Both banks of the Mississippi below the Arkansas River are lined with cotton plantations, giving a most interesting scene during the harvesting of the fleecy crop in the autumn. The broad plantations disclose the comfortable and often quaint planters' houses of the olden time embosomed in trees, and as one progresses southward the trees become more and more draped with the dark and sombre Spanish moss, giving a weird appearance to the shores. The Yazoo flows in, and the long and imposing range of the Walnut Hills rises on the eastern bank to five hundred feet elevation. Here a planter named Vick made the first settlement in 1836, and the city of Vicksburg has grown on the summit and slopes of the hills, the lucrative traffic of the Yazoo delta providing a chief source of its prosperity, making it the largest city in the state of Mississippi, there being fifteen thousand people. It presents a picturesque view from the river, but is chiefly known abroad from its famous siege and capture by General Grant in July, 1863. The Confederates, having lost Memphis and New Orleans, made their last desperate stand to hold the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, surrounding it with vast fortifications, crowning the hills with batteries, not only along the river front, but up the Yazoo River to Haines' Bluff. Several attempts were made to capture it in 1862, Farragut's fleet running past, and Grant began operations in the spring of 1863. After several battles, he appeared before the city in May, assaulting and being repulsed, and then began the siege which resulted in the surrender on July 4th. General Pemberton, commanding Vicksburg, surrendered thirty-one thousand men, his previous losses exceeding ten thousand. General Grant had similar losses, his forces engaged in the siege and preliminary battles approximating seventy thousand men. This siege greatly damaged the city, while in 1876 the Mississippi, in one of its peculiar freaks, cut through a neck of land opposite, took an entirely new channel, and left Vicksburg isolated on an inland lake. The Government has since, at heavy expense, diverted the Yazoo outflow past the city and restored the harbor. There are beautiful views and romantic glens in the Walnut Hills, with many traces of the old fortifications, while a favorite drive is to the extensive National Cemetery, where seventeen thousand soldiers' graves recall the terrific conflicts of the Civil War.