Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

A few words by way of explanation are necessary on this subject, and we must commence with a short description of the country which Banks proposes to subdue. We are to concern ourselves about the Red River only from its entrance into the north-west angle of the State of Louisiana. Its waters, holding in suspension an ochrey earth which has given it the name of Red River, wind along between the vast lakes which swell them when they are low, and which at the time of their freshets serve them, on the contrary, as outlets, thanks to an inextricable network of large and small channels. On one of these channels, which joins the river to Cross Lake, is the town of Shreveport, a well-situated entrepot at the limit of navigation of the Red River, on the borders of Texas and at the end of the roads which run into the prairies of the Indian Territory. The railroad intended to connect the Texan network with the Mississippi was to pass through Shreveport. Two sections only were finished in 1864—those running from Marshall to Shreveport, and from Monroe, on the Washita, to De Soto opposite Vicksburg. From the lakes to its mouth in the Mississippi the Red River passes through a rather flat and generally very fertile country, thanks to the rich soil which it has spread around. Yet the fruitful zone varies greatly in extent. A line of sandy undulations, in which may perhaps be seen the vestiges of the coast formation of the Gulf of Mexico at a remote geological period, extends from the north-west to the south-east: from the frontier of Texas between Marshall and Shreveport it extends in length about seventy-five miles, as far as an old fort called Fort Jesup: it is divided at this point. The main branch, keeping its direction, joins the new accretions washed up by the waters of the sea; the other, extending to the northeast, allows the passage of the waters of Red River at Grand core, and separates on the left bank of the river its direct tributaries from those of the Washita. These old downs form a permeable soil deprived of water, rebellious to cultivation, capable of sustaining only thick pine forests, and whose barrenness contrasts with the richness of the alluvial soil above which they