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Quinta Scott's Mississippi River Photographs

Swamps of the Western Lowlands

“There DeSoto left the Cacique in his own town; and an Indian guided them through an immense pathless thicket of desert for seven days, where they slept continually in ponds and shallow puddles. Fish were so plentiful in them that they were killed with blows of cudgels; and as the Indians traveled in chains, they disturbed the mud at the bottom, by which the fish, becoming stupefied, would swim to the surface, when as many were taken as were desired.” --The Gentleman from Elvas, 1541