STACK ISLAND.

I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence, Louisiana--which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with venerable gray beards of Spanish moss; 'restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the place,' comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling--also with truth.
A Mr.H.furnished some minor details of fact concerning this region which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known him to be a steamboat mate.

He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little Sunflower packet.
He was an austere man, and had the reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river man.

Among other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here.

One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at.