Natchez on the Mississippi -- Rare, Signed First Edition

An outdoor museum of great houses and great tales, Natchez is today the mecca of tens of thousands of Ameri-cans. Here, for the first time, is its full story, told by a master. Perched on a sun-splashed bluff overlooking the Father of Waters, the border between Mississippi and Louisiana, Natchez dreams of a past fabulous and turbulent, a life that had zest and high reward and danger. Capital of a lush cotton empire, it dominated men and manners for many miles. Its gentry built pillared mansions of soaring magnificence, practiced the high style and invited the world to come and look. But Natchez was also part of the American frontier, a brawling crossroads where backwoodsmen jostled raucous riverboatmen and the pageant of the Mississippi swirled along. On the bluff rose perfumed elegance; below huddled Natchez-under-the-Hill, wildest sin spot in the New World. Here, too, began the storied Natchez Trace, where a man prayed for protection against the bloody-handed bandits who were among the nation's first gangsters. A hundred years ago everybody, it seemed, wanted to get to Natchez, to make a fortune or have a good time — planter, steamboat captain, soldier, peddler, men of good will and evil. Here thrived a civilization in its own special image, exuberant, flush, vivid-hued. Everything came bigger in Natchez - plantations, alligators, mosquitoes, and ambitions. Here are the stories of the planter who put up mahogany and marble stalls, with mirrors, for his horses; the man who took a six-month trip to Europe to get his wife a set of dishes; the "Yellow Duchess," who had to have the color all around her, rooms, horses, servants, even her pantaloons; the maiden who said "No" to Aaron Burr; the breathtaking days when the 'Natchez' raced the 'Robert E. Lee' while the world made its bets; the mysterious figures of macabre "Goat Castle," where murder moved about the cobwebbed ruins of grandeur; the weird majesty of "Nutt's Folly," an unfinished Oriental palace in the Natchez woods. . . Harnett Kane tops all his previous books with a rich and brilliant portrait of a people and a scene, a book of magnificent readability, filled with warmly human touches and keen humor.