both of North and South America is the same; and not knowing, that the
whole continent, above this single part on the coast, is the most
likely, from its situation, and has been found by all the experience
that has been had of it, to be the most healthy part of all North
America in the same climates, as will abundantly appear from the
following and all other accounts.

To give a general view of those countries, we should consider them as
they are naturally divided into four parts; 1. The sea coast; 2. The
Lower Louisiana, or western part of Carolina; 3. The Upper Louisiana,
or western part of Virginia; and 4, the river Missisippi.

I. The sea coast is the same with all the rest of the coast of North
America to the southward of New York, and indeed from thence to Mexico,
as far as we are acquainted with it. It is all a low flat sandy beach,
and the soil for some twenty or thirty miles distance from the shore,
more or less, is all a _pine barren_, as it is called, or a sandy
desart; with few or no good ports or harbours on the coast, especially
in all those southern parts of America, from Chesapeak bay to Mexico.
But however barren this coast is in other respects, it is entirely
covered with tall pines, which afford great store of pitch, tar, and
turpentine. {iv} These pines likewise make good masts for ships; which I
have known to last for twenty odd years, when it is well known, that our
common masts of New England white pine will often decay in three or four
years. These masts were of that kind that is called the pitch pine, and
lightwood pine; of which I knew a ship built that ran for sixteen years,
when her planks of this pine were as sound and rather harder than at
first, although her oak timbers were rotten. The cypress, of which there
is such plenty in the swamps on this coast, is reckoned to be equally
serviceable, if not more so, both for masts (of which it would afford