Natchez, Mississippi: photos by Bridget

Natchez sits on a bluff overlooking the wide brown Mississippi river. We had driven down from Vicksburg, Mississippi, seeing fields of white-flowered cotton plants in row after row. Cotton played a major role in Natchez's history, with many of those who owned plantations in the lower lands of Louisiana choosing to build their extraordinary mansions in Natchez. Here they enjoyed a better climate, and could oversee the sale of their cotton downriver to New Orleans, or, sometimes, upriver to Ohio and Missouri. Natchez was the site of the second-largest slave market in the US, and, before the civil war, home to more millionaires than any other US city.

The Natchez Trace, which we had driven for the last two days, was used by the 'Kaintucks' or Flatboatmen who floated their wares down river to sell and then, unable to take their boats back up the river, walked the Trace back to their homes in Kentucky.

We had dinner at a bar down by the river, then walked around town as it got dark. The inner streets of town are narrow and intimate; many of the houses have plaques noting their former owners. The magnificent mansions lovingly restored by the Pilgrimage Garden Club of Natchez sat beside graciously decaying former mansions, wrought iron balconies overgrown with vines, elaborate, delicate fountains still bubbling in the gardens. Frogs and cicadas rang out, there was the smell of cypress and magnolia. Spanish moss hung from the trees. We walked just a few streets out from the centre and started to find a less grand part of town,where the contents of the houses spilled out into the gardens, and the houses themselves seemed to be splitting apart with the sheer mugginess and luxuriance of vegetation.

Down by the river whole streets of former commercial buildings lie derelict, livened only the odd bar promising beer and mint juleps.

That's the Mississippi there, y'all.

The Presbyterians made it here too ...land of a thousand churches.

..and the Catholics.

Earlier in the afternoon we had visited 'Staunton Hall', one of the ante-bellum mansions built in the mid-1800s: http://www.stantonhall.com/ It had 17 foot high ceilings, 12 foot high doors, and the downstairs hallway alone was nearly the same square footage as our entire house - and it was five stories high (although you can't see them all here. There is a domed observatory on the top). Hugh told our lady guide that he thought the people who owned it might have been rich. She said the man who owned it had, at one time, been the richest man in town, but she didn't mention the 'S' word once. Sadly, the Museum of African-American History was closed for renovation; it would have provided a bit of a counter narrative of the town's history.

And, happy 21st Nicole!! We were thinking about you all day - hope you had an fabulous and work-free day! When do you go to Australia? Graeme tried to ring you on your cell, but it said you had disconnected service to that number. Hope you got the text he sent Richard! Please email us your address, I have a present for you!! I can't believe you are 21 - I can still remember you wearing your 'I am 3' badge. Sorry about that! Lots and lots of love from us!!! xxxxx