A Book of the United States. Various
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the northern section of Mississippi the land rises in regular undulations, and the soil is black, fertile, and deep, covered with high cane brake. The valleys north-west of the Yazoo are well watered and exceedingly rich. In the western parts of the state, the lands are unfortunately exposed to inundation; but, in other respects, the soil does not much differ from that of Alabama. The southern tract is a level alluvion.
A region of Louisiana, comprising about five millions of acres, is annually overflowed by the waters of the Mississippi. Of this tract a large portion is, in its present state, unfit for cultivation. This immense tract embraces soil of various descriptions; cypress swamps, sea marsh, small elevated prairie lands of great fertility, and a tract covered with cane brake, rank shrubbery, and a heavy growth of timber.36 The best soil of Louisiana is found in the region called the coast, which is that part of the bottom of the Mississippi commencing with the first cultivation above the Balize, and comprising forty miles below New Orleans, and one hundred and fifty above. This fertile belt, which varies in width from one to two miles, is secured from inundation by an embankment, broad enough to furnish a fine highway, from six to eight feet in height. In the northern part of this state, bordering on Arkansas, is a considerable extent of hilly, flinty, barren land.
Arkansas territory exhibits every variety and quality of soil. The cultivated belt below the Post of Arkansas bears some outward resemblance to the coast in Louisiana; though its soil is not so fertile, and needs manuring to produce large crops. Large prairies interspersed with forest bottoms, and large tracts of excellent soil, are found five or six hundred miles from the mouth of Arkansas river. Mount Prairie, which lies on the Washita, has a black soil of extreme richness. On the White river are some of the healthiest and most fertile situations in this country. The other parts of this territory are vast tracts of sterile and precipitous ridges, sandy prairies, and barrens.
The soil of Tennessee, in the valleys of its creeks and streams, is rich beyond any of the same description elsewhere in the western country. In East Tennessee it derives its fertility from the quantities of dissolved lime, and nitrate of lime that are mixed with it. In West Tennessee the strata are arranged in the following order: first, a loamy soil, or mixtures of clay and sand; next, yellow clay; then comes a mixture of red sand and red clay; and lastly, a white sand. In the southern parts of this state immense banks are found of uncommonly large oyster shells, situated on high table-grounds remote from any water-course.
Missouri contains a large proportion of friable, loamy, and sandy soil. The uplands are rich, and of a darkish gray color: excepting the region of the lead mines, where the soil is bright and reddish. The prairies are generally level, and of an intermediate character between the rich and the poorer uplands, the latter of which have a light, yellow soil, stiff and clayey. The bottoms of the great rivers and smaller streams of this state have uncommon fertility. On the upper Mississippi are rich uplands, interspersed with flinty knobs two or three hundred feet high. In the south-west part of the state are sterile tracts, covered with yellow pine, and scattered with hilly and rocky country.
Kentucky abounds in large bodies of fertile land, but even here are tracts too sterile for cultivation. Nothing can exceed in richness the great valley of which Lexington is the centre. A tract one hundred miles by fifty in extent is found in the centre of the state, with a substratum of limestone, which dissolves and so mingles with the soil as to impart to it great richness and vigor. Much of the soil is of that character known as mulatto land. An extensive tract of barrens occurs between the Rolling Fork and Green river, and between the latter and Cumberland river, in the northern and eastern parts of the state. Here the soil is generally good, and affords fine pasturage.
Illinois has but few elevations, and those of inconsiderable extent; it is generally a region perfectly level. Though containing tracts of barrens and rough lands, not to be easily cultivated, it perhaps includes a greater proportion of land of the best quality than any other state. This region was called by the French the Terrestrial Paradise; and its soil is said to be the richest in the world. ‘Our road,’ says a recent traveller, ‘passed through the prairie ground, of which above two thirds of the whole state of Illinois is composed, most beautiful at all times, but especially at this season, owing to the brilliancy of the flowers now in blossom. Plantations we saw here and there, but the general appearance of the country was that of a fine waving surface of strong grass, covered with strawberry plants, and the finest flowers, and with wood on the high grounds and hollows, and occasional dropping trees, and clumps or islets of wood. In general, there was quite enough of wood in the view, and far more happily disposed than if the trees had been planted by the hand of man.’
Indiana contains large tracts of excellent soil; and is generally level and fertile. The prairies bordering the Wabash, are particularly rich; wells have been sunk in them, where the vegetable soil was twenty-two feet deep, under which was a stratum of fine white sand; yet the ordinary depth is from two to five feet. Many of the prairies and intervals are too rich for wheat. The northern part of the state contains much good land, but is intersected by long narrow bogs and swamps, with a soil of stiff blue clay.
In Ohio, the land bordering on the river of the same name is hilly and broken; but most of these hills have a deep rich soil, and are capable of being cultivated to their very summits. The bottoms of the Ohio are of very unequal width; the bases of some of the hills approach close to the river, while others recede to the distance of two or three miles. There are usually three bottoms, rising one above the other like the glacis of a fortification; and they are heavily timbered with such trees as denote a very fertile soil. In such parts of these bottoms as have been cleared and settled, the soil is uniformly fertile in a high degree; producing in great abundance wheat, Indian corn, rye, oats, and barley, and apples and peaches of excellent quality. In the western counties, and in the north-western and northern portions of the state, there is a leveller surface, and a moister soil, interspersed with tracts of dry prairie, and forests of a sandy or gravelly soil. The north-western corner of the state contains a considerable district of level, rich land, too wet and swampy to admit of healthy settlements: the soil is a black, loose, friable loam, or a vegetable mould, watered by sluggish and dark-colored streams.
That part of the territory of Michigan, which forms the peninsula lying between the great lakes, is generally level. In its centre, however, is a ridge of table-land about three hundred feet above the lakes, running north and south, and dividing the waters emptying into Erie and Huron from those running to the westward. This peninsula is divided into about equal proportions of grass prairies and forests. Along the southern shore of Lake Michigan is a sandy and barren tract of country, bleak and desolate. But much of the soil of this country is excellent, and its productions are similar to those of the state of New York. The North-West territory has not yet been much explored. That portion of it situated between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, and the western shore of Lake Michigan, has a rich, black, alluvial soil, and is well watered. The face of the country is unbroken by hills of any magnitude.
The most striking feature of the vast Missouri territory is its ocean of prairies. A belt of partially wooded country extends from two to four hundred miles west of the Mississippi and its waters. The immense extent of country west of the two great rivers is generally level, and is covered with grass plains, and sand deserts. On the banks of the streams there is usually a line of rich soil, but as we leave them it becomes barren and dry. Much of this country is as sterile as the deserts of Arabia, though in the most sandy parts there is a thin sward of grass and herbage. The Missouri, the Platte and the Yellow-stone run through a rich soil; but in its upper courses the Arkansas waters only a barren prairie.
GENERAL REMARKS ON SOIL.
The productiveness of soils is influenced by the nature of the sub-soil, or the earthy or stony strata on which they rest, and this should be attended to in all plans for their improvement. Thus sandy soil may owe its fertility to the power of the sub-soil to retain water; and an absorbent clay soil may occasionally be prevented from being barren by the influence of a substratum of sand and gravel. Those soils that are most productive of corn, contain always certain proportions of aluminous or calcareous earth in a finely divided state, and a certain quantity of vegetable or animal matter.
‘In cases,’ says Sir Humphrey Davy, ‘where a barren soil is examined with a view to its improvement, it ought, in all cases, if possible,