Cruise of the U.S. Flag-Ship Hartford – From the Personal Journal of Wm. C. Holton

May 18th. Found us under way early, expecting to reach Natchez in the course of the day. About noon the order was given to get the anchor ready for letting go, and we looked ahead for an anchorage. In one of the everlasting bends of the river, on a bluff forty or fifty feet high, could be seen a few houses, and others on the river banks below, with a road running from one group to the other upon almost perpendicular banks. This was Natchez, and here we anchored alongside the sloops-of-war Brooklyn and Richmond, which had been here several days waiting for us. Natchez is not discernible from the river, as it lies mainly over the hill, back from the river; but, from present appearances, we should judge it to be a rather lazy city.