These cliffs, which are eighteen miles below Natchez, have always been known as Ellis’ Cliffs.  In their rear is a most beautiful, and eminently fertile country.  Grants were obtained from the Spanish Government of these lands, in tracts suited to the means of each family.  A portion was given to the husband, a portion to the wife, and a portion to each child of every family.  These grants covered nearly all of that desirable region south of St. Catharine’s Creek and west of Second Creek to the Mississippi River, and south to the Homochitto River.  Similar grants were obtained for lands about the mouth, and along the banks of Cole’s Creek, at and around Fort Adams, ten miles above the mouth of Red River, and upon the Bayou Pierre.  The same authority donated to the emigrants lands about McIntosh’s Bluff, Fort St. Stephens, and along Bassett’s Creek, in the region of the Tombigbee River.  Here the lands were not so fertile, nor were they in such bodies as in the region of the Mississippi.  The settlements did not increase and extend to the surrounding country with the same rapidity as in the latter country.  Many of those first stopping on the Tombigbee, ultimately removed to the Mississippi.  Here they encountered none of the perils or losses incident to the war of the Revolution.  The privations of a new country they did, of necessity, endure, but not to the same extent that those suffer who are deprived of a market for the products of their labor.  New Orleans afforded a remunerative market for all they could produce, and, in return, supplied them with every necessary beyond their means of producing at home.  The soil and climate were not only auspicious to the production of cotton, tobacco, and indigo—­then a valuable marketable commodity—­but every facility for rearing without stint every variety of stock.  These settlements were greatly increased by emigration from Pennsylvania, subsequently to the conclusion of the war, as well as from the Southern States.

Very many who, in that war, had sided with the mother country from conscientious, or mercenary views, were compelled by public opinion, or by the operation of the law confiscating their property and banishing them from the country, to find new homes.  Those, however, who came first had choice of locations, and most generally selected the best; and bringing most wealth, maintained the ascendency in this regard, and gave tone and direction to public matters as well as to the social organization of society.  Most of them were men of education and high social position in the countries from which they came.  Constant intercourse with New Orleans, and the education of the youth of both sexes of this region in the schools of that city, carried the high polish of French society into the colony.

Louisiana, and especially New Orleans, was first settled by the nobility and gentry of France.  They were men in position among the first of that great and glorious people.  Animated with the ambition for high enterprise, they came in sufficient numbers to create a society, and to plant French manners and customs, and the elegance of French learning and French society, upon the banks of the Mississippi.