Between them and the inhabitants of the river counties there was little
communication and less sympathy; and I fancy no country on earth of the
same extent presented a wider difference in soil and population,
especially one speaking the same language and professing the same
religion. Time, and the pushing a railroad through this eastern portion
of the State, have effected vast changes for the better, and among
these quaintly called piney-woods people now are families of wealth and
cultivation. But in the main they are yet rude and illiterate.
Not ten years since, I spent some time in Eastern Mississippi. I met at
his home a gentleman I had made the acquaintance of in New Orleans. He
is a man of great worth and fine intelligence: his grandfather had
emigrated to the country in 1785 from Emanuel County, Georgia. His
grandson says: "He carried with him a small one-horse cart pulled by an
old gray mare, one feather bed, an oven, a frying-pan, two pewter
dishes, six pewter plates, as many spoons, a rifle gun, and three
deer-hounds. He worried through the Creek Nation, extending then from
the Oconee River to the Tombigbee.
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