"U.i.V,< ®f)e Htfcrarp of tfje ®niber£ttpcrf JSortf) Carolina Cnbotoeb bp ®fje dialectic anb f)f)tlautf)tojptc ^octettes C 9 17 ~ KSZ This book must not be taken from the Library building. Form No. 471 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://archive.org/details/greatsouthrecordking THE GREAT SOUTH: A RECORD OF JOURNEYS LOUISIANA, TEXAS, THE INDIAN TERRITORY, MISSOURI, ARKANSAS, MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, FLORIDA, SOUTH CAROLINA, NORTH: CAROLINA, KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE, VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, AND MARYLAND. BY EDWARD KING. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED FROM ORIGINAL SKETCHES BY J WELLS CHAMPNEY. . AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, HARTFORD, CONN. 1875. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Scribner & Co. In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. Library, Untv. of North Carolina PREFACE. T *HIS book is the record of an extensive tour of observation through the States of the South and South-west during the whole of 1873, and the Spring and Summer of 1874. The journey was undertaken at the instance of the publishers of Scribners Monthly, who desired to present to the public, through the medium of their popular periodical, an account of the material resources, and the present social and political condition, of the people in the Southern States. The author and the artists associated with him in the preparation of the work, traveled more than twenty-five thousand miles ; visited nearly every city and town of importance in the South ; talked with men of all classes, parties and colors; carefully investi- gated manufacturing enterprises and sites ; studied the course of politics in each State since the advent of reconstruction; explored rivers, and penetrated into mountain regions hereto- fore rarely visited by Northern men. They were everywhere kindly and generously received by the Southern people; and they have endeavored, by pen and pencil, to give the reading public a truthful picture of life in a section which has, since the close of a devastating war, been overwhelmed by a variety of misfortunes, but upon which the dawn of a better day is breaking. The fifteen ex-slave States cover an area of more than 880,000 square miles, and are inhabited by fourteen millions of people. The aim of the author has been to tell the truth 11 as exactly and completely as possible in the time and space allotted him, concerning the characteristics of this region and its inhabitants. The popular favor accorded in this country and Great Britain to the fifteen illustrated articles descriptive of the South which have appeared in Scribner's Monthly, has led to the preparation of the present volume. Much of the material which has appeared in Scribner will be found in its pages ; the whole has, however, been re-written, re-arranged, and, with numerous additions, is now simultaneously offered to the English- speaking public on both sides of the Atlantic. To the talent and skill of Mr. J. Wells Champney, the artist who accompanied the author during the greater part of the journey, the public is indebted for more than four hundred of the superb sketches of Southern life, character, and scenery which illustrate this volume. The other artists who have con- tributed have done their work faithfully and well. New York, November, 1874. A DEDICATION TO MR. ROSWELL-SMITH, Scribiicr &fi Co., 654 Broadway, Neiu York. My Dear Sir : — You have been from first to last so inseparably as well as pleasantly connected with "The Great South" enterprise, that I cannot forbear taking this occasion to thank you, not only for originally suggesting the idea of a journey of observation through the Southern States, but also for having generously submitted to the enlargement of the first plan's scope, until the undertaking demanded a really immense outlay. I am sure that thousands of people will tmite with me in testi- fying to you, and the gentlemen associated with you, their thanks for the lavish expenditure which has procured the beautiful series of engravings illustrating this volume. What I have been able only to hint at, the artists have interpreted with a fidelity to life and nature in the highest degree admirable. I herewith present you the result of the joint labor of author and artists, u The Great South" volume. Permit me, sir, to dedicate it to you, and by means of this humble tribitte to express my admiration for the energy and tmsparing zeal with which you have carried to completion the largest enterprise of its kind ever imdertaken by a monthly magazine. Sincerely Yours, EDWARD KING. . November i, 1874. r / CONTENTS PAGE. Preface ! Dedication 3 I Louisiana, Past and Present 17 II .The French Quarter of New Orleans — The Revolution and its Effects. . . 28 III. The Carnival— The French Markets 38 IV The Cotton Trade — The New Orleans Levees 50 V The Canals and the Lake — The American Quarter 59 VI On the Mississippi River — The Levee System — Railroads — The Fort St. Philip Canal 67 VII The Industries of Louisiana — A Sugar Plantation — The Teche Country. . . 78 VIII The Political Situation in Louisiana 89 IX "Ho! for Texas" — Galveston 99 X A Visit to Houston no XI Pictures from Prison and Field 117 XII Austin, the Texan Capital — Politics — Schools 127 XIII The Truth About Texas — The Journey by Stage to San Antonio 137 XIV Among the Old Spanish Missions 147 XV The Pearl of the South-west 157 XVI The Plains — The Cattle Trade 167 XVII Denison — Texan Characteristics 175 XVIII The New Route to the Gulf 186 XIX The " Indian Territory " 197 XX Railroad Pioneering — Indian Types and Character 204 XXI Missouri — St. Louis, Past and Present 215 XXII St. Louis Germans and Americans — Speculative Philosophy — Education... 222 XXIII Commerce of St. Louis — The New Bridge over the Mississippi 230 XXIV The Mineral Wealth of Missouri 237 XXV Trade in St. Louis — The Press — Kansas City — Along the Mississippi — The Capital 246 XXVI Down the Mississippi from St. Louis 257 XXVII . . . .Memphis, the Chief City of Tennessee — Its Trade and Character 264 XXVIII ...The "Supply" System in the Cotton Country, and its Results — Negro Labor— Present Plans of Working Cotton Plantations— The Black Man in the Mississippi Valley 270 VI PAGE. XXIX Arkansas — Its Resources — Its People — Its Politics — Taxation — The Hot Springs 278 XXX Vicksburg and Natchez, Mississippi — Society and Politics — A Louisiana Parish Jury 287 XXXI Life on Cotton Plantations 297 XXXII Mississippi — Its Towns — Finances — Schools — Plantation Difficulties 311 XXXIII . . . Mobile, the Chief City of Alabama 319 XXXIV The Resources of Alabama — Visits to Montgomery and Selma 328 XXXV Northern Alabama— The Tennessee Valley — Traits of Character — Educa- tion 339 XXXVI The Sand-Hill Region — Aiken — Augusta 344 XXXVII. . .Atlanta — Georgia Politics — The Failure of Reconstruction 350 XXXVIII .. Savannah, the Forest City — The Railway System of Georgia — Material Progress of the State 358 XXXIX Georgian Agriculture — "Crackers" — Columbus — Macon — Society — Athens — The Coast 371 XL The Journey to Florida — The Peninsula's History — Jacksonville 377 XLI Up the St. John's River — Tocoi — St. Augustine 383 XLII St. Augustine, Florida — Fort Marion 390 XLIII The Climate of Florida — A Journey to Palatka 398 XLIV Orange Culture in Florida — Fertility of the Peninsula 402 XLV Up the Oclawaha to Silver Spring 408 XLVI The Upper St. John's — Indian River — Key West — Politics — The New Con- stitution 416 XLVII South Carolina — Port Royal — The Sea Islands — The Revolution 422 XLVIII .... On a Rice Plantation in South Carolina 429 XLIX Charleston, South Carolina 438 L The Venice of America — Charleston's Politics — A Lovely Lowland City — Immigration 444 LI , .The Spoliation of South Carolina 454 LII The Negroes in Absolute Power 460 LIII The Lowlands of North Carolina 466 LIV Among the Southern Mountains — Journey from Eastern Tennessee to West- ern North Carolina 474 LV Across the " Smoky " to Waynesville — The Master Chain of the Alleghanies.48o LVI The " Sugar Fork " and Dry Falls — Whiteside Mountain 490 LVII Asheville — The French Broad Valley — The Ascent of Mount Mitchell. .503 LVIII The South Carolina Mountains — Cascades and Peaks of Northern Georgia .515 LIX Chattanooga, the Gateway of the South 527 LX .Lookout Mountain — The Battles around Chattanooga — Knoxville — East- ern Tennessee 536 vn PAGE. LXI A Visit to Lynchburg in Virginia 552 LXII In South-western Virginia — The Peaks of Otter — The Mineral Springs. . . .561 LXIII Among the Mountains — From Bristol to Lynchburg 569 LXIV Petersburg — A Negro Revival Meeting 579 LXV . , The Dismal Swamp — Norfolk — The Coast 588 LXVI The Education of Negroes — The American Missionary Association — The Peabody Fund — The Civil Rights Bill 596 LXVII . . . .The Hampton Normal Institute — General Armstrong's Work — Fisk Univer- sity — Berea and Other Colleges 603 LXVIII Negro Songs and Singers 609 LXIX A Peep at the Past of Virginia — Jamestown — Williamsburg — Yorktown 621 LXX Richmond — Its Trade and Character 626 LXXI The Partition of Virginia — Reconstruction and Politics in West and East Virginia 639 LXXII .... From Richmond to Charlottesville 647 LXXIII From Charlottesville to Staunton, Virginia — The Shenandoah Valley — Lexington — The Graves of General Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson — From Goshen to " White Sulphur Springs." 656 LXXIV .... Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs — From the "White Sulphur" to Ka- nawha Valley — The Mineral Springs Region 670 LXXV The Kanawha Valley — Mineral Wealth of Western Virginia 681 LXXVI .... Down the Ohio River — Louisville 693 LXXVII ... A Visit to the Mammoth Cave 699 LXXVIII . . The Trade of Louisville 707 LXXIX. . . .Frankfort — The Blue Grass Region — Alexander's Farm — Lexington 713 LXXX .... Politics in Kentucky — Mineral Resources of the State 721 LXXXI .... Nashville and Middle Tennessee .- 726 LXXXII . . . A Glance at Maryland's- History — Her Extent and Resources 733 LXXXIII . .The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 741 LXXXIV . .The Trade of Baltimore — Its Rapid and Astonishing Growth , 748 LXXXV . . . Baltimore and its Institutions 757 LXXXVI .. Southern Characteristics— State Pride — The Influence of Railroads- Poor Whites — Their Habits 77* LXXXVII .The Carrying of Weapons — Moral Character of the Negroes 777 LXXXVIII. Dialect — Forms of Expression — Diet 784 LXXXIX .. Immigration — The Need of Capital — Division of the Negro Vote — The Southern Ladies 79 2 XC Rambles in Virginia — Fredericksburg — Alexandria — Mount Vernon — Arlington 795 ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS. PAGE. Scene on the Oclawaha River, Florida — Frontispiece General Map of the Southern States 15 Bienville, the Founder of New Orleans 17 The Cathedral St. Louis — New Orleans 18 'A blind beggar hears the rustling of her gown, and stretches out his trembling hand for alms," 19 'A black girl looks wonderingly into the holy-water font " 19 The Archbishop's Palace, New Orleans 20 ' Some aged private dwellings, rapidly decaying," 25 A brace of old Spanish Governors. — From por- traits owned by Hon. Charles Gayarre, of New Orleans 26 ' And where to-day stands a fine Equestrian Statue of the Great General " 27 ' A lazy negro, recumbent in a cart " 29 ' The negro nurses stroll on the sidewalks, chatter- ing in quaint French to the little children " . . . . 30 ' The interior garden, with its curious shrine " . . . . 31 ' The new Ursuline Convent, New Orleans 32 ' And while they chatter like monkeys, even about politics, they gesticulate violently " 35 ' The old French and Spanish cemeteries present long streets of cemented walls " 36 The St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans 37 The Carnival — "White and black join in its mas- querading " ' 38 ' The coming of Rex, most puissant King of Car- nival" 40 ' The Bceuf-Gras — the fat ox — is led in the proces- sion " 41 ' When Rex and his train enter the queer old streets, the balconies are crowded with spec- tators " 42 ' The joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor " 43 ' Many bright eyes are in vain endeavoring to pierce the disguise " 45 'The French market at sunrise on Sunday morning" 46 ' Passing under long, hanging rows of bananas and pine-apples " 47 'One sees delicious types in these markets" 48 ' In a long passage, between two of the market buildings, sits a silent Louisiana Indian wo- man" 49 ' Stout colored women, with cackling hens dang- ling from their brawny hands " 49 ' These boats, closely ranged in long rows by the levee " 5° PAGE. " Whenever there is a lull in the work, they sink down on the cotton bales " 52 " Not far from the levee there is a police court, where they especially delight to lounge "...... 52 " The cotton thieves " 55 " There is the old apple and cake woman " 55 "The Sicilian fruit-seller " 56 ' ' At high water, the juvenile population perches on the beams of the wharves, and enjoys a little quiet fishing " 57 " The polite but consequential negro policeman," 57 The St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans 59 The New Basin : 60 The old Spanish Fort 60 The University of Louisiana, New Orleans 61 The Theatres of New Orleans 61 Christ Church, New Orleans 62 The Canal street Fountain, New Orleans 62 The Charity Hospital, New Orleans 63 The old Maison de Sante, New Orleans 63 The United States Marine Hospital, New Orleans 64 Trinity Church, New Orleans 64 St. Paul's Church, New Orleans 64 First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans 65 The Catholic Churches of New Orleans — St. Jo- seph's, St. Patrick's, Jesuit Church and School 65 The Custom-House, New Orleans 66 The United States Branch Mint, New Orleans ... 66 " Sometimes the boat stops at a coaling station ". . 68 " The Wasp " 69 ' ' Some tract of hopelessly irreclaimable, grotesque water wilderness. " (From a painting by Julio.) 70 The monument on the Chalmette battle-field .... 72 Light-house, South-west Pass 74 " Pilot Town," South-west Pass 75 ' ' A Nickel for Daddy " tj ' ' A cheery Chinaman " 82 Sugar-cane Plantation — " The cane is cut down at its perfection " 83 " The beautiful ' City Park,' " New Orleans 87 Map showing the Distribution of the Colored Population of the United States. (From the U. S. Census Reports) 88 Map of the Gulf States and Arkansas 89 The Supreme Court, New Orleans 92 The United States Barracks, New Orleans 93 Mechanics' Institute, New Orleans . . fc 95 Going to Texas 99 "It is only a few steps from an oleander grove to the surf" i«* X PAGE. "The mule-carts unloading schooners anchored lightly in the shallow waves " 1 103 " Galveston has many huge cotton-presses " 104 The Custom-House, Galveston 105 " Primitive enough is this Texan jail " 106 The Catholic Cathedral, Galveston 107 " Watch the negro fisherman as he throws his line horizonward " 108 " The cotton-train is already a familiar spectacle on all the great trunk lines " no "There are some notable nooks and bluffs along the bayou " 112 "The Head-quarters of the Masonic Lodges of the State" 113 " The railroad depots are everywhere crowded with negroes, immigrants, tourists and specu- lators " 113 The New Market, Houston 114 " The ragged urchin with his saucy face " 114 " The negro on his dray, racing good-humoredly with his fellows " 115 " The auctioneer's young man " 116 Sam Houston 117 View on the Trinity River 118 "We frequently passed large gangs of the con- victs chopping logs in the forest by the road- side " 119 " Satanta had seated himself on a pile of oakum " 121 " As the train passes, the negroes gather in groups to gaze at it until it disappears in the dis- tance " 123 The State Capitol, Austin 127 The State Insane Asylum, Austin 128 The Texas Military Institute, Austin 128 The Governor's Mansion, Austin 129 The Alamo Monument, Austin 131 The Land Office of Texas, Austin 133 " The emigrant wagon is a familiar sight there " . . 135 Sunning themselves — "A group of Mexicans, lounging by a wall " 140 " We encounter wagons drawn by oxen " 141 " Here and there we pass a hunter's camp " 143 "We pass groups of stone houses " 146 " The vast pile of ruins known as the San Jose Mission " 1 147 The old Concepcion Mission, near San Antonio, Texas 151 An old window in the San Jose Mission 155 "An umbrella and candlestick graced the christen- ing font " 155 " The comfortable country-house so long occupied by Victor Considerant " 156 The San Antonio River — "Its blueish current flows in a narrow but picturesque channel " . . 157 The source of the San Antonio River 157 San Pedro Springs — " The Germans have estab- lished their beer gardens " 158 "Every few rods there is a waterscape in minia- ture " 158 " The river passes under bridges, by arbors and bath-houses " 159 The Ursuline Convent, San Antonio 159 St. Mary's Church, San Antonio 160 PAGE. A Mexican Hovel 161 The Military Plaza, San Antonio 161 ' ' The Mexicans slowly saw and carve the great stones " 162 ' ' The elder women wash clothes by the brookside" 163 Mexican types in San Antonio 164 ' ' The remnant of the old Fort of the Alamo " . . . . 165 " The horsemen from the plains " 167 " The candy and fruit merchants lazily wave their fly-brushes " 168 A Mexican beggar 168 ' ' The citizens gather at San Antonio, and discuss measures of vengeance " 170 A Texan Cattle-Drover 171 Military Head-quarters, San Antonio 172 Negro Soldiers of the San Antonio Garrison . . . 173 Scene in a Gambling House — " Playing Keno," Denison, Texas 175 " Men, drunk and sober, danced to rude music". 176 "Red Hall" 178 The Public Square in Sherman, Texas 180 " With swine that trotted hither and yon " 181 Bridge over the Red River — (Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway) 182 The New Route to the Gulf 186 " The Pet Conductor " 188 " Charlie " 188 Our Special Train 189 1 ' ' A stock-train from Sedalia was receiving a squeal- ing and bellowing freight " 190 "The old Hospital," Fort Scott 191 Bridge over the Marmiton River, near Fort Scott 192 A Street in Parsons, Kansas 193 A Kansas Herdsman : 193 A Kansas Farm-yard 194 "The Little Grave, with the slain horses lying upon it " 195 "The stone house which the graceless Kaw has turned into a stable for his pony " 195 " The warrior galloping across the fields " 196 Monument erected to the memory of Brevet- Major E. A. Ogden, near Fort Riley, Kansas 196 An Indian Territorial Mansion 197 A Creek Indian 199 Bridge across the North Fork of the Canadian River, Indian Territory (M. K. and T. Railway) 199 An Adopted Citizen . 200 An Indian Stock-Drover 201 " The ball-players are fine specimens of men". . 202 A Gentleman from the Arkansas Border 203 Limestone Gap, Indian Territory 204 ' ' Coming in the twilight to a region where great mounds reared their whale^backed heights " . . 205 A ' ' Terminus ' ' Rough 206 ' ' We came to the bank of the Grand River, on a hill beyond which was the Post of Fort Gib- son " 206 A Negro Boy at the Ferry 208 ' ' We found the ferries obstructed by masses of floating ice " 209 " They wore a prim, Shakerish costume " 210 A Trader among the Indians 210 "The Asbury Manual Labor School," in the Creek domain 211 PAGF\ The Toll-Bridge at Limestone Gap, Indian Ter- ritory 213 ' Looking down on the St. Louis of to-day, from the high roof of the Insurance temple " 215 ' Where now stands the great stone Cathedral ". . 216 The old Chouteau Mansion (as it was) 217 The St. Louis Life Insurance Company's Build- ing 218 ' In those days the houses were nearly all built of hewn logs " 218 ' The crowd awaiting transportation across the stream has always been of the most cosmo- politan and motley character " 220 The Court-House, St, Louis 222 Thomas H. Benton (for thirty years United States Senator from Missouri) 223 William T. Harris, editor of the St. Louis " Journal of Speculative Philosophy " 226 The High School, St. Louis 228 Washington University, St. Louis 229 The new Post-Office and Custom-House in con- struction at St. Louis 230 The new Bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis 233 View of the Caisson of the East Abutment of the St. Louis Bridge, as it appeared during construction 234 The building of the East Pier of the St. Louis Bridge 235 In the " Cut" at Iron Mountain, Missouri 237 At the Vulcan Iron Works, Carondelet 238 The Furnace, Iron Mountain, Missouri 241 The Summit of Pilot Knob, Iron County, Mis- souri 243 The "Tracks," Pilot Knob, Missouri 244 Map of Missouri 245 View in Shaw's Garden, St. Louis 246 Statue to Thomas H. Benton, in Lafayette Park. 247 The " Four Courts " Building, St. Louis. ...... 248 The Gratiot Street Prison, St. Louis 248 First Presbyterian Church, St. Louis 249 Christ Church, St. Louis 250 The Missouri Capitol, at Jefferson City 254 ' The Cheery Minstrel " 255 The Steamer "Great Republ^" a Mississippi River Boat 257 ' ' Down the steep banks would come kaleidos- copic processions of negroes and flour barrels " 258 The Levee at Cairo, Illinois 259 An Inundated Town on the Mississippi's bank. . 260 The Pilot-House of the " Great Republic " 261 A Crevasse in the Mississippi River's Banks. . . . 262 View in the City Park at Memphis, Tennessee. . 264 The Carnival at Memphis, Tennessee — "The gorgeous pageants of the mysterious Mem- phi " 268 A Steamboat Torch-Basket 277 View on the Arkansas River at Little Rock 279 The Arkansas State Capitol, Little Rock 281 The Hot Springs, Arkansas 286 Vicksburg, Mississippi 287 The National Cemetery at Vicksburg, Missis- sippi 288 The Gamblers' Graves, Vicksburg, Mississippi. 289 XI PAGE. Colonel Vick, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Planter 289 Natchez-under-the-Hill.. Mississippi 291 View in Brown's Garden, Natchez, Mississippi . . 292 Avenue in Brown's Garden, Natchez, Mississippi 293 A Mississippi River Steamer arriving at Natchez in the night 294 ' Sah ? " 296 A Cotton Wagon-Train 302 A Cotton-Steamer 304 Scene on a Cotton Plantation 307 Baton Rouge, Louisiana 3og The Red River Raft as it Was 310 Map showing the Cotton Region of the United States. (From the U. S. Census Reports.). . . 312 Map of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama 313 The Mississippi State Capitol at Jackson 313 ' At the proper seasons, one sees in the long main street of the town, lines of emigrant wagons," 314 ' The negroes migrate to Louisiana and Texas in search of paying labor " 318 On the Bay Road near Mobile, Alabama « 319 ' Mobile Bay lay spread out before me " 320 'A negro woman fished silently in a little pool " . 321 The Custom-House, Mobile, Alabama 322 Bank of Mobile and Odd Fellows' Hall, Mobile, Alabama 323 The Marine and City Hospitals, Mobile, Ala 324 Trinity Church, Mobile, Alabama 324 In the City Park, Mobile — ' ' Ebony nurse-maids flirt with their lovers " 325 In the City Park, Mobile — ' ' Squirrels frolic with the children " 326 Barton Academy, Mobile, Alabama 326 Christ Church, Mobile, Alabama 327 The Alabama State Capitol, at Montgomery, 332 The Market-Place at Montgomery, Alabama. . . . 334 The Cotton-Plant 343 A Street Scene in Augusta, Georgia.- 344 A Bell-Tower in Augusta, Georgia 347 A Confederate Soldier's Grave, at Augusta, Ga. 348 Sunset over Atlanta, Georgia 350 The State-House, Atlanta, Georgia 353 An Up-Country Cotton- Press 357 View on the Savannah River, near Savannah, Georgia 358 General Oglethorpe, the Founder of Savannah 359 The Pulaski Monument in Savannah, Georgia. 360 A Spanish Dagger-Tree, Savannah 361 • Looking down from the bluff," Savannah 362 ' The huge black ships swallowed bale after bale " 363 An old Stairway en the Levee at Savannah 364 The Custom-House at Savannah 365 View in Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah 365 The Independent Presbyterian Church, Savan- nah 366 View in Forsyth Park, Savannah 367 ' Forsyth park contains a massive fountain" 368 A Savannah Sergeant of Police 369 General Sherman's Head-quarters, Savannah. . 370 A pair of Georgia " Crackers " 37 3 The Eagle and Phoenix Cotton-Mills, Columbus, Georgia 373 Xll PAGE. The old Fort on Tybee Island, Georgia 375 Happiness 376 Moonlight over Jacksonville, Florida 377 Jacksonville, on the St. John's River, Florida. . . 381 Residence of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, at Mandarin, Florida 383 Green Cove Springs, on the St. John's River, Fla. 384 On the Road to St. Augustine, Florida 386 A Street in St. Augustine, Florida 387 St. Augustine, Florida — "An ancient gateway " 388 The Remains of a Citadel at Matanzas Inlet 391 View of Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida. . . . 392 Light-house on Anastasia Island, near St. Au- gustine, Florida 393 View of the Entrance to Fort Marion, St. Au- gustine, Florida 394 " The old sergeant in charge " 395 The Cathedral, St. Augustine, Florida 396 The Banana — " At Palatka, we first found the banana in profusion " 400 "Just across the river from Palatka lies the beau- tiful orange grove owned by Colonel Hart "... 402 Entrance to Colonel Hart's orange grove, oppo- site Palatka 404 The Guardian Angel 407 A Peep into a Forest on the Oclawaha 409 ' ' We would brush past the trees and vines " 410 The " Marion " at Silver Spring 412 Shooting at Alligators 414 View on the upper St. John's River, Florida. . . . 416 Sunrise at Enterprise, St. John's River, Florida. 419 A Country Cart 421 View of a Rice-field in South Carolina 429 Negro Cabins on a Rice Plantation 431 " The women were dressed in gay colors " 432 " With forty or fifty pounds of rice-stalks on their heads " 432 A Pair of Mule-Boots 434 A "Trunk-Minder " 434 Unloading the Rice-Barges 435 "At the winnowing-machine " 436 "Aunt Bransom " — A venerable ex-slave on a South Carolina Rice Plantation 437 View from Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor.. 438 The old Charleston Post-Office 440 Houses on the Battery, Charleston 441 A Charleston Mansion 442 The Spire of St. Philip's Church, Charleston. . 443 The Orphan House, Charleston 444 The Battery, Charleston 445 The Grave of John C. Calhoun, Charleston. . . . 446 The Ruins of St. Finbar Cathedral, Charleston. 447 " The highways leading out of the city are all richly embowered in loveliest foliage " 449 Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston 450 Garden in Mount Pleasant, opposite Charleston 452 Peeping Through 453 A Future Politician 459 The State-House at Columbia, South Carolina.. 460 Sketches of South Carolina State Officers and Legislators under the Moses Administration. . 462 Iron Palmetto in the State-House Yard at Colum- bia 465 A Wayside Sketch 473 ' The Small Boy " 474 ' The Judge " 476 The Judge shows the Artist's Sketch-Book 479 ' The family sang line by line " 481 A Mountain Farmer 482 ' We caught a glimpse of the symmetrical Cata- louche mountain " 483 The Canon of the Catalouche as seen from " Bennett's " 484 Mount Pisgah, Western North Carolina 486 The Carpenter — A Study from Waynesville Life 487 View on Pigeon River, near Waynesville 488 The Dry Fall of the Sugar Fork, Blue Ridge, North Carolina 490 View near Webster, North Carolina 492 Lower Sugar Fork Fall, Blue Ridge, North Car- olina 49S The Devil's Court-House, Whiteside Mountain . 499 Jonas sees the Abyss S 01 Asheville, North Carolina, from " Beaucatcher Knob " 504 View near Warm Springs, on the French Broad River 506 Lover's Leap, French Broad River, Western North Carolina 508 View on the Swannanoa River, near Asheville, Western North Carolina 509 First Peep at Patton's 510 The "Mountain House," on the way to Mount Mitchell's Summit 511 View of Mount Mitchell 512 The Judge climbing Mitchell's High Peak 513 Signal-Station and " Mitchell's Grave," Summit of the Black Mountains 514 The Lookers-on at the Greenville Fair 516 Table Mountain, South Carolina 518 " Let us address de Almighty wid pra'r " 520 Mount Yonah, as seen from Clarksville, Geor- gia '. 521 The "Grand Chasm," Tugaloo River, Northern Georgia 5 22 Toccoa Falls, Northern Georgia 524 A Mail-Carrier 5 2 6 Mission Ridge, near Chattanooga, Tennessee.. 527 Lookout Mountain, (far Chattanooga, Tennessee 529 The Mineral Region in the vicinity of Chattanooga 531 Map showing Grades of Illiteracy in the United States. (From the U. S. Census Reports.). . . 532 Map of Middle Atlantic States, southern section, and North Carolina 533 The Rockwood Iron-Furnaces, Eastern Tenn- essee 533 The "John Ross House," near Chattanooga. Residence of one of the old Cherokee Land- holders 534 Catching a " Tarpin " 535 View from Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga 536 Umbrella Rock, on Lookout Mountain 537 Looking from " Lookout Cave " 538 " Rock City," Lookout Mountain 539 View from Wood's Redoubt, Chattanooga 540 On the Tennessee River, near Chattanooga 542 The " Suck," on the Tennessee River 543 A Negro Cabin on the bank of the Tennessee. . 544 PAGE. Knoxville, Tennessee 546 The East Tennessee University, Knoxville 548 At the iEtna Coal Mines 550 " Down in a Coal Mine " 551 The old Market at Lynchburg 552 The James River, at Lynchburg, Virginia 553 A Side Street in Lynchburg, Virginia 555 Scene in a Lynchburg Tobacco Factory 557 "Down the steep hills every day come the country wagons " 558 Summoning Buyers to a Tobacco Sale 560 Evening on the James River — "The soft light which gently rested upon the lovely stream " . . 561 In the Gap of the Peaks of Otter, Virginia 562 The Summit of the Peak of Otter, Virginia 564 Blue Ridge Springs, South-western Virginia. . . . 566 Bristol, South-west'ern Virginia 569 White Top Mountain, seen from Glade Springs 570 Making Salt, at Saltville, Virginia 571 Wayside Types — A Sketch from the Artist's Vir- ■ ginia Sketch-Book 573 Wytheville, Virginia 574 Max Meadows, Virginia 575 The Roanoke Valley, Virginia 576 View near Salem, Virginia • 577 View on the James River below Lynchburg 578 Appomattox Court-House — " It lies silently half- hidden in its groves and gardens " 579 " The hackmen who shriek in your ear as you arrive at the depot " 581 ' '■ The ' Crater, ' the chasm created by the explosion of the mine which the Pennsylvanians sprung underneath Lee's fortifications " 582 " The old cemetery, and ruined, ivy-mantled Bland- ford Church " 583 " Seen from a distance, Petersburg presents the appearance of a lovely forest pierced here and there by church spires and towers " 585 A Queer Cavalier 587 City Point, Virginia 588 A Peep into the Great Dismal Swamp 589 A Glimpse of Norfolk, Virginia 591 Map of the Virginia Peninsula 593 Hampton Roads 594 The Ruins of the old Church at Jamestown, Vir- ginia 621 Statue of Lord Botetourt at Williamsburg, Vir- ginia ." -.-T- 622 The old Colonial Powder Magazine at Williams- burg, Virginia 623 The old Church of Bruton Parish — Williamsburg, Virginia 624 Cornwallis's Cave, near Yorktown, Virginia .... 624 View of Richmond, Virginia, from the Manches- ter side of the James River 626 Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia 627 Capitol Square, with a view of the Washington Monument, Richmond, Virginia 628 St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia 629 View on the James River, Richmond, Virginia. . 630 Monument to the Confederate Dead, Richmond, Virginia 63 1 The Gallego Flouring-Mill, Richmond, Vir- ginia 631 Xlll PAGE. Scene on a Tobacco Plantation — Burning a Plant Patch 632 Tobacco Culture — Stringing the Primings 633 A Tobacco Barn in Virginia 633 The Old Method of Getting Tobacco to Market. 634 Getting a Tobacco Hogshead Ready for Market. 635 Scene on a Tobacco Plantation — Finding To- bacco Worms : 636 The Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia 637 A Water-melon Wagon 646 A Marl-bed on the Line of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad 647 Earthworks on the Chickahominy, near Rich- mond, Virginia 648 Scene at a Virginia " Corn-Shed " 649 Gordonsville, Virginia — "The negroes, who swarm day and night like bees about the trains " 650 The Tomb of Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia 651 Monticello — The Old Home of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Inde- pendence 652 The University of Virginia, at Charlottesville. . . 653 A Water-melon Feast 655 Piedmont, from the Blue Ridge 656 View of Staunton, Virginia 657 Winchester, Virginia 658 Buffalo Gap and the Iron-Furnace 659 Elizabeth Iron-Furnace, Virginia 660 The Alum Spring, Rockbridge Alum Springs, Virginia 661 The Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. .. . 661 Washington and Lee College, Lexington, Va. 662 Portrait of General Thomas J. Jackson, known as "Stonewall Jackson." (From an engraving owned by M. Knoedler & Co., N. Y.) 663 General Robert Edward Lee, born January 19, 1801 ; died October n, 1870 664 The Great Natural Arch, Clifton Forge, Jack- son's River 665 Beaver Dam Falls 665 Falling Springs Falls, Virginia 666 Griffith's Knob, and Cow Pasture River 667 Clay Cut, Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad 668 "Mac, the Pusher " 668 Jerry's Run 669 Scene on the Greenbrier River in Western Vir- ginia 670 The Hotel and. Lawn at Greenbrier White Sul- phur Springs, West Virginia 671 The Eastern Portal of Second Creek Tunnel, Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad 672 A Mountain Ride in a Stage-Coach 673 Anvil Rock, Greenbrier River 675 A West Virginia " Countryman " 675 A Freighters' Camp, West Virginia 676 "The rude cabin built beneath the shadow of a huge rock " 677 " The rustic mill built of logs " 678 The Junction of Greenbrier and New Rivers 678 Descending the New River Rapids 679 A hard road for artists to travel 680 The " Hawk's Nest," from Boulder Point 681 XIV PAGE. Great Kanawha Falls 682 Miller's Ferry, seen from the Hawk's Nest 682 Richmond Falls, New River 683 Big Dowdy Falls, near New River 684 Whitcomb's Bowlder 685 The Inclined Plane at Cannelton 686 Fern Spring Branch, a West Virginia Mountain Stream 687 Charleston, the West Virginia Capital 688 The Hale House, Charleston 688 Rafts of Saw-Logs on a West Virginia River. . . 689 The Snow Hill Salt Works, on the Kanawha River 690 Indian Mound, near St. Albans 690 View of Huntington and the Ohio River 691 The result of climbing a sapling — An Artist in a Fix 692 The Levee at Louisville, Kentucky 693 A familiar scene in a Louisville Street 695 A Waiter at the Gait House, Louisville, Kentucky 696 Scene in the Louisville Exposition 697 Mammoth Cave, Kentucky — The Boat Ride on Echo River 699 The Entrance to Mammoth Cave (Looking Out) . 700 Mammoth Cave — In "the Devil's Arm-Chair".. 702 The Mammoth Cave — "The Fat Man's Misery". 703 Mammoth Cave — "The Subterranean Album". 704 A Country Blacksmith Shop 706 The Court-House, Louisville 707 The Cathedral, Louisville 708 The Post-Office, Louisville 708 The City Hall, Louisville 709 George D. Prentice. (From a Painting in the Louisville Public Library) 710 The Colored Normal School, Louisville 710 Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, from the New Albany Heights 7.11 Chimney Rock, Kentucky 712 Frankfort, on the Kentucky River 713 The Ascent to Frankfort Cemetery, Kentucky. . . 714 The Monument to Daniel Boone in the Cemetery at Frankfort, Kentucky 715 View on the Kentucky River, near Frankfort .... 719 Asteroid Kicks Up 717 A Souvenir of Kentucky 719 A little Adventure by the Wayside 720 " Steady " 725 The Tennessee State Capitol, at Nashville 726 View from the State Capitol, Nashville, Tennes- see 727 Tomb of Ex-President Polk, Nashville, Tennes- see 728 The Hermitage — General Andrew Jackson's old homestead, near Nashville, Tennessee 729 Young Tennesseans 730 The old home of Gen. Andrew Jackson, near Nashville 731 PAGE. Tomb of Andrew Jackson, at the " Hermitage," near Nashville 732 View from Federal Hill, Baltimore, Maryland, looking across the Basin 733 The Oldest House in Baltimore 735 Fort McHenry, Baltimore Harbor 738 Jones's Falls, Baltimore 740 Exchange Place, Baltimore, Maryland 741 The Masonic Temple, Baltimore, Maryland. . . . 742 The Shot-Tower, Baltimore, Maryland 742 Scene on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal 743 The Blind Asylum, Baltimore, Maryland 745 The Eastern High School, Baltimore, Maryland 746 View of a Lake in Druid Hill Park, Baltimore. . 747 Maryland Institute, Baltimore 748 Woodberry, near Druid Hill Park 749 The new City Hall, Baltimore, Maryland 750 Lafayette Square, Baltimore, Maryland 750 .The City Jail, Baltimore, Maryland 752 The Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Maryland... 753 First Presbyterian Church, Baltimore 754 A Tunnel through the Alleghanies 756 Mount Vernon Square, with a view of the Wash- ington Monument, Baltimore, Maryland 758 The Battle Monument, seen from Barnum's Ho- tel, Baltimore 759 The Battle Monument, Baltimore, Maryland . . . 760 The Cathedral, Baltimore, Maryland 760 The Wildey Monument, Baltimore, Maryland. 761 Entrance to Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Mary- land ■. 761 Scene on the Canal, near Harper's Ferry 762 The Bridge at Harper's Ferry 763 View of the Railroad and River, from the Mountains at Harper's Ferry 764 Jefferson's Rock, Harper's Ferry 769 Cumberland Narrows and Mountains 767 Cumberland Viaduct, Maryland 768 Harper's Ferry, Maryland 769 Old John Cupid, a Williamsburg Herb Doctor. 770 Southern Types — Come to Market 771 Southern Types — A Southern Plough Team .... 772 Southern Types — Negro Boys Shelling Peas .... 773 Southern Types — A "likely Girl" with her Baby 775 Southern Types — Catching his Breakfast 776 Southern Types — Negro Shoeblacks 777 Southern Types — A Little Unpleasantness 779 Southern Types — "Going to Church" 780 Southern Types — A Negro Constable 781 Southern Types — The Wolf and the Lamb in Politics 784 Southern Types — Two Veterans discussing the Political Situation 787 The Potomac and Washington, seen from Ar- lington 800 Homeward Bound 801 THE GREAT SOUTH. LOUISIANA PAST AND PRESENT. LOUISIANA to-day is Paradise Lost. J In twenty years it may be Par- adise Regained. It has unlimited, magnificent possibilities. Upon its bayou-penetrated soil, on its rich uplands and its vast prairies, a gigantic struggle is in progress. It is the battle of race with race, of the picturesque and unjust civil- ization of the past with the prosaic and leveling civilization of the pres- ent. For a century and a-half it was coveted by all nations ; sought by those great colonizers of Amer- ica, — the French, the English, the Spaniards. It has been in turn the plaything of monarchs and the bait of adventurers. Its his- tory and tradition are leagued with all that was romantic in Europe and on the Western continent in Bienville, the Founder of New Orleans. the eighteenth Century. From its immense limits outsprang the noble sisterhood of South-western States, whose inexhaustible domain affords an ample refuge for the poor of all the world. A little more than half a century ago the frontier of Louisiana, with the Spanish internal provinces, extended nineteen hundred miles. The territory 2 18 LOUISIANA PAST AND PRESENT. boasted a sea-coast line of five hundred miles on the Pacific Ocean ; drew a boundary line seventeen hundred miles along the edge of the British- American dominions ; thence followed the Mississippi by a comparative course for fourteen hundred miles; fronted the Mexican Gulf for seven hundred miles, and embraced within its limits nearly one million five hundred thousand square miles. Texas was a fragment broken from it. California, Kansas, the Indian Territory, Mis- souri, and Mississippi, were made from it, and still there was an Empire to spare, watered by five of the finest rivers of the world. Indiana, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska were born of it. From French Bienville to American Claiborne the territorial administrations were dramatic, diplomatic, bathed in the atmosphere of conspiracy. Super- stition cast a weird veil of mystery over the great rivers, and Indian legend peopled every nook and cranny of the section with fantastic creations of untu- tored fancy. The humble roof of the log cabin on the banks of the Mississippi covered all the grace and elegance of French society of Louis the Fourteenth's time. Jesuit and Cavalier carried European thought to the Indians. Frenchman and Spaniard, Canadian and Yankee, intrigued and planned on Louisiana soil with an' energy and fierceness displayed nowhere else in our early history. What wonder, after this cosmopolitan record, that even the frag- ment of Louisiana which has retained the name — this remnant embracing but a thirtieth of the area of the original province — yet still covering more than forty thousand square miles of prairie, alluvial, and sea marsh — what wonder that it is so richly varied, so charming, so unique ? Six o'clock, on Saturday evening, in the good old city of New Orleans. From the tower of the Cathedral St. Louis the tremulous harmony of bells drifts lightly on the cool spring breeze, and hovers like a benediction over the antique buildings, the blossoms and hedges in the square, and the broad and swiftly- flowing river. The bells are calling all in the parish to offer masses for the repose of the soul of the Cathedral's founder, Don Andre Almonaster, once upon a time "perpetual regidor" of New Orleans. Every Saturday eve, for three-quarters of a century, the solemn music from the Cathedral belfry has brought the good Andre to mind ; and the mellow notes, as we hear them, seem to call up visions of the quaint past. Don Andre gave the Cathe- dral its dower in 1789, while the colony was under the domi- nation of Charles the Fourth of Spain. The original edifice is gone now, and in its stead, since 1850, has stood a com- posite structure which is a monu- The Cathedral St. Louis-New Orleans ment tO bad taste. Venerable THE OLD CATHEDRAL IN NEW ORLEANS. 19 "A blind beggar hears the rustling of her gown, and stretches out his trembling hand for alms." and imposing was the old Cathedral, with its melange of rustic, Tuscan, and Roman Doric styles of architecture; with its towers crowned with low spires, and its semicircular arched door, with clustered columns on either side at the front; and many a grand pageant had it seen. Under the pavement of the Cathedral lies buried Father Antonio de Sedella, a Spanish priest, who, in his time, was one of the celebrities of New Orleans, and the very recollection of whom calls up memories of the Inquisition, of intrigue and mystery. Father Antonio's name is sacred in the Louisiana capital, nevertheless; for although an enraged Spanish Governor once expelled him for presuming to establish the Inquisition in the colony, he came back, and flour- ished until 1837, under American rule, dying at the age of ninety, in the odor of sanctity, mourned by the women and worshiped by the children. Now the sunlight mingles with the breeze bewitchingly ; the old square, the gray and red buildings with massive walls and encircling balconies, the great door of the new Cathedral, all are lighted up. See ! a black-robed woman, with downcast eyes, passes silently over the holy threshold ; a blind beggar, with a parti-colored handkerchief wound about his weather-beaten head, hears the rustling of her gown, and stretches out his trembling hand for alms ; a black girl looks wonderingly into the holy-water font; the market-women hush their chatter as they near the portal; a mulatto fruit- seller is lounging in the shade of an ancient arch, beneath the old Spanish Council House. This is not an American scene, and one almost persuades himself that he is in Europe, although ten min- utes of rapid walking will bring him to streets and squares as generically American as any in Boston, Chicago, or St. Louis. The city of New Orleans is fruitful in surprises. In a morning's promenade, which shall not extend over an hundred acres, one may encounter the civilizations of Paris, of Madrid, of Messina; may Stumble Upon the Semi-barbaric life Of "A black girl looks wonderingly into the holy-water font' 20 NAPOLEON THE GREAT AND LOUISIANA. the negro and the native Indian; may see the overworked American in his business establishment and in his elegant home; and may find, strangest of all, that each and every foreign type moves in a special current of its own, mingling little with the American, which is dominant: in it, yet not of it — as the Gulf Stream in the ocean. But the older colonial landmarks in the city, as throughout the State and the Mississippi Valley, are fast disappearing. The imprint of French manners and customs will long remain, however ; for it was produced by two periods of domination. The hatred of Napoleon the Great for the English was the motive which led to the cession of Louisiana to the United States: had he not come upon the stage of European politics, the Valley of the Father of Waters might have been French to-day ; and both sides of Canal street would have reminded the European of Paris and Bordeaux. The French Emperor, fearful lest the cannon of the English fleets might thunder at the gates of New Orleans when he was at war with England, at the beginning of this century, sold the " Earthly Paradise " to the United States. " The English," said the man of destiny, " shall not have the Mississippi, which they covet." And they did not get it. Seventy years ago the tide of crude, hasty American progress rushed in upon the lovely lowlands bordering the river and the Gulf; and it is astonishing that even a few landmarks of French and Spanish rule are left high above the flood. Yonder is the archbishop's palace: enter the street at one side of it, and you seem in a foreign land; in the avenue at the other you catch a glimpse of the rush and hurry of American traffic of to-day along the levee ; you see the sharp-featured " river-hand, " hear his uncouth parlance, and recognize him for your countryman; you see huge piles of cotton bales; you hear the monotonous The Archbishop's Paiace-New Orleans. whistle of the gigantic white steamers arriving and departing; and the irrepressible negro slouches sullenly by with his hands in his pockets, and his cheeks distended with tobacco. You must know much of the past of New Orleans and Louisiana to thor- oughly understand their present. New England sprang from the Puritan mould; Louisiana from the French and Spanish civilizations of the eighteenth century. The one stands erect, vibrating with life and activity, austere and ambitious, upon its rocky shores ; the other lies prone, its rich vitality dormant and passive, luxurious and unambitious, on the glorious shores of the tropic Gulf. The former was Anglo-Saxon and simple even to Spartan plainness at its outset ; the latter was Franco- Spanish, subtle in the graces of the elder societies, self- indulgent and romantic at its beginning. And New Orleans was no more and no less the opposite of Boston in 1773 than a century later. It was a hardy rose which dared to blush, in the New England even of Governor Winthrop's time, BIENVILLE AND HIS COLONY. 21 beiore June had dowered the land with beauty ; it was an o 'er modest Choctaw rose in the Louisiana of De Soto's epoch which did not shower its petals on the fragrant turf in February. * In Louisiana summer lingers long after the rude winter of the North has done its work of devastation; the sleeping passion of the climate only wakes now and then into the anger of lightning or the terrible tears of the thunder-storm; there are no chronic March horrors of deadly wind or transpiercing cold ; the sun is kind ; the days are radiant. Wandering from the - ancient Place d' Armes, now dignified with the appel- lation of " Jackson Square," through the older quarters of the city, one may readily recall the curious, changeful past of the commonwealth and its cos- mopolitan capital ; for there is a visible reminder at many a corner and on many a wall. It requires but little effort of imagination to restore the city to our view as it was in 1723, five years after Bienville, the second French Governor of Louisiana, had undertaken the dubious project of establishing a capital on the treacherous Mississippi's bank. Discouraged and faint almost unto death, after the terrible sufferings which he and his fellow- colonists had undergone at Biloxi, a bleak fort in a wilderness, he had dragged his weary limbs to the place on the river where New Orleans stands to-day, and there defiantly unfurled the flag of France, and made his last stand ! Bienville was a man of vast courage and supreme daring ; he had been drifting along the Mississippi, through the stretches of wilderness, since 1699; had vanquished Indian and beast of the forest; was skilled in the lore of the backwoodsman, as became hardy son of hardier Canadian father. When he succeeded the alert and courageous Sauvolle as Governor of the colony, which had then become indisputably French, he entered upon a period of harrowing and petty vexations. He had to keep faithful and persistent watch at the entrance of the river from the Gulf, for, during many years England, France, and Spain were at war, and the Spaniards ever kept a jealous eye on French progress in America. The colony languished, and was inhabited by only a few vagabond Canadians, some dubious characters from France, and the Government officers. On the 14th of September, 17 12, Louis the Magnificent granted to Anthony Crozat, a merchant prince, the Rothschild of the day, the exclusive privilege, for fifteen years, of trading in all the indefinitely bounded territory claimed by France as Louisiana. Crozat obtained with his charter the additional privilege of sending a ship once a year for negroes to Africa, and of owning and working all the mines that might be discovered in the colony, provided that one-fourth of their proceeds should be reserved for the king. One ship-load of slaves to every two ship-loads of independent colonists was the proportion established for emigration to Louisiana more than a century and a half ago. Slavery was well begun. In 171 3 Bienville was displaced to make room for Cadillac, sent from France as Governor ; a rude, quarrelsome man, who saw no good in the new colony, and hated and feared Bienville. But Cadillac's daughter loved the quondam Governor whom her father's arrival had degraded ;'and to save her from a wasted 22 LOUISIANA AND JOHN LAW: life, the proud Cadillac offered her in marriage to Bienville. The latter did not reciprocate the maid's affection, and Cadillac, burning with rage, and anxious to avenge himself for this humiliation, sent Bienville with a small force on a dangerous expedition among the hostile Indians. He went, returning success- ful and unharmed. Cadillac's temper soon caused his own downfall, and others, equally unsuccessful, succeeded him. Crozat's schemes failed, and he relin- quished the colony. And then ? Louisiana the indefinite and unfortunate fell into the clutches of John Law. The regent Duke of Orleans had decided to "foster and preserve the colony," and in 1717 gave it to the "Company of the Indies," a com- mercial oligarchy into which Law had blown the breath of life. The Royal. Bank sprang into existence under Law's enchanted wand ; the charter of the Mississippi Company was registered at Paris, and the exclusive privilege of trading with Louisiana, during twenty-five years, was granted to that company. France was flooded with rumors that Louisiana was the long-sought Eldo- rado; dupes were made by millions; princes waited in John Law's ante-rooms in Paris. Then came the revulsion, the overturn of Law. Louisiana was no longer represented as the new Atlantis, but as the very mouth of the pit; and it was colonized only by thieves, murderers, beggars, and gypsies, gathered up by force throughout France and expelled from the kingdom. After the bursting of the Law bubble, Bienville was once more appointed Governor of Louisiana, and his favorite town was selected as the capital of the territory. The seat of government was removed from New Biloxi to New Orleans, as the city was called in honor of the title of the regent of France. Let us look at the New Orleans of the period between 1723 and 1730. Imagine a low-lying swamp, overgrown with a dense ragged forest, cut up into a thousand miniature islands by ruts and pools filled with stagnant water. Fancy a small cleared space along the superb river channel, a space often inundated, but partially reclaimed from the circumambient swamp, and divided into a host of small correct squares, each exactly like its neighbor, and so ditched within and without as to render wandering after nightfall perilous. The ditch which ran along the four sides of every square in the city was filled with a composite of black mud and refuse, which, under a burning sun, sent forth a deadly odor. Around the city was a palisade and a gigantic moat ; tall grasses grew up to the doors of the houses, and the hoarse chant of myriads of frogs mingled with the vesper songs of the colonists. Away where the waters of the Mississippi and of Lake Pontchartrain had formed a high ridge of land, was the " Leper's Bluff; " and among the reeds from the city thitherward always lurked a host of criminals. The negro, fresh from the African coast, then strode defiantly along the low shores by the stream ; he had not learned the crouching, abject gait which a century of slavery afterwards gave him. He was punished if he rebelled; but he kept his dignity. In the humble dwellings which occupied the squares there were noble manners and graces; all the traditions and each finesse of the time had not been forgotten in the voyage from France : and airy gentlemen NEW ORLEANS FROM 1723 TO 1730. 23 and stately dames promenaded in this queer, swamp-surrounded, river-endan- gered fortress, with Parisian grace and ease. There were few churches, and the colonists gathered about great wooden crosses in the open air for the ceremonials of their religion There were twice as many negroes as white people in the city. Domestic animals were so scarce that he who injured or fatally wounded a horse or a cow was punished with death. Ursuline nuns and Jesuit fathers glided about the streets upon their sacred missions. The principal avenues within the fortified enclosure were named after princes of the royal blood — Maine, Conde, Conti, Toulouse, and Bourbon; Chartres street took its name from that of the son of the regent of Orleans, and an avenue was named in honor of Governor Bienville. Along the river, for many miles beyond the city, marquises and other noble representatives of aristocratic French families had established plantations, and lived luxurious lives of self-indulgence, without especially contributing to the wealth of the colony. Jews were banished from the bounds of Louisiana. Sun- days and holidays were strictly observed, and negroes found working on Sunday were confiscated. No worship save the Catholic was allowed ; white subjects were forbidden to marry or to live in concubinage with slaves, and masters were not allowed to force their slaves into any marriage against their will; the children of a negro slave-husband and a negro free-wife were all free ; if the mother was a slave and the husband was free, the children shared the condition of the mother. Slaves were forbidden to gather in crowds, by day or night, under any pretext, and if found assembled, were punished by the whip, or branded with the mark of the flower-de-luce, or executed. The slaves all wore marks or badges, and were not permitted to sell produce of any kind without the written consent of their masters. The protection and security of slaves in old age was well provided for; Christian negroes were permitted burial in consecrated ground. The slave who produced a bruise, or the " shedding of blood in the face," on the person of his master, or any of the family to which he appertained, by striking them, was condemned to death ; and the runaway slave, when caught, after the first offence, had his ears cut off, and was branded ; after the second, was ham- strung and again branded ; after the third, was condemned to death. Slaves who had been set free were still bound to show the profoundest respect to their "former masters, their widows and children," under pain of severe penalties. Slave husbands and wives were not permitted to be seized and sold separately when belonging to the same master; and whenever slaves were appointed tutors to their masters' children, they " were held and regarded as being thereby set free to all intents and purposes." The Choctaws and Chickasaws, neighbors to the colonists, were waging destructive war against each other; hurricanes regularly destroyed all the engineering works erected by the French Government at the mouths of the Mississippi ; and expeditions against the Natchez and the Chickasaws, arrivals of ships from France with loads of troops, provisions, and wives for the col- onists, the building of levees along the river front near New Orleans, and the 24 MEMORIALS OF FRENCH DOMINATION. occasional deposition from and re-instatement in office of Bienville, were the chief events in those crude days of the beginning. I like to stand in these old Louisiana by-ways, and contemplate the progress of French civilization in them, now that it has been displaced by a newer one. I like to remember that New Orleans was named after the regent of France ; that the beautiful lake lying between the city and the Gulf was christened after the splendid Pontchartrain, him of the lean and hungry look, and of the " smile of death," him to whom the heart of Louis the Fourteenth was always open ; and that the other lake, near the city, was named in memory of Maurepas, the wily adviser of Louis the Sixteenth and unlucky. I like to remember that Louisiana itself owes its pretentious name to the devotion of its discoverer to the great monarch whom the joyous La Salle could not refrain from calling " the most puissant, most high, most invincible and victorious prince." I like to picture to myself Allouez and Father Dablon, Marquette and Joliet, La Salle, Iberville, and Bienville, following in the footsteps of Garay and Leon, Cordova and Narvaez, De Vaca and Friar Mark ; and finally tracing and identifying the current of the wild, mysterious Mississippi, which had been but a tradition for ages, until every nook and cranny, from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico, re-echoed to French words of command and prayer, as well as to gayest of French chansons. Let us take another picture of New Orleans, from 1792 to 1797, thirty years after the King of France had bestowed upon " his cousin of Spain" the splendid gift of Louisiana, ceding it, "without any exception or reservation whatever, from the pure impulse of his generous heart." That a country should, by a simple stroke of the pen, strip herself of possessions extending from the mouth of the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, is almost incomprehensible. France had perhaps already learned that her people had not in their breasts that eternal hunger for travel, that feverish unrest, which has made the Anglo- Saxon the most successful of colonists, and has given half the world to him and to his descendants. But the French had nobly done the work of pioneering. Sauvolle, grimly defying death at Biloxi ; Bienville, urging the adventurous prow of his ship through the reeds at the Mississippi's mouth, are among the most heroic figures in the early history of the country. New Orleans from 1 792 to 1 797 ? Its civilization has changed ; it is fitted into the iron groove of Spanish domination, and has become bigoted, narrow, and hostile to innovation. Along the streets, now lined with low, flat- roofed, balconied houses, out of whose walls peep little hints of Moorish architec- ture, stalks the lean and haughty Spanish cavalier, with his hand upon his sword ; and the quavering voice of the night watchman, equipped with his traditional spear and lantern, is heard through the night hours proclaiming that all is " serene," although at each corner lurks a fugitive from justice, waiting only until the watchman has passed to commit new crime. Six thousand souls now inhabit the city , there are hints in the air of a plague, and the Intendant has written home to the Council of State that " some affirm that the yellow fever is to be feared." NEW ORLEANS UNDER SPANISH RULE. 2$ The priests and friars are half-mad with despair because the mixed popula- tion pays so very little attention to its salvation from eternal damnation, and because the roystering officers and soldiers of the regiment of Louisiana admit that they have not been to mass for three years. The French hover about the few taverns and coffee-houses permitted in the city, and mutter rebellion against the Spaniard, whom they have always disliked. The Spanish and French schools are in perpetual collision ; so are the manners, customs, diets, and languages of the respective nations. The Ursuline convent has refused to admit Spanish women who desire to become nuns, unless they learn the French language ; and the ruling Governor, Baron Carondelet, has such small faith in the loyalty of the colonists that he has had the fortifications con- structed with a view not only to protecting himself against attacks from without, but from within. The city has suddenly taken on a wonderful aspect of barrack-yard and camp. On the side fronting the Mississippi are two small forts commanding the road and the river. On their strong and solid brick-coated parapets, Spanish sentinels are languidly pacing ; and cannon look out ominously over the walls. Between these two forts, and so arranged as to cross its fires with them, fronting on the main street of the town, is a great battery commanding the river. Then there are forts at each of the salient angles of the long square forming the city, and a third a little beyond them — all armed with eight guns each. From one of these tiny forts to another, noisy dragoons are always clattering; officers are parading to and fro ; government officials block the way ; and the whole town looks like a Spanish garrison gradually growing, by some mysterious process of transforma- tion, into a French city. Yet the Spanish civilization does not and can not take a strong hold there. Spain does not give to New Orleans so many lasting historic souvenirs as France. Barracks, petty forts, dragoon stables, and many other quaint build- ings finally disappear, leaving only the "Principal," next the Cathedral, its fellow on the other side of the old church, some aged private dwellings, ? ^* -^-^s rapidly decaying, and a delicate imprint " Sorae a s ed p rfvate dwellings, rapidly decaying." and suggestion of former Spanish rule scattered throughout various quarters of the city. But Spanish society still lingers, and in some parts of the old town the many-balconied, thick-walled houses for the moment mislead the visitor into the belief that he is in Spain until he hears the French language, or the curious Creole patois everywhere about him. Let us take another look at the past of New Orleans. The Spaniard has gone his ways ; Ulloa and O'Reilly, Unzaga, Galvez, and Miro, have held their governorships under the Spanish King. Carondelet, Gayoso, Casa-Calvo, and 26 EXIT SPANIARD ENTER AMERICAN. A brace of old Spanish Governors. — From portraits owned by Hon. Charles Gayarre, of New Orleans. Salcedo alike have vanished. There have been insurrections on the part of the French ; many longings after the old banner ; and at last the government of France determines once more to pos- sess the grand territory. Spain well knows that it is useless to oppose this decision ; is not sorry, withal, to be rid of a colony so difficult to govern, and so near to the quarrelsome Americans, who have many times threatened to take New Orleans by force if any far- ther commercial regulations are made by Spaniards at the Mississippi's outlet. Napoleon the Great has three things to gain by the possession of the Ter- ritory : the command of the Gulf; the supply of the islands owned by France ; and a place of settlement for sur- plus population. So that, at St. Ildefonso, on the morning of October first, 1800, a treaty of cession is signed by Spain, its third article reading as fol- lows : " His Catholic Majesty promises and engages, on his part, to retrocede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein relative to His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma — the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it ; and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states." This treaty is kept secret while the French fit out an expedition to sail and take sudden possession of the reacquired Territory; but the United States has sharp ears ; and Minister Livingston besets the cabinet of the First Consul at Paris ; fights a good battle of diplomacy ; is dignified as well as aggressive ; wins his cause; and Napoleon tells his counselors, on Easter Sunday, 1803, his resolve in the following words : " I know the full value of Louisiana, and I have been desirous of repairing the fault of the French negotiator who abandoned it in 1763 ; a few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me, it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it than to those to whom I wish to deliver it." And it is forthwith ceded to the United States, in 1803, on the "tenth day of Floreal, in the eleventh year of the French republic," in consideration of the payment by our government of sixty millions of francs. Half a generation brings the conflicting national elements into something like harmony, and makes Louisiana a territory containing fifty thousand souls. The first steamboat ploughs through the waters of the Mississippi, but more stirring events also take place. In 18 12 Congress declares that war exists between Great Britain and the United States, and early in 1 8 1 5 General Andrew Jackson wins a decisive victory over the English arms, on the lowlands near New Orleans. Fifteen thousand skilled British soldiers are beaten off and sent home GENERAL JACKSON'S TRIUMPH. 27 in disorder by the raw troops of the river States, by the stalwart Kentuckians, the hunters of Tennessee, the rough, hard-handed sons of Illinois, the dashing horsemen of Mississippi, and the handsome and athletic Creoles of Louisiana. When the victorious Americans return to New Orleans, a grand parade is held in the square henceforth to commemorate the name of Jackson, and where «wstw>;sMiov-0 : "And where to-day stands a fine Equestrian Statue of the great General." to-day stands a fine equestrian statue of the great general. In front of old Almonaster's cathedral the troops are drawn up in order of review. Under a triumphal arch, from which glittering lines of bayonets stretch to the river, General Jackson, the hero of the Chalmette battle-field, passes, and bows low his laurel-crowned head to receive the apostolic benediction of the venerable Abbe. II. THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW ORLEANS — THE REVOLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS. LET me show you some pictures from the New Orleans of to-day. The night- mare of civil war has passed away, leaving the memory of visions which it is not my province— *- certainly not my wish — to renew. The Crescent City has grown so that Claiborne and Jackson could no longer recognize it. It was gaining immensely in wealth and population until the social and political revolutions following the war came with their terrible, crushing weight, and the work of re-establishing the commerce of the State has gone on under conditions most disheartening and depressing; though trial seems to have brought out a reserve of energy of which its possessors had never suspected themselves capable. Step off from Canal street, that avenue of compromises which separates the French and the American quarters, some bright February morning, and you will at once find yourself in a foreign atmosphere. A walk into the French section enchants you ; the characteristics of an American city vanish ; this might be Toulouse, or Bordeaux, or Marseilles ! The houses are all of stone or brick, stuccoed or painted; the windows of each story descend to the floors, opening, like doors, upon airy, pretty balconies, protected by iron railings; quaint dormer windows peer from the great roofs; the street doors are massive, and large enough to admit carriages into the stone-paved court-yards, from which stairways communicate with the upper apartments. Sometimes, through a portal opened by a slender, dark-haired, bright-eyed Creole girl in black, you catch a glimpse of a garden, delicious with daintiest blossoms, purple and red and white gleaming from vines clambering along a gray wall ; rose-bushes, with the grass about them strewn with petals ; bosquets, green and symmetrical ; luxuriant hedges, arbors, and refuges, trimmed by skillful hands; banks of verbenas; bewitching profusion of peach and apple blossoms ; the dark green of the magnolia ; in a quiet corner, the rich glow of the orange in its nest among the thick leaves of its parent tree ; the palmetto, the catalpa; — a mass of bloom which laps the senses in slumbrous delight. Suddenly the door closes, and your paradise is lost, while Eve remains inside the gate ! From the balconies hang, idly flapping in the breeze, little painted tin placards, announcing " Furnished apartments to rent !" Alas ! in too many of the old mansions you are ushered by a gray-faced woman clad in deepest black, with little children clinging jealously to her skirts, and you instinctively PROMENADES IN THE FRENCH QUARTER. 20, note by her manners and her speech that she did not rent rooms before the war. You pity her, and think of the multitudes of these gray-faced women; of the numbers of these silent, almost desolate houses. Now and then, too, a knock at the porter's lodge will bring to your view a bustling Creole dame, fat and fifty, redolent of garlic and new wine, and robust in voice as in person. How cheerily she retails her misfortunes, as if they were blessings! "An invalid husband — voyez-vous fa! Auguste a Confederate, of course — and is yet; but the pauvre garfon is unable to work, and we are very poor !" All this merrily, and in high key, while the young negress — the housemaid — stands lazily listening to her mistress's French, nervously polishing with her huge lips the handle of the broom she holds in her broad, corded hands. Business here, as in foreign cities, has usurped only half the domain ; the shopkeepers live over their shops, and communicate to their commerce somewhat of the aroma of home. The dainty salon, where the ladies' hairdresser holds sway, has its doorway enlivened by the baby; the grocer and his wife, the milliner and his daughter, are behind the counters in their respective shops. Here you pass a little cafe, with the awning drawn down, and, peering in, can distinguish half-a-dozen bald, rotund old boys drinking their evening absinthe, and playing picquet and vingt-et-un, exactly as in France. Here, perhaps, is a touch of Americanism : a lazy negro, recumbent in a cart, with his eyes languidly closed, and one dirty foot sprawled on the sidewalk. No ! even he responds to your question in French, which he speaks poorly though fluently. French signs abound ; there is a warehouse for wines and brandies from the heart of Southern France ; here is a funeral notice, printed in deepest black : " The friends of Jean Baptiste," etc., "are respectfully invited to be present at the funeral, which will take place at pre- cisely four O'clock, On the ." The notice is "A lazy negro, recumbent in a cart." on black-edged note-paper, nailed to a post. Here pass a group of French negroes, the buxom girls dressed with a certain grace, and with gay ly- colored handkerchiefs wound about an unpardonable luxuriance of wool. Their cavaliers are clothed mainly in antiquated garments rapidly approaching the level of rags ; and their patois resounds for half-a-dozen blocks. Turning into a side street leading off from Royal, or Chartres, or Bourgogne, or Dauphin, or Rampart streets, you come upon an odd little shop, where the cobbler sits at his work in the shadow of a grand old Spanish arch; or upon a nest of curly-headed negro babies ensconced on a tailor's bench at the window of a fine ancient mansion ; or you look into a narrow room, glass-fronted, and see a long and well-spread table, surrounded by twenty Frenchmen and French- women, all talking at once over their eleven o'clock breakfast. Or you may enter aristocratic restaurants, where the immaculate floors are only surpassed in cleanliness by the spotless linen of the tables ; where a 30 PICTURES FROM THE STREETS. solemn dignity, as befits the refined pleasure of dinner, prevails, and where the waiter gives you the names of the dishes in both languages, and bestows on you a napkin large enough to serve you as a shroud, if this strange melange of French and Southern cookery should give you a fatal indigestion. The French families of position usually dine at four, as the theatre begins promptly at seven, both on Sundays and week days. There is the play-bill, in French, of course ; and there are the typical Creole ladies, stopping for a moment to glance at it as they wend their way shopward. For it is the shopping hour ; from eleven to two the streets of the old quarter are alive with elegantly, yet soberly attired ladies, always in couples, as French etiquette exacts that the unmarried lady shall never promenade without her maid or her mother. One sees beautiful faces on the Rue Royale (Royal street), and in the balconies and lodges of the Opera House ; sometimes, too, in the cool of the evening, there are fascinating little groups of the daughters of Creoles on the balconies, gayly chatting while the veil of the twilight is torn away, and the glory of the Southern moonlight is showered over the quiet streets. The Creole ladies are not, as a rule, so highly educated as the gracious daughters of the "American quarter;" but they have an indefinable grace, a savoir in dress, and a piquant and alluring charm in person and conversation, which makes them universal favorites in society. One of the chiefest of their attractions is the staccato and queerly-colored English, really French in idea and accent, which many of them speak. At the Saturday matinees, in the opera or comedy season at the French Theatre, you will see hundreds of the ladies of " the -quarter ;" and rarely can a finer grouping of lovely brunettes be found ; lowhere a more tastefully - dressed and elegantly - mannered assembly. The quiet which has reigned in the old French section since the war ended is, per- haps, abnormal ; but it would be difficult to find village streets more tranquil than are the main avenues of this foreign quarter after nine at night. The long, splendid stretches of Rampart and Esplanade streets, with their rows of trees planted in the centre of the driveways, — the whitewashed trunks giving a fine effect of green and white, — are peace- ful ; the negro nurses stroll on the sidewalks, chattering in quaint French to the little children of their former masters — now their " employers." There is no attempt on the part of the French or Spanish families to inaugurate stvle and fashion in the city; quiet home ' The negro nurses stroll on the sidewalks, chattering . ' , V i • ' i jL „„«.„:_„ ~f in quaint French to the little children." society, match- making and marrying 01 e ladies < SOCIETY AND CHARACTER. 31 daughters, games and dinner parties, church, shopping, and calls in simple and unaffected manner, content them. The majority of the people in the whole quarter seem to have a total disregard of the outside world, and when one hears them discussing the distracted condition of local politics, one can almost fancy them gossiping on matters entirely foreign to them, instead of on those vitally connected with their lives and property. ThTey live very much among themselves. French by nature and training, they get but a faint reflection of the excitements in these United States. It is also aston- ishing to see how little the ordinary American citizen of New Orleans knows of his French neighbors; how ill he ap- preciates them. It is hard for him to talk five minutes about them without saying, "Well, we have a non- progres- sive element here ; it will not be con- verted." Having said which, he will perhaps paint in -glowing colors the vir- tues and excellences of his French neighbors, though he cannot forgive them for taking so little interest in public affairs. Here we are again at the Arch- bishop's Palace, once the home of the Ursuline nuns, who now have, further down the river, a splendid new convent and school, surrounded by beautiful gardens. This ancient edifice was com- pleted by the French Government in 1733, and is the oldest in Louisiana. Its Tuscan composite architecture, its porter's lodge, and its interior garden "The interior garden, with its curious shrine." with its curious shrine, make it well worth preserving, even when the tide of progress shall have reached this nook on Conde street. The Ursuline nuns occupied this site for nearly a century, and it was abandoned by them only because they were tempted, by the great rise in real estate in that vicinity, to sell. The new convent is richly endowed, and is one of the best seminaries in the South. Many of the owners of property in the vicinity of the Archbishop s Palace have removed to France, since the war, — doing nothing for the benefit of the metropolis which gave them their fortunes. The rent of these solidly-con- structed old houses once brought them a sum which, when translated from dollars into francs, was colossal, and which the Parisian tradesmen tucked away into their strong boxes. Now they get almost nothing ; the houses are mainly vacant. With the downfall of slavery, and the advent of reconstruction, came such radical changes in Louisiana politics and society that those belonging to the ancien regime who could flee, fled ; and a prominent historian and gen- 32 THE REVOLUTION — ITS EFFECTS. The New Ursuline Convent — New Orleans. tleman of most honorable Creole descent told me that, among his immense acquaintance, he did not know a single person who would not leave the State if means were at hand. The grooves in which society in Louisiana and New Orleans had run before the late struggle were so broken that even a resi- dence in the State was distasteful to him and the so- ciety he represent- ed ; since the late war, he said, 500 years seemed to have passed over the common- wealth. The Italy of Augustus was not more dissimilar to the Italy of to-day than is the Louisiana of to-day to the Louisiana before the war. There was no longer the spirit to maintain the grand, unbounded hospitality once so charac- teristic of the South. Formerly, the guest would have been presented to planters who would have entertained him for days, in royal style, and who would have sent him forward in their own carriages, commended to the hos- pitality of their neighbors. Now these same planters were living upon corn and pork. "Most of these people," said the gentleman, "have vanished from their homes; and I actually know ladies of culture and refinement, whose incomes were gigantic before the war, who are 'washing' for their daily bread. The misery, the despair, in hundreds of cases, are beyond belief." "Many lovely plantations," said he, "are entirely deserted; the negroes will not remain upon them, but flock into the cities, or work on land which they have purchased for themselves." He would not believe that the free negro did as much work for himself as he formerly did for his master. He considered the labor system at the present time terribly onerous for planters. The negroes were only profitable as field hands when they worked on shares, the planters furnishing them land, tools, horses, mules, and advancing them food. He said that he would not himself hire a negro even at small wages; he did not believe it would be profitable. The discouragement of the natives of Louisiana, he believed, arose in large degree from the difficulty of obtaining capital with which to begin anew. He knew instances where only $10,000 or $20,000 were needed for the improvement of water power, or of lands which would net hundreds of thousands. He had himself written repeatedly, urging people at the North to invest, but they would not, and alleged that they should not alter their deter- mination so long as the present political condition prevailed. He added, with great emphasis, that he did not think the people of the North would believe a statement which should give a faithful transcript of the present condition of affairs in Louisiana. The natives of the State could hardly THE SHADOW OVER LOUISIANA. 33 realize it themselves ; and it was not to be expected that strangers, of differ- ing habits of life and thought, should do it. He did not blame the negro for his present incapacity, as he considered the black man an inferior being, peculiarly unfitted by ages of special training for what he was now called upon to undertake. The negro was, he thought, by nature, kindly, gen- erous, courteous, susceptible of civilization only to a certain degree ; devoid of moral consciousness, and usually, of course, ignorant. Not one out of a hundred, the whole State through, could write his name; and there had been fifty-five in one single Legislature who could neither read nor write. There was, according to him, scarcely a single man of color in the last Legislature who was competent in any large degree. The Louisiana white people were in such terror of the negro government that they would rather accept any other despotism. A military dictator would be far preferable to them ; they would go anywhere to escape the ignominy to which they were at present subjected. The crisis was demoralizing everyone.' Nobody worked with a will ; every one was in debt. There was not a single piece of property in the city of New Orleans in which he would at present invest, although one could now buy for $5,000 or $10,000 property originally worth $50,000. He said it would not pay to purchase, the taxes were so enormous. The majority of the great plantations had been deserted on account of the excessive taxation. Only those familiar with the real causes of the despair could imagine how deep it was. Benefit by immigration, he maintained, was impossible under the present regime. New-comers mingled in the distracted politics in such a manner as to neglect the development of the country. Thousands of the citizens were fleeing to Texas (and I could vouch for the correctness of that assertion). He said that the mass of immigrants became easily discouraged and broken down, because they began by working harder than the climate would permit. In some instances, Germans on coming into the State had been ordered by organizations both of white and colored native workmen not to labor so much daily, as they were setting a dangerous example ! Still, he believed that almost any white man would do as much work as three negroes. He hardly thought that in fifty years there would be any negroes in Louisiana. The race was rapidly diminishing. Planters who had owned three or four hun- dred slaves before the war, had kept a record of their movements, and found that more than half of them had died of want and neglect. The negroes did not know how to care for themselves. The women now on the same plantations where they had been owned as slaves gave birth to only one child where they had previously borne three. They would not bear children as of old; the negro population was rapidly decreasing. Gardening, he said, had proved an un- profitable experiment, because of the thievish propensities of the negro. All the potatoes, turnips, and cabbages consumed by the white people of New Orleans came from the West Such was the testimony of one who, although by no means unfair or bitterly partisan, perhaps allowed his discouragement to color all his views. He frankly 3 34 DISCOURAGEMENT AND DESPAIR. accepted the results of the war, so far as the abolition of slavery and the consequent ruin of his own and thousands of other fortunes were concerned ; he has, indeed, borne with all the evils which have arisen out of reconstruction, without murmuring until now, when he and thousands of his fellows are pushed to the wall. He is the representative of a very large class ; the discouragement is no dream. It is written on the faces of the citizens ; you may read and realize it there. Ah! these faces, these faces; — expressing deeper pain, profounder discontent than were caused by the iron fate of the few years of the war ! One sees them everywhere ; on the street, at the theatre, in the salon, in the cars ; and pauses for a moment, struck with the expression of entire despair — of complete helpless- ness, which has possessed their features. Sometimes the owners of the faces are one-armed and otherwise crippled ; sometimes they bear no wounds or marks ot wounds, and are in the prime and fullness of life ; but the look is there still. Now and then it is controlled by a noble will, the pain of which it tells having been trampled under the feet of a great energy ; but it is always there. The struggle is over, peace has been declared, but a generation has been doomed. The past has given to the future the dower of the present ; there seems only a dead level of uninspiring struggle for those going out, and but small hope for those coming in. That is what the faces say ; that is the burden of their sadness. These are not of the loud-mouthed and bitter opponents of everything tend- ing to reconsolidate the Union ; these are not they who will tell you that some day the South will be united once more, and will rise in strength and strike a blow for freedom ; but they are the payers of the price. The look is on the faces of the men who wore the swords of generals who led in disastrous measures; on the faces of women who have lost husbands, children, lovers, fortunes, homes, and comfort for evermore. The look is on the faces of the strong fighters, thinkers, and controllers of the Southern mind and heart; and here in Louisiana it will not brighten, because the wearers know that the great evils of disorganized labor, impoverished society, scattered families, race legislation, retributive tyranny and terrorism, with the power, like Nemesis of old, to wither and blast, leave no hope for this generation. Heaven have mercy on them ! Their fate is too utterly inevitable not to command the strongest sympathy. Of course, in the French quarter, there are multitudes of negroes who speak both French and English in the quaintest, most outlandish fashion; eliding whole syllables which seem necessary to sense, and breaking into extravagant excla- mations on the slightest pretext. The French of the negroes is very much like that of young children; spo"ken far from plainly, but with a pretty grace which accords poorly with the exteriors of the speakers. The negro women, young and old, wander about the streets bareheaded and barearmed; now tug- ging their mistresses' children, now carrying huge baskets on their heads, and walking under their heavy burdens with the gravity of queens. Now and then one sees a mulatto girl hardly less fair than the brown maid he saw NEGRO CUSTOMS AND MANNERS. 35 at Sorrento, or in the vine-covered cottage at the little mountain town near Rome ; now a giant matron, black as the tempest, and with features as pro- nounced in savagery as any of her Congo ancestors. But the negroes, taken as a whole, seem somewhat shuffling and disor- ganized; and apart from the statuesque old house and body servants, who appear to have caught some dignity from their masters, they are by no means inviting. They gather in groups at the street corners just at nightfall, .and while they chatter like monkeys, even about politics, they gesticulate violently. They live without much work, for their wants are few ; and two days' labor in a week, added to the fat roosters and turkeys that will walk into their clutches, keeps them in bed and board. They find ample amusement in the " heat o' the sun," the passers-by, and tobacco. There are families of color noticeable for "And while they chatter like monkeys, even about politics, they gesticulate violently,'' intelligence and accomplishments , but, as a rule, the negro ot the French quarter is thick-headed, light-hearted, improvident, and not too conscientious. Perhaps one of the most patent proofs of the poverty now so bitterly felt among the hitherto well-to-do families in New Orleans was apparent in the suspension of the opera in the winter of 1873. Heretofore the Crescent City has rejoiced in brilliant seasons, both the French and Americans uniting in sub- scriptions sufficient to bring to them artists of unrivaled talent and culture. But opera entailed too heavy an expense, when the people who usually supported it were prostrate under the hands of plunderers, and a comedy company from the Paris theatres took its place upon the lyric stage. The French Opera House is a handsomely arranged building of modern construction, at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse streets. The interior is elegantly decorated, and now during the season of six months the salle is nightly visited by hundreds of the subscribers, who take tickets for the whole season, and by the city's floating population. Between each act of the pieces all the men in the theatre rise, stalk 36 THE OPERA IN NEW ORLEANS. out, puff cigarettes, and sip iced raspberry- water and absinthe in the cafes, returning in a long procession just as the curtain rises again; while the ladies receive the visits of friends in the loges or in the private boxes, which they often occupy four evenings in the week. The New Orleans public, both French and American, possesses excellent theatrical taste, and is severely critical, especi- ally in opera. It is difficult to find a Creole family of any pretensions in which music is not cultivated in large degree. People in the French quarter very generally speak both prevailing languages, while the majority of the American residents do not affect the French. The Gallic children all speak English, and in the street-plays of the boys, as in their conversation, French and English idioms are strangely mingled. American boys call birds, fishes and animals by corrupted French names, handed down through seventy years of perversion, and a dreadful threat on the part of Young America is, that he will "mallerroo" you, which seems to hint that our old French friend malheureux, "unhappy," has, with other words, undergone corruption. When an American boy wishes his comrade to make his kite fly higher, he says, poussez ! just as the French boy does, and so on ad infinitum. Any stranger who remains in the French quarter over Sunday will be amazed at the great number of funeral processions. It would seem, indeed, as if death came uniformly near the end of the week in order that people might be laid away on the Sabbath. The cemeteries, old and new, rich and poor, are scattered throughout the city, and most of them present an extremely beautiful appearance — the white tombs nestling among the dark-green foliage. It would be difficult to dig a grave of the ordinary depth in the " Louisiana lowlands" without coming to water; and, consequently, burials in sealed tombs above ground are universal. The old French and Spanish cemete- ries present long streets of cemented walls, with apertures into which once were thrust the noble and good of the land,, as if they were put into ovens to be baked ; and one may still read queer inscriptions, dated away back in the middle of the eighteenth century. Great numbers of the monuments both in the old and new cemeteries are very imposing; and, one sees every day, as in all Catholic communities, long pro- cessions of mourning relatives carrying flowers to place on the spot where their loved and lost are entombed ; or catches a glimpse of some black- robed figure sitting motionless before a tomb. The St. Louis Cemetery is "The old French and Spanish cemeteries present long streets of cemented walls." THE ST. LOUIS HOTEL. 37 fine, and many dead are even better housed in it than they were in life. The St. Patrick, Cypress Grove, Firemen's, Odd Fellows, and Jewish cemeteries, in. the American quarter, are filled with richly- wrought tombs, and trav- ersed by fine, tree- planted avenues. The St. Louis Hotel is one of the most imposing monuments of the French quarter, as well as one of the finest hotels in the United States. It was originally built to combine a city exchange, hotel, bank, ball-rooms, and private stores. The rotunda, metamorphosed into a dining-hall, is one of the most beau- tiful in this country, and the great inner circle of the dome is richly frescoed with allegorical scenes and busts of eminent Americans, from the pencils of Canova and Pinoli. The immense ball-room is also superbly decorated. The St. Louis Hotel was very nearly destroyed by fire in 1840, but in less than two years was restored to its original splen- dor. On the eastern and western sides of Jackson Square are the Pontalba buildings, large and not especially handsome brick structures, erected by the Countess Pontalba, many years ago. Chartres street, and all the avenues Contributing tO it, are thor- The St. Louis Hotel— New Orleans. oughly French in character ; cafe's, wholesale stores, pharmacies, shops for articles of luxury, all bear evidence of Gallic taste. Every street in the* old city has its legend, either humorous or tragical ; and each building which confesses to an hundred years has memories of foreign domination hovering about it. The elder families speak with bated breath and touching pride of their " ancestor who came with Bienville," or with such and such Spanish Governors; and many a name among those of the Creoles has descended untarnished to its present possessors through centuries of valor and adventurous achievement. III. THE CARNIVAL — THE FRENCH MARKETS. CARNIVAL keeps its hold upon the people along the Gulf shore, despite the troubles, vexations, and sacrifices to which they have been forced to submit since the social revolution began. White and black join in its The Carnival— "White and Black join in its masquerading." masquerading, and the Crescent City rivals Naples in the beauty and richness of its displays. Galveston has caught the infection, and every year the King of the Carnival adds a city to the domain loyal to him. The saturnalia practiced ORIGIN OF THE CARNIVAL. 39 before the entry into Lent are the least bit practical, because Americans find it impossible to lay aside business utterly even on Mardi-Gras. The device of the advertiser pokes its ugly face into the very heart of the masquerade, and brings base reality, whose hideous .features, outlined under his domino, put a host of sweet illusions to flight. The Carnival in New Orleans was organized in 1827, when a number of young Creole gentlemen, who had recently returned from Paris, formed a street- procession of maskers. It did not create a profound sensation — was considered the work of mad wags; and the festival languished until 1837, when there was a fine parade, which was succeeded by another still finer in 1839. From two o'clock in the afternoon until sunset of Shrove Tuesday, drum and fife, valve and trumpet, rang in the streets, and hundreds of maskers cut furious antics, and made day hideous. Thereafter, from 1840 to 1852, Mardi-Gras festival had varying popularity — such of the townspeople as had the money to spend now and then organizing a very fantastic and richly-dressed rout of mummers. At the old Orleans Theatre, balls of princely splendor were given ; Europeans even came to join in the New World's Carnival, and wrote home enthusiastic accounts of it. In 1857 the " Mistick Krewe of Comus," a private organization of New Orleans gentlemen, made their debut, and gave to the festivities a lustre which, thanks to their continued efforts, has never since quitted it. In 1857 the "Krewe" appeared in the guise of supernatural and mythological characters, and flooded the town with gods and demons, winding up the occasion with a grand ball at the Gaiety Theatre ; previous to which they appeared in tableaux representing the "Tartarus" of the ancients, and Milton's "Paradise Lost." In 1858 this brilliant coterie of maskers renewed the enchantments of Mardi-Gras, by exhibiting the gods and goddesses of high Olympus and of the fretful sea, and again gave a series of brilliant tableaux. In 1859 they pictured the revels of the four great English holidays, May Day, Midsummer Eve, Christmas and Twelfth Night. In i860 they illustrated American history in a series of superb groups of living statues mounted on moving pedestals. In 1861 they delighted the public with "Scenes from Life" — Childhood, Youth, Man- hood and Old Age ; and the ball at the Varieties Theatre was preceded by a series of grandiose tableaux which exceeded all former efforts. Then came the war; maskers threw aside their masks; but, in 1866, after the agony of the long struggle, Comus once more assembled his forces, and the transformations which Milton attributed to the sly spirit himself were the subject of the display. The wondering gazers were shown how Comus, " Deep-skilled in all his mother's witcheries, By sly enticement gives his baneful cup, With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison The visage quite transforms of him that drinks, And the inglorious likeness of a beast Fixes instead." In 1867 Comus became Epicurean, and blossomed into a walking bill of fare, the maskers representing everything in the various courses and entrees of a 40 THE KREWE OF COMUS. gourmand's dinner, from oysters and sherry to the omelette brulee, the Kirsch and Curacoa. A long and stately array of bottles, dishes of meats and vegetables, and desserts, moved through the streets, awakening saturnalian laughter wherever it passed. In 1868 the Krewe presented a procession and tableaux from "Lalla Rookh;" in 1869, the ''Five Senses;" and in 1870, the "History of Louisaina;" when old Father Mississippi himself, De Soto and his fellow-dis- coverers, the soldiers, adventurers, cavaliers, Jesuits, French, Spanish, and American Governors, were all paraded before the amazed populace. In 1871, King Comus and his train presented picturesque groupings from Spenser's "Faery Queene;" in 1872, from Homer's "Tale of Troy;" and in 1873 detailed the " Darwinian Development of the Species" from earliest beginnings to the gorilla, and thence to man. The Krewe of Comus has always paid the expenses of these displays itself, and has issued invitations only to as many people as could be accommodated within the walls of the theatre to witness the tableaux. It is composed of one hundred members, who are severally sworn to conceal their identity from all outsiders, and who have thus far succeeded admirably in accomplishing this object. The designs for their masks are made in New Orleans, and the costumes are manufactured from them in Paris yearly. In 1870 appeared the " Twelfth- Night Revelers" — who yearly celebrate the beauti- ful anniversary of the visit of the wise men of the East to the manger of the Infant Saviour. In 1870 the pageants of this organization were inaugurated by "The coming of Rex, most puissant King of Carnival." [Page 41. J THE COMING OF THE KING. 41 " The Lord of Misrule and his Knights;" in 187 1, " Mother Goose's Tea Party" was given; in 1872, a group of creations of artists and poets and visionaries, from lean Don Quixote to fat Falstaff, followed; and in 1873 the birds were represented, in a host of fantastic and varied tableaux. Another feature has been added to the festivities, one which promises in time to be most attractive of all. It is the coming of Rex, most puissant King of "The Boeuf-Gras — the fat ox — is led in the procession." [Page 42.] Carnival. This amiable dignitary, depicted as a venerable man, with snow-white hair and beard, but still robust and warrior-like, made his. first appearance on the Mississippi shores in 1872, and issued his proclamations through newspapers and upon placards, commanding all civil and military authorities to show subservience to him during his stay in "our good city of New Orleans."' Therefore, yearly, when the date of the recurrence of Mardi-Gras has been fixed, the mystic King issues his proclamation, and is announced as having arrived at New York, or whatever other port seemeth good. At once thereafter, and daily, ,the papers teem with reports of his progress through the country, interspersed with anec- dotes of his heroic career, which is supposed to have lasted for many centuries. The court report is usually conceived somewhat in the style of the following paragraph, supposed to be an anecdote told at the "palace" by an "old gray- headed sentinel:" " Another incident, illustrating the King's courageous presence of mind, was related by the veteran. While sojourning at Auch (this was several centuries ago), a wing of the palace took fire, the whole staircase was in flames, and in the highest story was a feeble old woman, apparently cut off from any means of escape. His Majesty offered two thousand francs to any one who would save 42 THE RECEPTION PARADE. her from destruction, but no one pre- sented himself. The King did not :■ .'"■' nf^^^^T'.- i the Beast." From the gallery of the Varieties Theatre, many bright eyes are in vain endeavoring to pierce the dis- guise under which a fashionable member of the Comus Krewe parades before their gaze. From early morning until nightfall the same quaint, distorted street-cfies which one hears in foreign cities ring through the streets of New Orleans; and in the French quarter they are mirth-provoking, under their guise of Creole patois. The Sicilian fruit-sellers also make their mellifluous dialect heard loudly ; and the streets always resound to the high-pitched voice of some negro who is rehearsing his griefs or joys in the most theatrical manner. Negro- beggars encumber the steps of various banks and public edifices, sitting for hours together with open, outstretched hands, almost too lazy to close them over the few coins the passers-by bestow. A multitude of youthful darkies, who have no visible aim in existence but to sport in. the sun, abound in the American quarter, apparently well fed and happy. The mass of the negroes are reck- Hlgi','in:iiinii|'iii':iiii' ililMlii|IMIill|ll|i|IIUjMH.ill», : Many bright eyes are ui vain the disguise. endeavoring to pierce 4 6 THE NEW ORLEANS MARKETS. lessly improvident, living, as in all cities, crowded together in ill-built and badly-ventilated cabins, the ready victims for almost any fell disease. Next to the river traffic, the New Orleans markets are more pic- turesque than anything else apper- taining to the city. They lie near the levee, and, as markets, are in- deed clean, commodious, and always Avell stocked. But they have an- other and an especial charm to the traveler from the North, or to him who has never seen their great counterparts in Europe. The French market at sunrise on Sun- day morning is the perfection of vivacious traffic. In gazing upon the scene, one can readily imagine himself in some city beyond the seas. From the stone houses, bal- conied, and fanciful in roof and window, come hosts of plump and pretty young negresses, chatting in their droll patois with monsieur the fish- dealer, before his wooden bench, or with the rotund and ever-laugh- ing madame who sells little piles of potatoes, arranged on a shelf like cannon balls at an arsenal, or chaffering with the fruit-merchant, while passing under long, hanging rows of odorous bananas and pine- apples, and beside heaps of oranges, whose color contrasts prettily with the swart or tawny faces of the purchasers. During the morning hours of each day, the markets are veritable bee-hives of industry ; ladies and servants flutter in and out of the long passages in endless throngs; but in the afternoon the stalls are nearly all deserted. One sees deli- MARKET TYPES 47 cious types in these markets ; he may wander for months in New Orleans without meeting them elsewhere. There is the rich savage face in which the struggle of Congo with French or Spanish blood is still going on; there is the old French market-woman, with her irrepressible form, her rosy cheeks, and the bandanna "Passing under long, hanging rows ot bananas and pine-apples." [Page 46. J wound about her head, just as one may find her to this day at the Halles Centrales in Paris; there is the negress of the time of D'Artaguette, renewed in some of her grandchildren ; there is the plaintive-looking Sicilian woman, who has been bullied all the morning by rough negroes and rougher white men as she sold oranges; and there is her dark, ferocious-looking husband, who handles his cigarette as if he were strangling an enemy. ,' In a long passage, between two of the market buildings, where hundreds of people pass hourly, sits a silent Louisiana Indian woman, with a sack of gumbo spread out before her, and with eyes downcast, as if expecting harsh words rather than purchasers. Entering the clothes market, one finds lively Gallic versions of the Hebrew female tending shops where all articles are labeled at such extraordinarily low rates that the person who manufactured them must have given them away; qua- vering old men, clad in rusty black, who sell shoe-strings and cheap cravats, but who have hardly vitality enough to keep the flies off from themselves, not to speak of waiting on customers ; villainous French landsharks, who have eyes as sharp for the earnings of the fresh-water sailor as ever had a Gotham 4 8 A BABEL OF TRADE shanghai merchant for those of a salt-water tar; mouldy old dames, who look daggers at you if you venture to insist that any article in their stock is not of finest fabric and quality; and hoarse- voiced, debauched Creole men, who almost cling to you in the energy of their pleading for purchases. Some- times, too, a beautiful black-robed girl leans- over a counter, displaying her superbly -moulded arms, as she adjusts her knitting- work. And from each and every one of the markets the noise rises in such thousand currents of patois, of French, of English, of good-natured and guttural negro accent, that one cannot help wondering how it is that buyer and seller ever come to any understanding at all. Then there are the flowers! Such marvelous bargains as one can have in bouquets! Delicate jessamines, modest knots of white roses, glorious orange blossoms, camelias, red roses, tender pansies, exquisite verbenas, the luscious and perfect virgin's bower, and the magnolia in its season; — all these are to be had in the markets for a trivial sum. Sometimes, when a Havana or a Sicilian vessel is discharging her cargo, fruit boxes are broken open ; and then it is a treat to see swarms of African children hovering about the tempting piles, from which even the sight of stout cudgels will not frighten them. In the winter months the markets are crowded with strangers before six o'clock every morning. Jaunty maids from New England stroll in the passages, %i "One sees delicious types in these markets." [Page 47.] MORNINGS IN THE MARKETS. 49 "In a long passage, between two of the market buildings, sits a silent Louisiana Indian woman." [Page 47.] Wagons from the country clatter over the stones ; the drivers sing cheerful melodies, interspersed with shouts of caution to pedestrians as they guide their restive horses through the crowds. Stout colored women, with cackling hens dangling from their brawny hands, gravely parade the long aisles ;■ the fish- monger utters an apparently incom- prehensible yell, yet brings crowds around him ; on his clean block lies the pompano, the prince of Southern waters, which an enthusiastic ad- mirer once described as " a just fish made perfect," or a "translated shad." Towards noon the clamor ceases, the bustle of traffic is over, and the market-men and women betake themselves to the old cathedral, in whose shadowed aisles they kneel for momentary worship. 4 escorted by pale and querulous invalid fathers, or by spruce young men, who swelter in their thick garments, made to be worn in higher lati- tudes. While New York or Boston ladies sip coffee in a market-stall, groups of dreamy-eyed negro girls surround them and curiously scan the details of their toilets. Black urchins grin con- fidingly and solicit alms as the blond Northerner saunters by. Perchance the Bostonian may hear a silvery voice, whose owner's face is buried in the depths of a sun-bonnet, exclaim — " There goes a regular Yankee !" Sailors, too, from the ships anchored in the river, promenade the long pas- sage-ways; the accents of twenty languages are heard; and the childlike, comical French of the negroes rings out above the clamor. " Stout colored women, with cackling hens dangling from their brawny hands." IV. THE COTTON TRADE — THE NEW ORLEANS LEVEES. c OTTON furnishes to New Orleans much of its activity and the sinews of its trade. It stamps a town, which would otherwise resemble some yed but still luxurious European centre, with a commercial aspect. Amer- " These boats, closely ranged in long rows by the levee." [Page 52.] icans and Frenchmen are alike inter- ested in the growth of the crop throughout all the great section drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. They rush eagerly to the Exchange to read the statements of sales, and rates, and bales on hand; and both are intensely excited when there is a large arrival from some unexpected quarter, or when the telegraph informs them that some packet has sunk, with hundreds of bales on board, while toiling along the currents of the Arkansas or Red rivers. In the American quarter, during certain hours of the day, cotton is the only subject spoken of; the pavements of all the principal avenues in the vicinity of the Exchange are crowded with smartly- dressed gentlemen, who eagerly discuss crops and values, and who have a perfect mania for preparing and comparing the estimates at the basis of all speculations in the favorite staple; with young Englishmen, whose mouths are filled with the slang of the Liverpool market; GROWTH OF THE COTTON TRADE. 51 and with the skippers of steamers from all parts of the West and South-west, each worshiping at the shrine of the same god. From high noon until dark the planter, the factor, the speculator, flit fever- ishly to and from the portals of the Exchange, and nothing can be heard above the excited hum of their conversation except the sharp voice of the clerk read- ing the latest telegrams. New Orleans receives the greater portion of the crop of Louisiana and Mississippi, of North Alabama, of Tennessee, of Arkansas, and Florida. The gross receipts of cotton there amount to about thirty-three and one- third per cent, of the entire production of the country. Despite the abnormal condition of government and society there, the natural tendency is towards a rapid and continuous increase of cotton production in the Gulf States. But the honor of receiving the Texas crop, doubled, as it soon will be, as the result of increased immigration, favoring climate, and cheap land, will be sharply disputed by Galveston, one of the most ambitious and promising of the Gulf capitals; and the good burghers of New Orleans must look to a speedy completion of their new railways if they wish to cope successfully with the wily and self-reliant Texan. Judging from the progress of cotton -growing in the past, it will be tremend- ous in future. In 1^24.-2$ the cotton crop of the United States was 569,249 bales; in 1830-31, it ran up to 1,038,000 bales; during '37-38 it reached as high as 1,800,000 bales; and eleven years later was 2,700,000 bales. In 1859- '60 the country's cotton crop was 4,669,770 bales; in 1860-6 1 it dropped to 3,656,000 bales. Then came the war. In the days of slave labor, planters did not make more than a fraction of their present per cent. They themselves attended very little to their crops, leaving nearly everything to the overseers. Cotton raising is now far more popular in the Gulf States than it was before the war, although it has still certain distressing drawbacks, arising from the incom- plete organization of labor. The year after the close of the war, 2,193,000 bales were produced, showing that the planters went to work in earnest to retrieve their fallen fortunes. From that time forward labor became better organized, and the production went bravely on. In i866-'67 it amounted to 1,951,000 bales, of which New Orleans received 780,000; in 1867 -'68 to 2,431,000 bales, giving New Orleans 668,000; in 1868-69 to 2,260,000, 841,000 of which were delivered at New Orleans; in i869-'70 to 3,114,000, and New Orleans received 1,207,000; in 1870-71 to 4,347,000, giving the Crescent City 1,548,000; and in 1871-72 to 2,974,000, more than one-third of which passed through New Orleans. The necessity of a rapid multipli- cation of railroad and steamboat lines is shown by the fact that more than 150,000 bales of the crop of i870-'7i remained in the country, at the close of that season, on account of a lack of transportation facilities. From 1866 to 1872, inclusive, the port of New Orleans received 6,114,000 bales, or fully one-third of the entire production of the United States. The receipts from the Red River region alone at New Orleans for 1871-72, by steamer, were 52 THE WHARFMEN. 197,386 bales ; for 1870-71 Ouachita River sent to the 151,358 in 1870-71. Knowing these statistics, one can hardly wonder at the vast masses of bales on the levee at the landings of the steamers, nor at the numbers of the boats which daily arrive, their sides piled high with cotton. About these boats, closely ranged in long rows by the levee, and seeming like river monsters which have crawled from the ooze to take a little sun, the negroes swarm in crowds, chat- ting in the broken, colored English characteristic of the hang in rags from their tawny rival in perfection of form the they amounted to 284,313 bales; and the metropolis 89,084 bales in 1871-72, and 'Not far from the levee, there is a police court, where they especially delight to lounge." "Whenever there is a lull in the work they sink down on the cotton bales." river-hand. They are clad in garments which or coal black limbs. Their huge, naked chests works of Praxiteles and his fellows. Their arms are almost constantly bent to the task of re- moving cotton bales, and carrying boxes, barrels, bundles of every conceivable shape and size ; but whenever there is a lull in the work they sink down on the cotton bales, clinging to them like lizards to a sunny wall, and croon to themselves, or crack rough and good- natured jokes with one another. Not far from the levee there is a police court, where they especially delight to lounge. In 1871-72 (the commercial year ex- tends from September to September) the PLANTERS FACTORS FREEDMEN TRADERS. 53 value of the cotton received at New Orleans was $94,430,000; in iSjo-'ji it was $101,000,000; and in iS6g-'yo even $120,000,000. The difference in the value of the crops during that period was very great. In 1869-70 cotton sold for nearly $100 per bale, and in 1870-71 it had depreciated to an average of $65 per bale. Until the facilities for speedy transportation have been greatly increased, a glut of the market, produced by a successful conduct of the year's labor on the majority of the plantations, will continue to bring prices down. The whole character of the cotton trade has been gradually changing since the war. Previous to that epoch a large portion of the business was done directly by planters through their merchants; but now that the plantations are mainly worked on shares by the freedmen, the matter has come into the hands of country traders, who give credits to the laborers during the planting seasons, and take their pay in the products of the crop, in harvest time. These speculators then follow to market the cotton which they have thus accumulated in small lots, and look attentively after it until it has been delivered to some responsible purchaser, and they have pocketed the proceeds. They often pay the planter and his cooperating freedmen a much higher price for cotton than the market quotations seem to warrant ; but they always manage to retain a profit, rarely allowing a freedman to find that his season's toil has done more than square his accounts with the acute trader who has meantime supplied him and his family with provisions, clothing, and such articles of luxury as the negro's mind and body crave. Shortly after the war there was trouble between planters and factors ; and it is not probable that much, if any, business will hereafter be transacted by the latter directly with the planter, though upon the arrival of the crop in New Orleans the cotton factor becomes the chief authority. Business is largely done between buyer and seller on the basis of a confidence which seems to the casual observer rather reckless, but which custom has made perfectly safe. The Cotton Exchange of New Orleans sprang into existence in 1870, and merchants and planters were alike surprised that they had not thought its advan- tages necessary before. It now has three hundred members, and expends thirty thousand dollars annually in procuring the latest commercial intelligence, and maintaining a suite of rooms where the buyer and seller may meet, and which shall be a central bureau of news. The first president of the Exchange was the well-known E. H. Summers, of Hilliard, Summers & Co., of New Orleans; the second and present one is Mr. John Phelps, one of the [ principal merchants of the city.* The boards of the Exchange are carefully and thoroughly edited, and are always surrounded by a throng of speculators, as well as by the more staid and important of the local merchants. During the busy season, the labor at the Exchange, and in the establishments of all the prominent merchants and factors, is almost incessant. * The writer takes this occasion to acknowledge his indebtedness to Secretary Hester of the Cotton Exchange of New Orleans, and to Mr. Parker of the Picayune, for many interesting details in this connection; to Hon. Charles Gayarre for access to historical portraits; and to Collector Casey and his able deputy, Mr. Champlin, for reference to official statistics. 54 THE COTTON EXCHANGE MANUFACTURES. In the months between January and May, when the season is at its height, clerks and patrons work literally night and day ; so that when the most exhaust- ing period of the year arrives, finding themselves thoroughly overworked, they leave the sweltering lowlands, and fly to the North for rest and cool refuge. New Orleans is accused of a lack of energy, but her cotton merchants are more energetic than the mass of Northern traders and speculators, working, as they do, with feverish impulse early and late. One well-known cotton factor, whose transactions amount to nearly $12,000,000 yearly, gets to his desk, during the season, long before daylight, — and that, in the climate of the Gulf States, comes wonderfully early. The railroad development of the South since the war has metamorphosed the whole cotton trade of New Orleans. Cotton which once arrived in market in May now reaches the factor during the preceding December or January. The Jackson and Mobile roads did much to effect this great change, and when rail communication with Texas is secured, it will bring with it another marked difference in the same direction. The sugar interest once left the most money in New Orleans; now cotton is the main stay. It is estimated that each bale which passes through the market leaves about seven dollars and fifty cents. Most of the business with England is done by cable, and the telegraph bills of many prominent firms are enormous. The Board of Arbitration and Board of Appeals of the Exchange make all decisions, and have power to expel any unruly member. The Louisiana capitalists have given some attention to the manufacture of cotton, and the factories which have already been established are clearing from eighteen to twenty-five per cent, per annum. There are two of these factories in New Orleans, each of which consumes about one thousand bales yearly; a third is located at Beauregard, and a fourth in the penitentiary at Baton Rouge. The consumption by all the Southern cotton mills, during the three years closing with 1872 amounted to two hundred and ninety-one thousand bales, and is increasing at a rapid rate. Each new railway connection enlarges the city's claims as a cotton mart. The Jackson Railroad, during the com- mercial year 1871—72, brought into it forty thousand bales, thus adding about four million dollars to the trade. When the levees are crowded with the busy negroes, unloading cotton from the steamboats, the apparent confusion is enough to turn a stranger's head; yet the order is perfect. Each of the steamers has its special stall, into which it swings with grace and precision, to the music of a tolling bell and an occasional hoarse scream from the whistle ; and the instant the cables are made fast and the gangways swung down, the "roustabouts" are on board, and busily wheeling the variously branded bales to the spaces allotted them on the wharves. The negroes who man the boats running up and down the Mississippi are not at all concerned in the discharging of cargoes, being relieved from that duty by the regular wharfmen. There is a rush upon the pile of bales fifty-feet high on the capacious lower deck of a Greenville and Vicksburg, a Red River, or a Ouachita packet, and the monument to the industry of a dozen planters DISCHARGING CARGOES. 55 1 The cotton thieves. vanishes as if by magic. Myriads of little flags, each ornamented with different devices, flutter from various points along the wharves; and as the blacks wheel the cotton past the "tally-man" standing near the steamer's gangways, he notes the mark on each bale, and in a loud voice calls out to him who is wheeling it the name of the sign on the flag under \SJ^3lPll which it is to rest £ji until sold and re- jsj moved. While the JeS bales remain on the levees, the cotton thieves now and £ then steal a pound ^ or two of the prec- ious staple. This army of "roustabouts" is an ebony-breasted, tough-fisted, bul- let-headed, toiling, awkward mass ; but it does wonders at work. It is generally good-humored, even when it grum- bles; is prodigal of rude, cheerful talk and raillery; has no secrets or jealousies; is helpful, sympathetic, and familiar. It leaps to its work with a kind of con- centrated effort, and, as soon as the task is done, relapses into its favorite condition of slouch. Neither the sharp voices of the skippers, nor the harsh orders of the masters of the gangs, nor the cheery and mirth-provoking res- ponses of the help, mingled with the sibilations of es- caping steam, the ringing of countless bells, and the moving and rumbling of drays, carts and steam-cars can drown or smother the jocund notes of the negro's song. His arms and limbs and head keep time to the harmony, as he trundles the heavy bale along the planks. When he pauses from his work, you may see his \ V "There is the old apple and cake woman. [Page 56. J 56 SMALL MERCHANTS. dusky wife or daughter, in a long, closely-fitting, trim calico gown, and a starched gingham sun-bonnet, giving him his dinner from a large tin pail ; or you may find him patronizing one of the grimy old dames, each of whom looks wicked enough to be a Voudou Queen, who are always seated at quiet corners with a basket of coarse but well-prepared food. Small merchants thrive along the levee. There is the old apple and cake woman, black and fifty, blundering about the wharf's edge ; there is the antiquated and moss- grown old man who cowers all day beside a little cart filled with cans of ice- cream; there is the Sicilian fruit- seller, almost as dark visaged as a negro; there is the coffee and sausage man, toward whom, many a time daily, black and toil-worn hands are eagerly outstretched ; and bordering on Canal street, all along the walks leading from the wharf, are little booths filled with negroes in the supreme stages of shabbiness, who feast on chicken and mysterious compounds of vegetables, and drink alarming draughts of " whiskey at five cents a glass." The sailor on the Mis- sissippi is much like his white brother of more stormy seas, who drinks up his wages, gets penitent, confesses his poverty, and begs again for work. At high water, the juvenile population of New Orleans perches on the beams of the wharves, and enjoys a little quiet fishing. For two or three miles down the river, from the foot of Canal street, the levees are encumbered with goods of every conceivable des- cription. Then the landings cease, and, almost level with the bank on which you walk, flows the grand, impetuous stream which has sometimes swept all before it on the lowlands where the fair Louisiana capital lies, and transformed the whole section between Lake Pontchartrain and the present channel into an eddying sea. Up the river, commerce of the heavy and substantial order has monopolized the space, and you may note in a morning the arrival of a hundred thousand bushels of grain, on a single one of the capacious tow-boats of the Mississippi Valley Transportation Company. Merchants even boast that the port can supply, to outgoing ships, that quantity daily from the West; and that the lack of transportation facilities often causes an accumulation of three hundred thousand bushels in the New Orleans storehouses. Up and down the levees run the branch lines of the Jackson, the Louisiana and Texas, and the New Orleans, Mobile and " The Sicilian fruit-seller." NIGHT ON THE LEVEES. 57 "At high water, the juvenile population perches on the beams of the wharves, and enjoys a little quiet fishing." fPage 56.] Texas railways, and teams drive recklessly on the same tracks on which incoming trains are drawn by rapidly moving locomotives. The freight depots, the recep- tion sheds and the warehouses are crammed with jostling, sweating, shouting, black and white humanity ; and, in the huge granite Custom- House, even politics has to give way, from time to time, before the tor- rents of business. At night a great silence falls on the levee. Only the footsteps of the watchmen, or of the polite, but consequen- tial negro police- man, are heard on the well-worn planks. Now and then an eye of fire, the lamp of an incoming steamer, peers out of the obscurity shrouding the river, or glides athwart the moonlight, and three hoarse screams announce an arrival. Along the shore, a hundred lights twinkle in the water, and turn the commonest surroundings into enchantment. There is little sign of life from any of the steamers at the docks, though here and there a drunken river-hand blunders along the wharves singing some dialect catch; but with early sun-peep comes once more the roar, the rush, the rattle ! The coastwise trade is one of the important elements of the commerce of New Orleans. Of the total tonnage entered and cleared from that port during the fiscal year 1871-72, fifty-four per cent, or 1,226,000 tons, belonged to this trade, representing something like $125,000,000; while the foreign trade was only $109,000,000 for the same period. During the commercial year ending September 30, 1872, two thousand five hundred and nine steamboats, comprising a tonnage of 3,500,000 tons burthen, arrived at the port. The value of the principal articles brought in by these boats was $160,000,000, the up-river cargoes amounting to about $90,000,000. It is, therefore, fair to estimate the net value of "The P0lite,^t := quential negro ^ commerce at nearly $ 400 ,000,000 per annum. 58 THE COMMERCE OF NEW ORLEANS. Now let us take the actual figures of the commerce of- the Gulf for one year: that from September, 1871, to September, 1872. Coastwise trade $135,000,000 Galveston trade 25,000,000 Mobile trade 24,000,000 Exports from New Orleans 90,800,000 Imports to New Orleans 18,700,000 Cuban trade 150,000,000 Porto Rico 25,000,000 Mexico 35,000,000 This, exclusive of the Darien and Central American trade, now so rapidly increasing, makes a grand total of more than five hundred millions of dollars.* * The collection district, of which New Orleans is the chief port, embraces all the shores, inlets, and waters within the State of Louisiana east of the Atchafalaya, not including the waters of the Teche, of the Ohio river, or the several rivers and creeks emptying into it, or of the Mississippi or any of its tributaries except those within the State of Mississippi. The district extends on the coast from the western boundary of Mississippi, on Lake Borgne, to the Atchafalaya ; and the ports of delivery, to which merchandise can be shipped under transporta- tion bond, are as follows : Bayou St. John and Lake Port, in Louisiana ; Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville, in Tennessee ; Hickman and Louisville, in Kentucky ; Tuscumbia, in Alabama ; Cincinnati, in Ohio ; Madison, New Albany and Evansville, in Indiana ; Cairo, Alton, Quincy, Peoria and Galena, in Illinois ; Dubuque, Burlington and Keokuk, in Iowa; Hannibal and St. Louis, in Missouri, and Leavenworth, in Kansas. The shipment of merchan- dise, under transportation bond, has increased steadily from $1,736,981 in 1866 to $5,502,427 in 1872; the value of merchandise imported, from $10,878,365 to $20,006,363; and domestic exports, from $89,002,141 to $95,970,592, in the same period. The total value of the mer- chandise imported during those years is $102,305,014; the total of domestic exports amounted to $608,871,013, and the whole amount of revenue collected, to $35,140,906. The receipts from customs at New Orleans for 1872 were very much diminished by the large shipments of goods in bond to the interior cities of Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, etc., the duties on which were collected at those ports respectively. From 1866 to 1872 inclusive, the movement of the port included 2,852 foreign vessels, with a tonnage of 1,547,747 tons, and 1,773 American ships, with a tonnage of 1,100,492. The rev- enue receipts at New Orleans have been largely diminished by the removal of the duties on coffee — the importations of that article during the seven years following 1866 amounting to 155,953,213 pounds, valued at $16,511,602. The magnitude of the trade of the port may also be well illustrated by showing the importations of sugar and railroad iron for the same time. Of the former article there were imported 263,918,978 pounds, worth $14,531,960, and of the latter 480,043 tons, valued at $15,299,642. It will be seen that the imports are small in quantity as compared with the exports when the cotton is counted in — the imports amounting to only about one-seventh of the exports; but this ratio will be much reduced in time, as New Orleans becomes a more economical port. Five steamship lines now make the city their point of departure. Three of these, the Liverpool Southern, the Mississippi and Dominion, and the State Line Steamship Company, communi- cate directly with Liverpool, while other lines are projected. V. THE CANALS AND THE LAKE THE AMERICAN QUARTER. NEW ORLEANS is built on land from two to four feet below the level of the Mississippi river at high water mark. It fronts on a great bend in the stream in the form of a semicircle, whence it takes its appellation of the "Crescent City," and stretches back to the borders of Lake Pontchartrain, which lies several feet below the level of the Mississippi, and has an outlet on the Gulf of Mexico. The rain-fall, the sewerage of the city, and the surplus water from the river, are drained into the canals which traverse New Orleans, and are thence carried into the lake. The two principal canals, known as the Old and New Basins. are navigable ; steamers of consider- able size run through them and the lake to the Gulf, and thence along the Southern Atlantic coast; and schooners and barks, laden with lum- ber and produce, are towed in and out by mules. The city is divided into drainage districts, in each of which large pumping machines ^are constantly worked to keep down the encroaching water. Were it not for the canals and the drainage system, the low-lying city would, after a heavy rain, be partially submerged. A fine levee extends for four and a-half miles along the front of Lake Pontchartrain, making a grand driveway ; and as a complement to this improvement, it is expected that in a few years the cypress swamps will be filled up, and the lake front will be studded with mansions. The building of this levee' was an imperative necessity, the action of the lake making the perfecting of the city's present system of drainage impossible other- The St. Charles Hotel — New Orleans. [Page 61.] On Sundays the shell road leading northward from Canal street past the Metairie and Oakland Parks, by the side of the New Basin, is crowded with teams, and the restaurants, half hidden by foliage, echo to boisterous merri- ment. But on a week day it is almost deserted. Schooners on the canal glide 6o ON LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN. The New Basin. [Page 59.] lazily along; ragged negro boys sit on the banks, sleepily fishing; while the intense green of the leaves is beautifully reflected from the water. Arrived near the lake, you catch a view of dark water in the canal in the foreground, with a gayly-painted sail-boat lying close to the bank; an ornamental gateway just beyond; a flock of goats browsing at the roadside; and afar off, a white light-house standing lonely on a narrow point of land. You may step into a sail-boat at the lake, and let a brown, barefooted Creole fisherman sail you down to the pier where the railroad from New Orleans terminates; then back again, up the Bayou St. John, until he lands you near the walls of the "old Spanish fort" There you may find a summer-house, an orchard, and a rose-garden. From the balcony you can see a long pier running into the lake ; the sun's gold on the rippling water; the oranges in the trees below; the group of sailors tugging at the cable of their schooner; the pretty cluster of cottages near the levee's end; the cannon, old and dismounted, lying half-buried under the grasses ; the wealth of peach-blossoms in the bent tree near the parapet; and a bevy of bare- legged children playing about their mother, as she sits on the sward, cutting rose-stems, and twisting blossoms into bouquets. As evening deepens, you sail home, and, in the dining-room of the restaurant near the canal, look out upon the passing barges and boats gliding noiselessly townward ; hear the shouts of festive parties as they wander on the levee, or along the cypress-girt shore; hear the boatmen singing catches; or watch a blood-red moon as it rises slowly, and casts an enchanted light over the burnished surface of the water-way. A promenade on Canal street is quite as picturesque as any in the French quarter. There is the negro boot-black sitting in the sun, with his own splay- feet on his blacking-block; and there are the bouquet- sellers, black and white, ranged at convenient corners, with baskets filled with breast knots of violets, and a world of rose-buds, camelias, and other rich blossoms: The newsboy cries his wares, vociferous as his brother of Go- tham. The " roust- abouts" from the levee, clad in striped trowsers and flannel shirts, and in coats and hats which they seem to have slept in for a century, hasten homeward tO The old Spanish Fort. NEW ORLEANS LADIES- 'THE GARDEN CITY. 6l dinner, with their cotton-hooks clenched in their brawny hands. The ropers for gambling-houses — one of the curses of New Orleans — haunt each con- spicuous corner, and impudently scan passers-by. From twelve to two the American ladies monopolize Canal street Hund- reds of lovely brunettes may be seen, in carriages, in cars, in couples with mamma, or accompanied by the tall, _- ___,= dark, thin Southern youth, attired in black broadcloth, slouch hat, and irreproachable morning gloves. The confectioners' shops are crowded with dainty little women, who have the Italian rage for confetti, and the sugared cakes of the pastry-cook vanish like morning dew. The matinees at the American theatres, as at the French, begin at noon; and at three or half-past three, twice a week, the tide of beauty floods Canal, St. Charles, Carondelet, Rampart, and other streets. At evening, Canal street is very quiet, and hardly seems the main thoroughfare Of a great City. The Universit y ° f Louisiana -New Orleans. [Page 62.] The American quarter of New Orleans is superior to the French in width of avenue, in beauty of garden and foliage; but to-day many streets there are grass-grown, and filled with ruts and hollows. In that section, not inaptly designated the " Garden City," there are many spacious houses surrounded by gardens, parks and orchards ; orange-trees grow in the yards, and roses clamber in at the windows. The homes of well-to-do Americans, who have been able to keep about them some appearance of comfort since the war, are found mostly on Louis- iana and Napoleon avenues and on Prytania, Plaque- mine, Chestnut, Camp, Jena, Cadiz, Valence, Bordeaux, and St. Charles streets. Along St. Charles street, near Canal, are the fa- mous St. Charles Hotel; the Acad- emy of Music, and the St. Charles Theatre, both welJ 62 PUBLIC BUILDINGS. appointed theatrical edifices ; and the Masonic, City, and Exposition Hails. Opposite the City Hall — one of the noblest public buildings in New Orleans, built of granite and white marble, in Grecian Ionic style — is Lafayette Square. On its south-western side is the First Presbyterian Church ; and at its southern extremity the Odd Fellows' Hall, where the famous McEnery Legislature held its sessions. On Common street, one of the business thoroughfares of the town, is the University of Louisiana. The city is making its most rapid growth in the direction of Carrollton, a pretty suburb, filled with pleasant homes, and within three-quarters of an hour's ride of Canal street. Canal street is bordered by shops of no mean pretensions, and by many handsome residences; it boasts of Christ Church, the Varieties Theatre, the noted restaurant of Moreau, the statue of Henry Clay, a handsome fountain, and the new Custom- House. The buildings are not crowded together, as in New York and Paris; they are Christ Church -New Orleans. usually two or three stories high, and along the first story runs a porch which serves as a balcony to those dwelling above, and as protection from sun and rain to promenaders below. The banks, insurance offi- ces, and wholesale stores fronting on Canal street are elegant and modern, an improvement in the general tone of business architecture having taken place since the war. Under the regime of slavery, little or no attention was paid to fine buildings; exterior decoration, - --^- Ji - .^^iCl:^-- save that which the magnificent foliage of the country gave, was en- tirely disregarded. Now, however, the citizens begin to take pride in their public edifices. The bugbear of yellow fever has, for many years, been a drawback to the prosperity of New Orleans. The stories told of its fearful ravages during some of its visitations are startling- but there is hope that the complete and thorough draining of the city will prevent the repetition of such scenes and consequent panics in future. The inhabitants who remain in the city throughout the summer are, in ordi- nary seasons, as healthy a people as can be found in the United States. Although a lifetime spent in the soft YELLOW FEVER— THE CHARITY HOSPITAL. 63 climate of Louisiana may render an organism somewhat more languid and effeminate than that of the Northerner, there are few of the wretched chronic complaints, terminating in lingering illness and painful death, which result from the racking conflict of extremes in the New England climate. The Charity Hospital — New Orleans. Many Louisianians disbelieve in the efficacy of quarantine against the yellow fever. They say that, during seventy years, from 1796 to 1870, they had quar- antine nineteen times, and in each of those nineteen years the dread fever at least showed its ugly face. The war quarantine, . they assert, failed every year of the four that it was in operation. The Charity Hospital has received cases of yellow fever annually for the last fifty years. Only in two cases, however, where the proper quarantine precautions had been taken, had the disease assumed the proportions of a general plague. The general impression is that the fever will certainly carry off unacclimated persons; but physicians in the hospitals assert that there has been no evidence of the transmission of the fever in hospital wards to unacclimated people; and as they have watched cases for weeks after exposure, their testimony should be considered valuable. Previous to the war, no proper attention had been paid to drainage and cleanliness of streets in New Orleans; and it is the opinion of many good authorities that a careful exam- ining of all vessels arriving from foreign ports, and in town a sanitary police of the most rigorous character, will soon make the fever a rare and not a very dangerous visitor. The Charity Hospital is one of the noblest buildings in the city, and the people of New Orleans have good reason to be proud of it. Dating from the earliest foundation of the city, it has never closed its doors save when acci- The old Maison de Sante — New Orleans [Page 64. J 6 4 HOSPITALS PROTESTANT CHURCHES. dent has compelled it to do so temporarily. From the time when the Ursuline nuns took charge of it under Bienville until now it has been one of the most beneficent charities in the country. No question of race, nationality, religion, sex or character hinders from admission a single applicant for repose and heal- ing within the walls; and the best medical talent is placed at the disposition of the poorest and meanest of citizens. The Asylum of St. Elizabeth, and the male and female orphan asylums, are also note- worthy charities. The Maison de Sante, long one of the most noted infirmaries of New Orleans, The United States Marine Hospital — New Orleans. IS nOW deserted and like the United States Marine Hospital, which has not been used since i860, is rapidly falling into decay. During the war the fine United States Hos- pital, which once stood at MacDonough's, on the river opposite New Orleans, was destroyed. The Protestant churches in the American quarter are good specimens of modern church architecture. The oldest of the Episcopal organizations, dating back to 1806, is Christ Church, on Canal street, founded by Bishop Chase. This church was the germ of Protestantism in the South-west. The present edifice is the third erected by the society. The fashionable Episcopal churches Trinity Church — New Orleans. St. Paul's Church — New Orleans. THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES. 65 are considered to be Trinity and St. Paul's. Annunciation Church is a fine edifice. The McGhee Church, of which Rev. Dr. Tudor is pastor, is the prin- cipal of the Methodist Episcopal churches South. The Northern post-bellum settlers are mainly Congregational or Methodist, and have gathered at the First Congregational Church, and at the Methodist Episcopal Ames Chapel. The First Presbyterian Church Society long en- joyed the spiritual guid- ance of the eloquent Dr. Palmer, a divine of na- tional reputation. The principal Baptist society assembles at the Coli- seum Place Church. There are great numbers of colored church organ- izations, many of which are in a flourishing con- dition, having been largely aided by North- ern missions. As there are one hundred and sixteen churches in New Orleans, the visitor can hardly hope to peer into them all; but on Baronne street he may steal for a moment into the shade of the old Jesuit Church, and, entering the dimly- lighted nave, see the black- robed girls at the confessional, and the richly-dressed women First Presbyterian Church — New Orleans making their rounds before the chapels and kneeling, prayer-books in hand, beside the market-woman and the serving girl. The Jesuit Church, St. Augustine's, St. Joseph's, St. Patrick's, and the Mortuary Chapel, are PAT The Catholic Churches of New Orleans. among the best of the Catholic religious structures. St. Patrick's has a tower 190 feet high, modeled after that of the famous minster at York, England. The city is not rich in architecture. After the National Capitol, the Custom- House is considered the largest public building in the country. It has 5 66 THE CUSTOM-HOUSE — THE BRANCH MINT a front of 334 feet on Canal street, and nearly the same on the levee. It is built entirely of granite from Massachusetts. Begun in 1848, little has been done since the war to complete it. As the seat of the United States courts, and of the exciting political conventions which have been so intimately The Custom-House — New Orleans. connected with the present political condition of Louisiana, the Custom-House attracts an interest which its architecture certainly could never excite. The building still lacks the roof contemplated in the original plan. When General Butler was military commander of New Orleans he proposed to erect a tem- porary roof, but his recall came before the work was begun. The Ionic building at the corner of Esplanade and New Levee streets, once used as a United States branch mint, is noted as the place of execution of Mum- ford, who tore down the flag which the Federal forces had just raised on the roof when in 1862 the city was first occupied by the Northern forces. Mumford was hung, by General Butler's order, from a flag-staff projecting from one of the windows under the front portico of the main building. ■', Jo. ^JlUJl^S'lHJJi H H " :, ir .■.*! I iHSTPai I ft W' ' ' ' Alfli i l The United States Branch Mint — New Orleans. VI. ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER — THE LEVEE SYSTEM — RAILROADS. THE FORT ST. PHILIP CANAL. THE banks of the Mississippi, within the State of Louisiana, are lovely, the richness of the foliage and the luxuriance of the vegetation redeeming them from the charge of monotony which might otherwise be urged. Here and there a town, as in the case of Plaquemine, has been compelled to recede before the encroachments of the river. The people of the State have shown rare pertinacity in maintaining the levee system. Like the Dutch in Holland, they doggedly assert their right to the lowlands in which they live, always braving inundation. They have built, and endeavor to maintain in repair, more than 1,500 miles, or 51,000,000 cubic feet of levees within the State limits. Their State engineer corps is always at work along the banks of the ' Mississippi, above and below Red River, on the Red River itself, on the Lafourche, the Atchafalaya, the Black and Ouachita, and on numerous important bayous. The work of levee building has been pressed forward even when the Com- monwealth has been prostrated by a hundred evils. Detailed surveys are con- stantly necessary to insure the State against inundation. The cost value of the present system is estimated at about $17,000,000, and it is asserted that the future expenditure of a similar sum will be necessary to complete and perfect it. Ten years before the war, when Louisiana was in her most prosperous condi- tion, she possessed 1,200 miles of levees, and the police juries of the several parishes compelled a strict maintenance of them by "inspectors of sections." Of course, during the war, millions of cubic feet of levees were destroyed by neglect, and for military purposes ; and that the State, in her impoverished condition, should have been able to rebuild the old, and add new levees in so short a time, speaks volumes for her energy and industry, — qualities which find a thorough representative in General Jeff Thompson, the present State Engineer. The Louisiana people claim that the general government should now take the building of levees along the Mississippi into its own hands, and their reasoning to prove it is ingenious. They say, for instance, that the tonnage of the great river amounts during a given year to 1,694,000 tons. They then claim that the transit of steamboats gives, by causing waves, an annual blow, equal to the whole tonnage of the commerce of the river, against each portion or point of the levees, or the banks on which the levees are erected ; and that this blow is delivered at the average rate of about six miles an hour, a force equal to 68' THE LEVEE SYSTEM DOWN THE RIVER. 15,000,000 tons; — a force expended by the commerce of the whole Mississippi basin upon each lineal foot in the 755 miles of Louisiana levees upon the river! On these grounds they object to paying all the expenses of levee building in their own State ; and they are supported by able scientists. The United States certainly is the only power in America which can ever control the Mississippi, and pre- vent occasional terrible overflows; and it is its bounden duty to do it. By day and night, the journey down river in the State of Louisiana is alike beautiful, impressive, exhila- rating. But when a moonless night settles down upon the stream, and you float away into an apparent ocean on the back of the white Leviathan whose throbbing sides, seem so tireless, the effect is sol- emnly grand. Sometimes the boat stops at a coaling station, and tons of coal are laboriously transferred from barges to the steamer. An army of negroes shovel the glistening nuggets into rude hand-barrows, which another army, formed into a procession, car- ries to the furnaces. I went down from Vicksburg on one of the larger and finer of the steamers; and the journey was a per- petual succession of novel episodes. At one point, when I supposed we were comfortably holding our way in the channel, a torch- light flared up, and showed us nearing a scraggy bank. The thin, long prOw of the boat ran upon the land. Gangways were lowered; planks were run out from the boat's side to the bank; forty negroes sprang from some* mysterious recess below, and huddled before the capstan. The shower of harmless sparks from the torches cast momentary red gleams over the rude but kindly black faces. A sharp-voiced white man, whom I learned afterwards to call the "Wasp," because he always flew nervously about stinging the sprawling negroes into activity, thrust himself among the laborers. Twenty stings from his voice, and the dusky forms plunged into the darkness beyond the gangways. Then other torches were placed upon the bank — lighting up long wood-piles. "Sometimes the boat stops at a coaling station. "wooding up." 69 The Wasp flitted restlessly from shore to deck, from deck to shore, while the negroes attacked the piles, and, each taking half a dozen sticks, hurried to the deck with them. Presently there was an endless procession of black forms from the landing to the boat and back through the flickering light, to the tune of loud adjurations from the Wasp. Now and then the chain of laborers broke into a rude chant, beginning with a prolonged shout, such as "Oh! I los' my money dar!" and followed by a gurgling laugh, as if the singers were amused at the sound of their own voices. When any of the darkies stumbled or lagged, the Wasp, generally kind and well- disposed towards the ne- groes, despite his rough ways, broke into appeal, threat, and entreaty, cry- ing out raspingly and with, oaths, " You, Reuben !" "You, Black Hawk!" "Come on thar, you Washington ! ain't you going to hear me!" Now and then he would run among the negroes, urging them into such activity that a whole pile would vanish as if swallowed by an earthquake. In two hours and a-half sixty cords of wood were trans- ferred from the bank to the boat, and the Wasp, calling the palpitating wood-carriers around him, thus addressed them: " Now, you boys, listen. You, Black Hawk, do you hear? you and these three, first watch! You, Reuben, and these three, second watch !" etc. Then the torches were dipped in the river, and the great white boat once more wheeled around into the channel. On the shores we could dimly discern huge trees half fallen into the stream, and stumps and roots and vines peeping up from the dark waters. We could hear the tug-boats groaning and sighing as they dragged along heavily laden barges ; and once the light of a conflagration miles away cast a strange, dim light over the current. Now and then the boat, whirling around, made for the bank, and the light of our torches disclosed a ragged negro holding a mail-bag. "The Wasp." "JO A LOUISIANA SWAMP. Up the swinging gangway clambered one of our deck hands; the mails were exchanged ; the lights went out once more. So on, and ever on, a cool breeze blowing from the perfumed banks. Now we could see the lights from some little settlement near a bayou emptying into "Some tract of hopelessly Irreclaimable, grotesque water wilderness." the stream ; now, the eye of some steamer, and hear the songs of the deck- hands as she passed us. Now we moved cautiously, taking soundings, as we entered some inlet or detour of the river ; and now paused near some great swamp land — some tract of hopelessly irreclaimable, grotesque water wilderness, where abound all kinds of noisesome reptiles, birds and insects. One should see such a swamp in October, when the Indian summer haze floats and shimmers lazily above the brownish-gray of the water; when a delicious magic in the atmosphere transforms the masses of trees and the tangled vines and creepers into semblances of ruined walls and tapestries. But at any season you see towering white, cypresses, shooting their ghostly trunks far above the surrounding trees ; or,- half rotten at their bases, fallen into the water ; the palmettoes growing in little clumps along the borders of treacherous knolls, where the earth seemed firm, but where you could not hope with safety to rest your feet ; the long festoons of dead Spanish moss hanging from the high boughs of the red cypress, which refuses to nourish the pretty parasite ; and the great cypress knees, now white, now brown, looming up through the warm haze, and peeping from nooks where the water is transparent, seeming like veins in a quarry riven by lightning strokes. Vista after vista of cypress-bordered avenues, with long lapses of water filling them, and little islands of mud and slime, thinly coated with a deceptive foliage, stretch before your vision ; a yellowish ray, flashing across the surface of the water, shows you where an alligator had shot forward to salute his friend or THE RIVER PANORAMA. Jl attack his enemy ; and a strange mass hanging from some remotest bough, if narrowly inspected, proves an eagle's nest, fashioned with a proper care for defense. You see the white crane standing at some tree root, sullenly contemplating the yielding mass of decaying logs and falling vines ; and the owl now and then cries from a high perch. The quaint grossbeak, the ugly heron, the dirty-black buzzard, the hideous water-goose, with his featherless body and satiric head, start up from their nooks as you enter ; the water moccasin slides warily into the slime ; and if you see a sudden movement in the centre of a leaden-colored mass, with a flash or two of white in it, you will do well to beware, for half a dozen alligators may show themselves at home there. You may come upon some monarch-tree, prostrate and decayed within from end to end. Entering it, and tapping carefully as you proceed to frighten away lurking snakes, you will find that you can walk through without stooping, even though you are of generous height. As far as the eye can reach you will see hundreds of ruined trees, great stretches of water, forbidding avenues which seem to lead to the bottomless pit, vistas as endless as hasheesh visions ; and the cries of strange birds, and the bel- lowings of the alligator, will be the only sounds from life. You will be glad to steal back to the pure sunlight and the open lowland, to the river and the odors of many flowers — to the ripple of the sad-colored current, and the cheery songs of the boatmen. Some evening, just as sunset is upon the green land and the broad stream, you stand high up in the pilot-house, as you float into a channel between low- lying islands, clad even to the water's edge with delicate shrubs whose forms are minutely reflected in the water. You may almost believe yourself removed out of the sphere of worldly care, and sailing to some haven of profoundest peace. So restfully will the tender glory of the rose and amethyst of the sunset come to you; so softly will the perfume of the jessamines salute your senses; so gently will avenue after avenue of verdurous banks, laved by tranquil waters and extend- ing beyond the reach of your vision, open before you ; so quietly will the wave take from the horizon the benison of the sun's dying fires ; so artfully will the perfect purple — the final promise of a future dawn — peep up from the islets' rims ere it disappears, that you will be charmed into the same serene content which nature around you manifests. From some distant village is borne on the breeze the music of an evening bell ; from some plantation- grounds, or a grove of lofty trees, comes the burden of a negro hymn, or a jolly song of love and adventure. Down below, the firemen labor at the seven great furnaces, and throw into them cords on cords of wood, tons on tons of coal ; the negroes on the watch scrub the decks, or trundle cotton bales from one side of the boat to the other, or they lie listlessly by the low rails of the prow, blinking and shuffling and laugh- ing with their own rude grace. Above, the magic perfume from the thickets fillled with blossoms is always drifting, and the long lines of green islets bathed by the giant stream, pass by in rapid panorama. 7* TYPES ON A RIVER STEAMER. You notice that some little fiend of a black boy, clad in an old woolen cap, a flannel shirt whose long flaps hang over his ragged and time-honored trowsers, and shoes whose heels are so trodden in that when he walks his motion seems to rock the steamer, will, when his comrade is not watching, steal some little arti- cle which said comrade can ill afford to lose ; whereupon comrade, in due time discovering the loss, will end by complaining of the suspected boy to the Wasp ; then you see the Wasp come buzzing and stinging and swearing along the broad decks, and calling George Washington to a certain post where he is to face him. Perhaps the Wasp will say: "George Washington, Jack says you stole his belt;" and then will sting and buzz and swear ; whereupon George Washington, mop- ping his black face with the flap of his red flannel over-garment, will say hastily, in one indignant sibilation: "Deed to God, hope I die, sah — no sah !" Perhaps then the Wasp will make George Washington hold up his hand, and, looking him earnestly in the face, will say, "George Wash- ington, are you going to tell me a lie?" with a buzz and a sting and a swear. Whereupon George Washington will again and defiantly sibilate: "If dat nigger say dat, he lied. I do' know nuffin about his belt nohow. Mus' a los' it woodin-up las' night. I did n't tetch it ; " but after various hand- raisings will The monument on the Chalmette battle-field. finally end by rendering up the belt, and retiring to the shade of a cotton bale, followed by the laughter of his com- rades. You come to a planta- tion landing where some restive steers are to be taken aboard, and notice the surprising manner in which those playful crea- tures toss about the negroes who wish to lead them on, until one or two agile fellows, catching the beasts by the tails, and as many more holding their horns, manage to make them walk the narrowest planks. Or you come to some landing where a smart-looking young negro man comes on board with a quadroon wife ; and you notice a hurried look of surprise on some of the old men's faces as the couple are shown a state-room, or as they promenade unconcernedly. Or a group of chattering French planters, with ruddy complexions and coal black eyes and hair, arrive, and the village priest, a fat, stalwart old boy in a white choker and a shovel hat, accompanies them; or perhaps a lean, gray-haired man, with a strongly marked dialect and a certain contemptuous way of talking of modern things, tells you that he remembers the first steamboat but three that ever ran upon the Mississippi river, and hints that " times were better then than now. That was a right smart o' years ago." Descending the river from New Orleans, you go slowly down a muddy- colored but broad and strong current, between low and seemingly unstable banks. You pass the Chalmette battle-field, where Andrew Jackson won his victory over the English, and where Monument Cemetery, the burial place of THE MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 73 many thousand soldiers, killed in the late civil war, is located. The monument from which the cemetery takes its name was erected in 1856, to commemorate General Jackson's good fight. The fears that the levees along the Mississippi would "not be able always to resist the great body of water bearing and wearing upon them have several times been realized. Among the most disastrous instances of the "crevasse" is that of May, 18 16, when the river broke through, nine miles above New Orleans, destroying numbers of plantations, and inundating the back part of the city. Gov. Claiborne adopted the expedient of sinking a vessel in the breach, and saved the town. In 1844 the river did much damage along the levee at New Orleans; and the inundations of 1868 and 1871 were severe lessons of the necessity of continually strengthening the works. Within fifty or sixty miles of the river's mouths, the banks become too low for cultivation ; you leave the great sugar plantations behind, and the river broadens, until, on reaching the " Head of the Passes," it separates into several streams, one of which in turn divides again a few miles from its separation from the main river. Beginning at the north and east, these passes, as they are called, are named respectively "Pass a l'Outre," "North-east Pass," the "South Pass," and "South-west Pass." Across the mouths of these passes bars of mud are formed, deposited by the river, which there meeting the salt and consequently heavier water of the gulf, runs over the top of it, and, being partially checked, the mud is strained through the salt water, and sinks at once to the bottom. This separation of the fresh from the salt water is maintained in a remarkable degree. When the river is high, the river water runs far out to sea, and has been seen at fifteen miles from the passes, with as sharply defined a line between them as that between oil and water. This is also true with reference to the upper and lower strata. Sometimes, when a steamer is running through a dense pea-soup colored water on top, the paddle-wheels will displace it sufficiently to enable one to see clear gulf water rushing up to fill the displacement. The flood tide runs up underneath the river water for a long distance, and, at extra- ordinary high tides, is distinctly visible as far as New Orleans, one hundred and ten miles above.* The bars change their depth constantly. When the river is high, and consequently brings down most mud, the depth of the deposit increases with great rapidity ; while in a low stage of the river the accumulation is slight. The bars are subject to another and great change, believed to be peculiar to the Mississippi ; that is, the formation of " mud lumps." These mud lumps are cone-shaped elevations of the bottom, often thrown up in a few hours, so that although the pilot may find ample depth for the largest ship on one day, on the next he may be aground with one of a much lighter draught. Sometimes the lumps disappear as quickly as formed ; at others they spread, show themselves above the water, and gradually grow into islands. It is sup- * For these and many other interesting details, the writer gratefully acknowledges his obliga- tions to Major C. W. Howell, Captain of United States Engineers, and to Captain Frank Barr, United States Revenue Marine. 74 IMPROVEMENT OF THE RIVER "PASSES. posed that this is the manner in which the long, narrow banks on either side of the "passes" have been formed. These cone-shaped lumps of mud are believed to be started by the action of carburetted hydrogen gas formed by the decay of vegetable matter contained in the river deposits, the substance of the bar being loosened by the action of the gas and forced upward until the lump makes its appearance above the water ; when, becoming dry, and being continually fed by the forces from below, it gradually gains consistency, and forms another link in the delta chain, extending into the waters of the Gulf. The attention of the United States Government to the necessity of improve- ment at the mouths of the Mississippi was first attracted in earnest in 1837, when an extended and elaborate survey of the passes and mouths was made by Captain Talcot, of the Engineer Corps. To save the commerce of New Orleans it was necessary to deepen the channel ; and the plan of dredging with buckets was carried into effect as far as a slight appropriation permitted. No farther work was then undertaken until 1852, when $75,000 was set aside for it; and* a num- ber of processes for deepening—- such as stirring up the river bottom with suit- able machinery, and the establishment of parallel jetties, five miles in length, at the mouth of the South-west Pass — were tried. By 1853 a depth of eighteen feet of water had been obtained in the South- west Pass by stirring up the river bottom; but in 1856 it was found that no trace of the deepening remained. In that year the sum of $300,000 was appropri- ated for opening and keeping open, by contract, ship channels through the bars at the mouths of the South-west Pass. Contractors began work, but unless they labored incessantly, they could not keep the channels open; and they retired discomfited. The plan of dragging har- rows and scrapers seaward along the bottom of the channel was adopted, thus- aiding the river-flood to carry the stirred-up matter to deep water; and a depth of eighteen feet was maintained upon the bar for one year at a cost of $60,000. Other efforts, in 1866 and 1867, were equally costly and of small avail; and in 1 868, the " Essayons," a steam Light-house — South-west Pass. [Page 75.] dredge-boat, constructed by the Atlantic Works, of Boston, was employed upon the bar at Pass a l'Outre. The plan of this boat, which had been recommended by General McAllister, was a powerful steamer with a cutting pro- peller, which could be lowered into the surface of the mud, where its rapid revolutions would effect the necessary "stirring- up." So far as her draught permits, the "Essay- ons " has been a complete THE BALIZE- PILOT TOWN. 75 success; and another steamer, whose cutting propeller can work at greater depth, and which has been named "McAllister," is now engaged upon the work. The ma.in labor with these new boats has been done at the South-west Pass, which has become the principal entrance to the Mississippi, and there the United States Government is erecting a light-house on iron piles, as the marshes offer but an insecure foundation. The improvements at the river's mouth, like those in the Red River, Tone's Bayou, the Tangipahoa River, the harbor of Galveston, and the Mississippi forts, as well as those on the lakes in the rear of New Orleans, are all under the direction of Major C. N. Howell, of the Engineer Department. Pass a 1' Outre is generally consid- ered by best authorities the natural channel for eastward- bound and returning ships. With its bar opened, none such would, it is affirmed, ever go to South-west Pass, for the reason that they might save several hours coming in. This pass, properly opened, can accommodate three times the number of ships which now annually enter the Mississippi. The effect on the commerce of New Orleans of the bar- formations at the river's mouths is depressing. They cause burdensome taxes on the earnings of ships. In 1870 the value of imports at New Orleans amounted to only one-seventh of the exports; but if the port were made as economical as that of New York, by removing all obstacles to free entrance and exit, the imports would soon nearly equal the exports. The Government is at present expending about $650,000 annually on the necessary river and harbor improve- ments in Louisiana and Texas. Twice that amount might be judiciously invested every year. The work on the channel at the Mississippi's outlet must evidently be perpetual, unless the plan of a canal is adopted. "The Balize," now a little collection of houses at the North-east Pass, was a famous place in its day — was, indeed, the port of New Orleans; and vessels were often detained there for weeks on the great bar, which had been labored upon to but little advantage before the cession of Louisiana to the United States. The extensive French military and naval establish- ments at the Balize were utterly destroyed by the great hurricanes of September, 1740. Now-a-days, the venerable port is almost desolate; a few damp and discouraged fishermen linger sadly among the wrecks of departed greatness. "Pilot Town," at the South-west Pass, is interesting and ambitious. The pilots and fishermen are delightful types, and are nearly all worthy seamen and good navigators. At "Pass a l'Outr.e " and " South-west Pass " the Government maintains a " boarding-station " for protec- j6 RAILROADS IN LOUISIANA. tion of the revenue, and an inspector is sent up to the port of New Orleans with each incoming vessel. Steaming back to the Louisiana capital on one of the inward-bound vessels, leaving behind you the low-lying banks ; the queer towns at the mouths of the passes, with their foundations beneath the water; the long lines of pelicans sailing disconsolately about the current ; the porpoises disporting above the bars, and the alligators sullenly supine on the sand, you will land into the rush and whir of the great commerce "on the levee." If it be evening, you will hear the hoarse whistles of a dozen steamers, as they back into midstream, the negroes on their decks scrambling among the freight and singing rude songs, while the loud cries of the captains are heard above the noise of escaping steam. One of the most pressing needs of Louisiana is an increase of railway lines. The New Orleans, Mobile and Texas road has done much for the commerce of the State, and is, undoubtedly, one of the best constructed lines in the country. It drains extensive sections of Mississippi and Alabama toward New Orleans. The extension of this route to Houston in Texas, and the building of a branch from Vermilionville to Shreveport, will do much for the development of the commonwealth. The trade between New Orleans and Shreveport, which is really immense, was much restricted for many years by the difficulty of navigat- ing the Red river, whose tortuous water-ways have latterly been considerably improved. The projected "Louisiana Central" railroad, located along the route of the Red river for about 200 miles, passing through Alexandria and Natchi- toches, will make Shreveport within twelve hours of New Orleans. The journey formerly occupied three or four days. Morgan's "Louisiana and Texas" rail- road extends from New Orleans to Brashear City on Berwick's Bay, where it communicates with a fleet of first-class iron steamers running to Texas ports. The branch of this road from Brashear City to Vermilionville, graded years ago, might now be completed to advantage. The New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern railroad gives a valuable con- nection with the North, via Jackson, in Mississippi. A recent enterprise is the New Orleans and North-eastern road, which is to cross Lake Pontchartrain on a trestle-work, supported on piles, and opening up a delightful location for sub- urban residences beyond the lake, is to push on into the iron and coal regions of Alabama. The Illinois Central Railroad Company has built a line from Jackson, Tennessee, to the south bank of the Ohio river, opposite Cairo, Illinois, bringing New Orleans as near to Chicago by rail as it is to New York, and creating an important adjunct to the system for transportation from the North- west to the gulf and the ocean. Railroad routes along the banks of the Mis- sissippi would give new life to such towns as Baton Rouge, the old capital of Louisiana, 129 miles from New Orleans, and Natchez in Mississippi. Baton Rouge now has no communication with New Orleans save by steamer. It is a lovely town, built on gently sloping banks crowned with picturesque houses, the ruined Gothic State Capitol, a substantial Penitentiary, and the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. It is one of the healthiest towns in the State, and with proper facilities for speedy communication with other towns, might be the seat THE FORT ST. PHILIP CANAL. 77 of a flourishing trade. Routes parallel with the river would be speedily built if New Orleans had better outlets and more tonnage. Knowing this, the enterprising inhabitants of that city are anxious for the Fort St. Philip canal, which shall render the tedious and risky navigation of the passes at the Mississippi's mouth unnecessary. The project of the Fort St. Philip canal is not entirely due to the sagacity of this generation. Forty years ago the Legislature of Louisiana, at the suggestion of a distinguished engineer, memorialized Congress on the subject of a canal to connect the Mississippi river with the Gulf, leaving the stream a few miles below Fort St. Philip and entering the Gulf about four miles south of the island " Le Breton." Numerous commercial conventions have endorsed it since that time. It would give, by means of a system of locks, a channel which would never be subject to the evils now disfiguring the passes at the river's mouth, and would communicate directly with deep water. The estimated cost of the work is about eight millions of dollars. It is a national commercial necessity, and should be undertaken by the Government at once. New Orleans would more than quad- ruple her transportation facilities by means of this canal, not only with regard to Liverpool, Bremen, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Southampton, Havre, and Glasgow, but to New York and Philadelphia. Havana, Lima, and Aspinwall. 'A Nickel for Daddy. VII. * THE INDUSTRIES OF LOUISIANA A SUGAR PLANTATION. THE TECHE COUNTRY. THE main industries of Louisiana at the present time are the growth of cotton, the production of sugar, rice, and wheat, — agriculture in general, — and cattle raising. The culture of the soil certainly offers inducements of the most astonishing character, and the immigrant who purchases a small tract — five to ten acres — of land can, during the first year of possession, make it support himself and his numerous family, and can also raise cotton enough on it to return the purchase money. Vergennes, in his memoir on La Louisiane, printed early in this century, says: "I will again repeat what I have already many times said — that Louis- iana is, without doubt, by reason of the softness of her climate and the beauty of her situation, the finest country in the universe. Every European plant, and nearly all those of America, can be successfully cultivated there." This was the verdict of one who had made a careful survey of the great province then known as Louisiana, and especially the tract now comprised in the lowlands. Rice, an important article of food, can be raised on grounds which are too low and moist for any other species of valuable vegetables, and in the Mississippi basin, rice, sugar and corn can be cultivated in close proximity. The fertility of the sugar lands is proverbial; and Louisiana is prodigal of fruit of all kinds. With but little attention orange and fig-trees prosper and bear splendid crops ; apples and peaches are produced in abundance; and grape-bearing lands are to be found in all sections of the State. Sugar, cotton, rice and tobacco might all be readily cultivated on the same farm in many sections. The cultivation of rice, introduced into Louisiana by Bienville, at the time of the founding of New Orleans, may be profitably pursued in all the "parishes," i. e., counties, on the river and Gulf coasts, and on the high pine lands of the northern part of the State. The rice raised on the irrigated lands below New Orleans, and in the immediate proximity of the Gulf, is known as "lowland rice;" that raised elsewhere as "upland." The quality of the staple is constantly improving by cultivation. In i860 the rice crop of Louisiana amounted to 6,500,000 pounds. There is no good reason why it should not now be 60,000,000. Barley and buckwheat flourish admirably in the .State, and the attention given to the cultivation of wheat since the close of the war has accorded singularly gratifying results. The average yield in the hill portion of the State is fully equal to that of the Northern States, — about twelve bushels to the acre — and in the Red River Valley, where the WHEAT THE SUGAR-CANE. 79 planters were compelled to devote much of their old cotton land to the pro- duction of wheat, for the sake of getting the wherewithal to live, the yield was twenty bushels to the acre. The wheat yearly gains largely in weight, size and color. It is said that wherever the cavalry of the United States camped in Louisiana during the war, immense grain fields sprang up from the seed scattered where horses were fed. In the swamps of Assumption parish wheat and rye have been known to yield forty bushels to the acre. The wheat may be planted in September, October, or November, and reaped late in April or early in May. Indian corn does not yield well, rarely giving over fifteen bushels to the acre. Marsh, Hungarian herbs, and prairie grasses grow in abundance and make excellent hay. Pastur- age is perennial, and in the Attakapas the grazing regions are superb. Cotton may be cultivated throughout the entire arable portion of the State. The cultivation of the sugar-cane in Louisiana merits especial mention. One of the most remunerative of industries under the slave system, it has been for some time languishing because of the disorganization of labor, and because also of the division of large plantations into small farms. For a whole year before the sugar crop is ready for the market, a constant outlay is required, and the small planters succeed but poorly, while the larger ones have been ruined by the war, and have allowed their sugar-houses to decay, and their splendid machinery to rust in ditches. In 175 1, two ships transporting soldiers to Louisiana, stopped at Hispaniola, and the Jesuits on that island sent some sugar-canes and some negroes, used to their cultivation, to the brothers of their order in the new colony. The Jesuits at New Orleans undertook the culture of the crop, but did not succeed; and it was only in 1795 that the seeds became thoroughly naturalized in Louisiana. Up to 1 8 16 the cultivation of the cane was confined to the lower parishes, but it is now raised with reasonable success in many other portions of the State. From 1828 to 1833, the sugar production in the commonwealth was about 280,000 hogsheads. The following table will show the amount of the crops of each year from 1834 to 1873 inclusive: Y Production, ' Hogsheads. 1834 100,000 I835 30,000 1836 70,000 1837 65,000 1838 70,000 1839 115,000 1840 87,000 1841 90,oop 1842 140,000 1843 100,000 Year Production, Hogsheads. 1844 200,000 1845 186,000 1846 140,000 1847 240,000 1848 220,000 1849 247,000 1850 211,000 185 I 236,000 1852 321,000 1853 449,000 Y ear Production, Hogsheads. 1854 346,000 1855 231,000 1856 74,000 1857 279,000 1858 362,000 1859 221,000 i860 228,000 l86l 459,000 1 864.. War, 7,000 1865 15,000 Y ear Production, Hogsheads. 1866 39,000 1867 37,600 1868 84,000 1869 87,000 1870 144,800 1871 128,461 1872 105,000 1873 90,000 The ribbon cane planted in Louisiana was brought from Java, in a ship which touched at Charleston. It was hardy, and was at once adopted in all sections of 80 COOPERATION THE "DELTA." the State. But it is thought that it has deteriorated very much, and an associa- tion recently sent a gentleman to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and to India to search for a fresh supply. He secured some ten thousand cuttings, which were so long in transit as to be nearly all destroyed, and parties in the sugar interest are now anxious that a government vessel should be sent out to obtain a new supply. There were, at the time of my visit to Louisiana, 1,224 sugar-houses in operation in the State, 907 of which possessed steam power. The number of large plantations is everywhere decreasing, while small farms take their place. The cooperative system, as practiced in Martinique and other colonies, has been adopted to some extent in the State. It separates the production of cane from the manufacture of sugar, the small planters taking their carte to the sugar- houses to be worked through on shares. This is much better than the old system, which made the raising of sugar by free labor so expensive as to be almost impossible. The cooperative system will, perhaps, prevail very largely ere long, many extensive planters giving it their sanction. In 1871, there was enough labor and capital expended on the crop to have brought it up to a quarter of a million hogsheads. The accumulated losses of the last three years have made the trade so dubious that dozens of the largest planters in the State cannot secure a cent of advances. Plantations are deserted ; owners are completely discouraged. The present sugar production of this most fertile of cane- growing lands is only two per cent, of the whole production of the world. The consumption of sugars in the United States for the calendar year 1871 was 663,000 tons, of which eighty- five per cent, was foreign. The whole number of acres now devoted to the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana is estimated at 148,840, producing to the acre about 49,000 pounds of cane, or 1,500 pounds of raw sugar. To every thousand pounds of sugar there is also a yield of 666 pounds of molasses. All the land comprised in the section known as the " Delta proper of the Miss- issippi River," embracing eighteen parishes and an area of 12,000 square miles, is peculiarly adapted to the cultivation of sugar-cane, as well as of cotton, corn, rice, tobacco, indigo, oranges, lemons and figs. More than half of the population of the State is settled upon this delta ; and in 1 860, one hundred and fifty thou- sand slaves were held in that section, and the total estimate of taxable property there, including the slaves, amounted to $271,017,667, more than half of the State's entire valuation. It is not wonderful that stagnation has fallen upon this once prosperous region, since, reckoning the slaves at the average $1,000 apiece, by their liberation alone $150,000,000 of the above valuation at once vanished into thin air.* "" For fifty or sixty miles below New Orleans, the narrow strip which protects the Mississippi channel on either side from the gulf is crowded with plantations. The soil there is all of recent alluvial formation, and is, consequently, extremely *The census of 1870 gives Louisiana 732,731 population, of whom 364,210 were blacks. The population of New Orleans in 1870 was nearly 200,000. THE "MAGNOLIA PLANTATION. 8l prolific. This section may, without the least exaggeration, be called " of the best land in the world.." The rivers and bayous furnish fish and oysters of finest flavor ; the earth brings forth fruit and vegetables in tropical abundance ; all the conditions of life are easy ; and, in addition, there is the profitable culture of sugar and rice. The negroes themselves are making money rapidly in this section, and show much skill in managing their affairs. In many cases they were aided in purchas- ing their lands by their old masters, and generally go to them for advice as to speculation and conduct in crop raising. The same negro who will bitterly oppose his old master politically, will implicitly follow his advice in matters of labor and investment in which he is personally concerned. At every turn, and on every available spot along the shore, as one drifts slowly down the lower Mississippi, one is charmed to note the picturesque group- ing of sugar-houses and "quarters," the mansions surrounded by splendid groves, and the rich fields stretching miles away towards a dark belt of timber. Each plantation has its group of white buildings, gleaming in the sun ; each its long vistas of avenues, bordered with orange-trees ; for the orange and the sugar-cane are friendly neighbors. When the steamer swings around at the wharf of such a lordly plantation as that of the "Woodlands" of Bradish John- son, or that of Effingham Lawrence, the negroes come trooping out, men and women dancing, somersaulting, and shouting; and, if perchance there is music on the steamer, no power can restrain the merry antics of the African. The " Magnolia" plantation of Mr. Lawrence is a fair type of the larger and better class ; it lies low down to the river's level, and seems to court inundation. Stepping from the wharf, across a green lawn, the sugar-house first greets the eye, an immense solid building, crammed with costly machinery. Not far from it are the neat, white cottages occupied by the laborers ; there is the kitchen where the field-hands come to their meals ; there are the sheds where the carts are boused, and the cane is brought to be crushed ; and, ranging in front