oak, ash, and hickory, hackberry, sycamore, Scc. with an under-growth
of reed cane, and below N. Lat. 31° 30', the palmetto. In the overflown swamps, the principal timber is cypress, tupelo, different species of oak and hickory, maple, sweet gum, and ash. On all other water-courses in the state, more or less alluvion occurs ; but in all places is confined in extent, and on the streams in the interior, often merges into the interval land or pine forest.
Taken together, the bluff lands and river alluvion amount to about 5560 square miles, equal to 3,558,400 acres. The bluff lands extend froin N. Lat. 31° to 35°, with more or less width, as the rivers intervene.
Confined as the two foregoing tracts of land are, when compared to the area of the state, of which they form a part, they nevertheless form, in the aggregate, the most extensive continuous tract of productive soil in the United States, south of N. Lat. 35° ; and when its fer tility and local advantages arc taken into view, it is hazarding no violence to truth, to estimate this region as one of the most valuable in the United States.
Counties, Towns, Population, and Historical Epocha.— In the state of Mississippi there are 15 counties, as fol lows, commencing at the south-east angle of the state.
The returns of the census of 1820 have not yet been received from this state, but the number of inhabitants probably amounts to within a trifling fraction of 60,000; one half of whom are black, or of mixed breed. Of this population, more than half are contained in the five counties bordering on the Mississippi river, 1Vilkinson, Adams, Jefferson, Claiborne, and Warren. Franklin and Amite, lying east of Adams and Wilkinson, are, after the river counties, best peopled. Lawrence, Pike, and Marion, situated on the waters of Pearl and Bogue Chito, and immediately east of Franklin and Amite, are but thinly peopled ; and the five south-eastern counties, Covington, Wayne, Greene, Hancock, and Jackson, have still fewer inhabitants on an equal surface, than are found in Lawrence, Pike, and Marion.