History of Louisisana | Page 5

prejudices,
that the following account of these countries, which appears to be both
{iii} just and reasonable, and agreeable to every thing we know of
America, may be the more necessary.
We have been long ago told by F. Charlevoix, from whence it is, that
many people have formed a contemptible opinion of this country that
lies on and about the Missisippi. They are misled, says he, by the
relations of some seafaring people, and others, who are no manner of
judges of such things, and have never seen any part of the country but
the coast side, about Mobile, and the mouths of the Mississippi; which
our author here tells us is as dismal to appearance, the only thing those
people are capable of judging of, as the interior parts of the country,
which they never saw, are delightful, fruitful, and inviting. They tell us,
besides, that the country is unhealthful; because there happens to be a
marsh at the mouth of the Missisippi, (and what river is there without
one?) which they imagine must be unhealthful, rather than that they
know it to be so; not considering, that all the coast both of North and
South America is the same; and not knowing, that the whole continent,
above this single part on the coast, is the most likely, from its situation,
and has been found by all the experience that has been had of it, to be
the most healthy part of all North America in the same climates, as will
abundantly appear from the following and all other accounts.
To give a general view of those countries, we should consider them as
they are naturally divided into four parts; 1. The sea coast; 2. The
Lower Louisiana, or western part of Carolina; 3. The Upper Louisiana,

or western part of Virginia; and 4, the river Missisippi.
I. The sea coast is the same with all the rest of the coast of North
America to the southward of New York, and indeed from thence to
Mexico, as far as we are acquainted with it. It is all a low flat sandy
beach, and the soil for some twenty or thirty miles distance from the
shore, more or less, is all a _pine barren_, as it is called, or a sandy
desart; with few or no good ports or harbours on the coast, especially in
all those southern parts of America, from Chesapeak bay to Mexico.
But however barren this coast is in other respects, it is entirely covered
with tall pines, which afford great store of pitch, tar, and turpentine. {iv}
These pines likewise make good masts for ships; which I have known
to last for twenty odd years, when it is well known, that our common
masts of New England white pine will often decay in three or four
years. These masts were of that kind that is called the pitch pine, and
lightwood pine; of which I knew a ship built that ran for sixteen years,
when her planks of this pine were as sound and rather harder than at
first, although her oak timbers were rotten. The cypress, of which there
is such plenty in the swamps on this coast, is reckoned to be equally
serviceable, if not more so, both for masts (of which it would afford the
largest of any tree that we know), and for ship building. And ships
might be built of both these timbers for half the price perhaps of any
others, both on account of the vast plenty of them, and of their being so
easily worked.
In most parts of these coasts likewise, especially about the Missisippi,
there is great plenty of cedars and ever-green oaks; which make the
best ships of any that are built in North America. And we suspect it is
of these cedars and the American cypress, that the Spaniards build their
ships of war at the Havanna. Of these there is the greatest plenty,
immediately; to the westward of the mouth of the Missisippi where
"large vessels can go to the lake of the Chetimachas, and nothing
hinders them to go and cut the finest oaks in the world, with which all
that coast is covered;" [Footnote: Charlevoix Hist. N. France, Tom. III.
p. 444.] which, moreover, is a sure sign of a very good, instead of a bad
soil; and accordingly we see the French have settled their tobacco
plantations thereabouts. It is not without reason then, that our author
tells us, the largest navies might be built in that country at a very small
expence.

From this it appears, that even the sea coast, barren as it is, from which
the whole country has been so much depreciated, is not without its
advantages, and those peculiarly adapted to a trading and maritime
nation.