There are, at Natchez, numerous stores, and three-fourths of the goods at every store are articles of British manufacture. Shopkeeping is here profitable, and mechanics are highly paid. Lotteries are very prevalent at Natchez. When Mr. Fearon was here, there was a lottery for _building a Presbyterian church_; and the scheme was preceded by a long address, on the advantages of religion, and the necessity of all citizens supporting Christianity, by purchasing tickets in this lottery!
The streets of Natchez were literally crammed with bales of cotton for the Liverpool market. These are carried to the water-side in carts, each drawn by two mules, horses being here little used. During Mr. Fearon's residence at this town, he twice visited the State legislature, which was composed of men who appeared any thing but legislators. Their place of meeting was in a superior kind of hay-loft; and the imitation of the forms of the British parliament were perfectly ludicrous.
Between Natchez, and the mouth of the Ohio, there is not one spot which could be recommended as a place for an Englishman to settle in. Throughout the whole of this space, the white population are the victims of demoralizing habits. The native Indians present, of course, nothing but a picture of mere savage life; and the negro slaves suffer even more misery than commonly falls to the lot of their oppressed and degraded condition. What a foul stain is it upon the American republic, professing, as they do, the principles of liberty and of equal rights, that, out of twenty states, there should be eleven in which slavery is an avowed part of the political constitution; and that, in those called free, New England excepted, the condition of blacks who are indentured, for terms of years, should practically amount to slavery!
Beyond the state of Louisiana, the Mississippi divides the Missouri territory from the territory of Mississippi; and, north of that, from the states of Tenessee and Kentucky. About the 37th degree of north latitude, and on the western bank of the river, is a town called _New Madrid_. This place, from the advantages of its situation, about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Ohio, may at some future time become of considerable importance. The _Ohio_, at the place of its junction with the Mississippi, is about a mile in width, and is navigable, for vessels of considerable burden, to a distance of more than a thousand miles.