dence of Col. Bruin is at Fayeau Pierre, eleven miles below the Grand Gulph. The Colonel, to whom I had a letter from his friend Burr, received me with great kindness and cordiality, and I spent a pleasant afternoon at his house. There is no settlement so extensive as the Colonel's above him on the river. He keeps one hundred negroes, and makes by their labor ten thousand dollars a year. He principally cultivates cotton. The wheat, corn, &c. which he raises are only for his domestic use. There is a settlement on the east side, just above Colonel Bruin's, occupied by about twenty New England families, which is also doing well. They raise great quantities of cotton, and make some portion of it into thread, which they manufacture into cotton cloth, and sell for a dollar per yard. On the whole, I was glad to see an appearance of civilization and industry, and I under stood from the Colonel, that from his house to New Orleans, settlements and villages, at very short intervals, are to be found. Nine miles from the Colonel's is the "Petite Gulph," the navigation of which requires nearly as much attention as the Grand Gulph; and twenty-seven miles below is the city of Natchez. LETTER XXXIX. Natchez city-its trade and luxury-territory of the Mississippi-Natchez Indians-their adorations. City of Natchez, Mississippi Territory, THIS city is pleasantly situated on a considerable eminence on the east side of the river. It contains about three hundred houses, and two thousand five hundred inhabitants, including blacks, who are very numerous. There is a printing-office and several very extensive mercantile stores. There is also a Roman catholic church, but the Americans have stripped it of its Spanish possessions, shut up the church, and have not yet erected one of their own. There is a great number of mechanics in the city, whose wages are very high, as is labor of every kind. The market is proportionably extravagant. Every article, except venison and game, is as dear as in London. The citizens, however, are enabled to endure the high price of provisions, by their trade between New Orleans and the back and upper country. Cotton is cultivated in the neighbourhood to such perfection, and with such advantages, that many of the citizens have been induced to purchase farms, and turn all their attention to rearing and preparing that article for exportation. Their profit is so considerable, that, both in town and country, they live in the style of eastern luxury. I dined in several places where the dinner consisted of three courses and a desert, where VOL. III. K the service was of solid plate, where a negro, magnificently dressed, stood behind every chair, and where the air was kept in circulation by little girls employed in pulling variegated fans suspended from the centre of the room. At one of those houses of sumptuous entertainment, the proprietor informed me, that his crop of cotton of that year was estimated at forty thousand dollars. There many of the cotton plantations yield from five thousand to twenty thousand dollars a ycar. The owners in dulge in every luxury, and set an example of dissipation, which at this moment pervades the city and territory. The vice of the Natchez is proverbial through America. But dreadfully are the wretched citizens to suffer for their profligacy and licentiousness. A confirmed and hereditary venereal disease, contracted by an unrestrained intercourse with Africans, Indians, and Mestizoes, |