Identifier: systematictreati00drak (find matches)
Title: A systematic treatise, historical, etiological and practical, on the principal diseases of the interior valley of North America : as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux varieties of its population
Year: 1850 (1850s)
Authors: Drake, Daniel, 1785-1852
Subjects: Medical geography Medical climatology
Publisher: Cincinnati : Winthrop B. Smith & Co.
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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ry. As in the bottoms below, thepeople inhabiting the banks of the Mississippi are more healthy than thoseliving on the streams and lakes of the interior. Yellow fever has neverappeared either in Helena or New Madrid. Let us now cross the Mississippi, and examine its eastern shores.Beginning nearly opposite the lower part of the St. Francis Bottom, andascending to the mouth of the Ohio Eiver, we find a series of bluffs, whichalternately approach to, and recede from, the Mississippi, with interveningbottom lands at the points of recession. The four lower of these bluffs lie in West Tennessee, and liave receivedthe name of Chickasaw, from tlie Indian tribe which once dwelt near or uponthem. The three upper, called ^Mills Puint, the Chalk Banks, and the IronBanks, are in the western part of Kentucky. They all belong to the creta-ceous formation ; whicli, in its successive outcrops from the south, of course,presents at these bluffs, which lie progressively north of each other, some PLVIII
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PART I.) INTERIOR VALLEY OF NORTH AMERICA. 133 strata not seen before. The only important town found on these bluffsI shall now describe. IV. Memphis.—The commercial metropolis of Tennessee ( PI. VIII^), isbuilt on the fourth or most soutliern Chickasaw bluff, at the distance of ninehundred miles from the Balize, in Lat. 35o 08 N., and Lon. 90^ 06 W. Itselevation above the surface of the river at low water, is one hundred andseventy feet — over the Gulf of Mexico, four hundred. Its site is abed of loam, belonging to the cretaceous formation. Unlike Vicksburg,Memphis occupies a gently undulating plain, on which there are some swales,but no ponds or swamps. Wells dug to the depth of from thirty to sixtyfeet, afford water which in most of them is very good, but in some, slightly sa-line and sulphurous. Immediately above the city, to the north, is the mouthof Wolf Eiver, which has just before received the Loosahatchee, also fromthe north. The bottoms of this small river are wide, and

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