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#5 we left the Chapitoulas on the 29th. Although we had sent for a much larger boat, and in spite of the new stowing which our people made, we were almost as much crowded as before. We had but two leagues to make that day, to reach Burnt Canes,* the residence of M. de Benac, director of the grant of M. d'Artagnan, where we were to sleep. He received us in a very friendly manner, and regaled us with a carp from the waters of the Mississippi, which weighed thirty-five pounds. The Burnt Canes is the name given to two or three grants along the Mississippi; the place is very much like the Chapitoulas, while the situation appears to me to be more beautiful. The next day we advanced six leagues, which is about as much as they can ever accomplish in ascending the river, and we slept, or rather encamped at the Germans.** These are the quarters assigned to the lingering remnant of that company of Germans who had died of misery, some at the East, and some on arriving in Louisiana.*** Great poverty is visible in their dwellings. It is here properly that we begin to learn what it is to voyage on the Mississippi, and I am going to give you a little idea of it, so that I shall not be obliged to repeat the same thing every day. We had set out at the season of the heavy floods, when the river had risen more than forty feet above its ordinary level, and as almost all the country is composed of low lands, it was of course inundated. Tnus we were exposed to the difficulty of not finding cabanage, that is to say, ground on which to do our cooking and to sleep. When we could find it we slept in this way. If the ground was still muddy, as was the case when the water began to subside, they commenced by *Cannes brulees. **Aux Allemands. ***Some further account of these Germans is given in the next letter. They were a portion of the settlers brought out for Law's grant, but did not arrive until after his fall, when they were suffered to die from want. making a couch of branches, that the mattress might not rest on the mud. Then they spread upon the earth a skin, or a mattress, and clothes, i