prise warrants any trouble in reason it may give for a few years to have such a stream with so much of future promise kept open and in order. The Red river extends a distance of about one thousand seven hundred miles, through the most fertile body of lands in the United States, and all below the latitude of 35°, and which, within no long period, will be inhabited by a dense population, and its waters freighted with the produce of its unlimited fine range for cattle and hogs, and also with cotton, wheat and other grains, and the varied produce that belong to so much fertility and such latitude. These advantages attend the removal of the raft. Let us look a moment at the disastrous consequences of leaving the obstruction that has already and is now taking place. Caddo prairie, already described and formerly settled, is now a lake, and this is but a small portion of the lands similarly situated. The comfortable houses of many a family is now a noxious lake. Its mischievous upward march is most strikingly seen from the eminences that skirt the swamp above this. You there see under you, as I have done, perhaps one hundred thousand acres of timber in all its various stages of decay, those nearest the obstruction showing nothing but their rotted trunks standing, those next having a part of their limbs on, and those above that dead and dying with their leaves yet on. The usual winter water, at seventy miles above the head of the raft, now backs up and covers the land about four feet higher than it did twenty years ago, and many at that distance have been obliged to abandon their farms. It requires but little prophecy to see what must soon be the condition of the upper settlers. Their farms will be lakes, and they must pull up their tent pins and march. FRANCE IN 1855. We are indebted to the Paris correspondent of the National Intelligencer for the following: M. Legoyt, of the Bureau of Statistics attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, has published a volume of French statistics, being the continuation of a similar volume published under government auspices in 1837. The total surface of continental France is 52,305,744 hectares, (129,250,387 acres ;) of which about 49,300,000 hectares (121,823,028 acres) are taxable, and the balance, 7,427,359 acres, consisting principally of public highways and unproductive domains, are not taxable. The quantity of arable land is estimated at about 25,500,000 hectares, (63,011,909 acres;) of meadow at about 5,000,000, (12,355,277 acres ;) of vineyard at about 2,000,000, (4,942,111 acres ;) of orchards, nurseries, and gardens about 600,000 hectares, (1,482,633 acres.) It is calculated that France, in an average year of production, produces three hectolitres (84 bushels) of grains and one hectolitre (22 gallons) of wine for each inhabitant. Upwards of 7,000,000 of hectares, or more than one-eighth of the whole superfices of France still remains waste land, common pasture, heath, or uncertain land. The average quantity of grain produced per hectare in France is thirteen hectolitres, (35 bushels,) which is equivalent to fourteen and a half bushels per acre; while in England, says a writer in the Constitutionnel, the production is on an average twenty hectolitres per hectare, (224 bushels per acre.) The number of houses of all sorts in France, including dwellings, warehouses, shops, factories-in fine, all constructions used for habitations, commerce, or manufacture-is, or was in 1846, the date of the last enumeration, 7,462,545; presenting in the aggregate 44,283,363 taxable doors and windows, and covering about 250,000 hectares (617,764 acres) of surface. France is notoriously the country of small land owners. The minute subdivisions of territorial property is generally cited as one of the most efficient causes of the inferiority of French agriculture when compared with that of most other countries of Europe. The parcels of land are so small as to be generally insufficient for the support of a family, or to admit of the smallest outlay of capital or manure, improved instruments of husbandry, or superior systems of agriculture. Accordingly we find territorial property in France divided into 126,210,194 lots or parcels; which, considered in connexion with the quantity of arable land above given for all France, exhibits as the average size of cultivated lots in this country just half an acre. These lots are owned by 13,122,758 proprietors. Thus each proprietor owns on an average about 44 acres of arable land; and these 4 acres are cut up into nine distinct lots. These lots are often separated from each other by considerable distance; so that a land-owner who would visit the whole of his domain of 4 acres on the same day must spend nearly his whole time in so doing. The evil of minute subdivision of territorial property, great as it has ever been since the first revolution, would seem to be increasing. In 1827 the number of land-owners was 11,053,702; in 1842 it was 11,511,000; in 1854, as above stated, they numbered 13,122,758, or 36 per cent. of the whole popula tion. It is perhaps true, as has been suggested, that the remarkable increase in the number of land-owners since 1842 is attributable in part to the increased demand for building lots required by progressive agriculture and manufactures. From 1815 to 1846 the number of taxable houses increased from 5,564,000 to the above-given figure of 7,462,545. France possesses, in five great fluvial basins, an aggregate length of 8,817 kilometres, (5,478 miles) of navigable rivers; 97 canals, of which the aggregate length is 4,715 kilometres, (2,9293 miles ;) 654 imperial roads, of an aggregate length of 36,038 kilometres, (22,393 miles ;) 1,694 departmental roads, of an aggregate length of 45,626 kilometres, (27,108 miles ;) 69 strategic roads, of an aggregate length of 1,463 kilometres, (909 miles ;) and 284,737 vicinal or cross roads, of an aggregate length of 558,441 kilometres, (347,000 miles.) The number of bridges in France having a length each of twenty-two yards or more is 1,914, supported upon a total number of 8,000 arches on trusses. With regard to the railroads of the empire, Mr. Legoyt's volume does not give information up to the present moment. But, before dismissing this portion of the statistics, I will give, from an official report published in the Moniteur, the following items concerning them. The total length of railroad opened and in use in France at this time is 4,975 kilometres, (3,091 miles,) made up of the following roads of the length annexed: The most profitable roads are the Paris and Lyons road, of which the gross receipts during the six months were 35,051 francs per kilometre, the Grand Central 31,914 francs per kilometre, and the Northern Railway 30,524 francs per kilometre. There are upwards of five thousand kilometres more of railways in France now in process of construction, or conceded and soon to be commenced. As for the population of France, the census during the last fifty years establishes a very satisfactory progression. In the year 1700, under Louis XIV., it was 19,669,000; in 1784, under Louis XVI., it was 24,800,000; the increase being only a little upwards of five millions in the space of eighty-four years. In 1851 the population had swollen to 35,783,170; showing since 1784, a period of sixty-six years, an augmentation of eleven millions. The Constitutionnel, which now-a-days never lets slip an opportunity to snap at the defunct republic of 1848, states a curious fact touching the progress of the population, and, whether rightly or wrongly, attributes it to the republic, with a sneer at its pretension to have been instituted for the people's good. The fact is, says the Constitutionnel, that in five years, from 1841 to 1846, the population of France increased by 1,171,000 inhabitants; and in five years, from 1846 to 1851, (embracing the republic,) the increase was only 483,000. Of the 35,783,170 population in 1851, the census shows 20,351,628 engaged in agriculture; 2,094,371 engaged in manufactures; 7,810,144 artizans, mechanics, and tradesmen; 4,000,000 nearly members of the liberal professions; 753,505 domestic servants; and 782,496 mendicants, invalids, persons supported by public charity, and vagabonds. There were 44,970 insane persons, 29,512 deaf and dumb, 37,662 blind, 75,063 blind of one eye, 42,384 afflicted with goitre, 44,619 hump-backed, 20,378 lame, and 22,547 clubfooted. In France the annual number of births has been for a long time stationary at about 960,000 per annum. This gives one birth for 37.48 inhabitants. The number of deaths, not including the still-born, is 811,000, or about one for fortythree inhabitants. The number of marriages is 277,000 per annum, or one for 128.20 inhabitants. FACTS UPON YELLOW FEVER-ITS PROGRESS NORTHWARD. 1st. Its origin.-Whether this epidemic was really imported from Africa or not, is a point which cannot be settled from any data yet made public, and I shall not offer you any * In a letter to a citizen of the District of Columbia. speculations on it. One fact, however, is certain, that this disease has travelled steadily on, since its first appearance in Rio Janeiro five years ago, along the Caribbean gulf and Atlantic coasts, until it has at length reached Norfolk. No mortal of our day is endowed with the spirit of prophecy; but still we can often, from the lights of history and observation, predict with tolerable certainty coming events; and it was on such data that I ventured to foretell that yellow fever would go as far as Norfolk, which is about the boundary of the yellow fever latitude, and also suggested the strong probability that it would visit our northern cities, where it does occur at long intervals. Now, the grounds upon which I made these predictions were as follows: Yellow fever has at long intervals, not only in the Mediterranean, along the Spanish and French coasts, but in in the United States, (about fifty years ago,) taken on this travelling character. About the time alluded to, yellow fever extended from southern ports to Norfolk, and thence to Winchester in the interior to Philadelphia, to New York, and thence to Catskill, on the North river, and to Hartford and Middletown. The epidemic in question had steadily progressed for three years, from Rio to Mobile, and on to Key West; and with all these facts before me I did not hazard much in predicting that its progress was onward in the direction it had been travelling. Type of the disease.-Few men in the United States have seen more of yellow fever than I have, and I have no hesitation in saying that this is substantially the same disease as the yellow fever which occurred in Philadelphia in 1793, and which has appeared from time to time since. It is the fact with typhoid fever, cholera, plague, scarlet fever, small-pox, and all epidemic diseases, that they appear in different grades of violence at different times, and occasionally have a greater tendency to travel over a large extent of country. This has been the case with the yellow fever in question; but its mode of attack, its course of symptoms, including yellow skin and black vomit, its average duration, &c., are the same as other yellow fevers, and, though it may have been somewhat more virulent, it is still the same disease. Contagiousness.-This is a knotty point, and I have not space to do more than express my conclusions. Under the term contagion are compounded two distinct questions, viz: contagiousness proper, or the communication directly of yellow fever from one human subject to another; and, secondly, the portability of the cause or germ by vessels from one port to another. Although my mind leans at present towards a belief in the contagiousness of this disease in certain in |