arising out of the exigences of the occasion, which brings together at such times a crowd of people, to spots often possessing very inadequate accommodations. In these cases it may truly be said, that Misfortune makes people acquainted with strange bedfellows.' , * Early the following morning we proceeded on the lake, traversed it, and on landing found ourselves not more than three miles from the Judge's house, from which however we were separated by a swampy wood, not very pleasant to cross, and by a navigable river, the Teche. The Judge and myself however, together with his housekeeper, who had accompanied us from New Orleans, waded on foot through the slough, and arrived about the middle of the day opposite his plantation, quite bespattered with mud. The Judge possesses a fine and fertile tract of land, extending for nearly a mile on either side of the river Teche, which consists for the most part of what was originally prairie, but is now converted into sugar-fields. A belt of wood however bounds the plantation on either side, and near the borders of the river is an almost regular line of some of the finest Live Oaks I have ever seen. He has brought nearly 2000 acres into cultivation, and has a stock of about 160 negroes, 40 horses, and a variety of other cattle. He is at present lodged in a small cottage, but is erecting a handsome and commodious mansion. I should not call it in England very spacious, considered as the residence of one of the largest proprietors in the country, but in Louisiana it is remarkable enough to attract curious persons from considerable distances, so rare is it for the planters to aspire to anything beyond a cottage on their country estates. I had indeed frequent proofs of their indifference to such kind of conveniences, in the mean dwelling-houses that occur on the borders of the Mississippi, associated with such large assemblages of negro huts, and such expensive buildings for grinding and preserving their sugars. spent eight days very pleasantly at the Judge's, whose good temper, wit, powers of memory, and conversational talents, made the time pass off rapidly enough. He had a good library of English books, and it was gratifying to meet with, Buckland's Bridgwater, and Whately's logic, within fifty miles of the bor * Yet some progress has been made since Mons. Chateaubriand's visit to America in 1791. I never saw, even in Arkansas, one of those singular beds, which he describes as existing at an inn between Albany and Niagara, constructed in a circular form round a post, in which each traveller was expec ed to take his place with his feet towards the post in the centre, and his head at the circumference of the circle. ders of Texas, and to hear Shakespear, Scott, and Byron quoted familiarly amongst the wilds of Louisiana. Nor was I left to his society alone, for we dined at the houses of two of his neighbours, and met several of them at his hospitable table. One or two proved to be very intelligent men, the rest respectable and hearty country gentlemen. From such people the treatment of the negroes, so far as physical comforts are concerned, is doubtless good. The Judge, I should think, must be beloved by his own dependants, with whom, on reaching his estate, he shook hands, like a Feudal Lord amongst his Serfs, receiving their congratulations on his return, and inquiring with interest into their family concerns. His slaves are, I am sure, liberally and kindly treated, but I cannot say that there were any indications, either on the part of him or of others, that they regarded them much in the light of morally responsible beings, or made any efforts to instruct or enlighten them. I own, however, that my inquiries on such subjects were limited, for I did not think it fair to avail myself of my opportunities for secretly investigating matters, which, I can see, all slave-holders avoid as much as possible to discuss. The practice of dirt-eating, I hear, prevails to a considerable extent among the slaves in some of the neighbouring plantations, and often proves an unsuspected source of disease, producing disinclination for food, listlessness, and marasmus. The medical attendants sometimes are able to detect the existence of this propensity, by examining, whether the walls of the hut, in which the sick negro lives, bear any marks of having had their plaster picked off, as if by the hand-for the morbid appetite seems in these parts to be, not for unctuous kinds of earth, as is the case with the savages whom Humboldt describes, but for those of a gritty and loose consistence, such as mortar, limestone, &c. There appears to be a rooted impression among the planters, that the negro race is not only inferior, but distinct an idea, which receives the more countenance, as it seems to palliate the injustice of continuing to hold them in bondage. They say however, with some truth, that we should act as they do, if placed under the same circumstances, for that it cannot be expected, that the people of the South should be willing alone to make the sacrifice, or that the great body of landed proprietors should be prepared to give up every thing, for the sake of a principle, and that, too, one of doubtful application.* *It is with pain and regret that I see such a writer as Mr. Dickens imprecating a curse upon the land of Virginia for fostering slavery; for when I recollect that the institution was kept up a century ago by the government at home, when the colonists wished to abolish it, I do not think that an Englishman is exactly the person to raise an outcry The abolition of slavery has hitherto been brought about in one of two ways: either by a general sense of the superior advantage of free labour over that of slaves, as in the northern states of America; or by physical compulsion, as in the case of the English West India colonies. Neither of these methods, it is to be feared, can be put into operation with respect to the southern states, so that the prospect of emancipation in their case would seem to be very distant. Alligators abound in the Bayous bordering on the Judge's property. Taking a boat one evening, we killed one about three feet in length, which, though shot twice through the head, continued to live for at least an hour. I afterwards saw several much larger ones, in an inlet or creek of the Great Lake already mentioned. They appeared very timid and harmless. Adjoining this inlet is an Indian burial ground, to which, until lately, the Chetimache tribe were accustomed to remove the bones of their deceased relations, after the body had become decomposed. The bones had been packed in little open oblong boxes, which were piled one above the other on the summit of a small artificial mound, shaded by a venerable live oak. Together with these bones were some utensils belonging to the deceased the piroque or canoe, the iron-pot, and even some coarse pottery. Of late however they have begun to bury under ground, so that the skulls which remained in the boxes were of rather old standing, and consequently decayed. I nevertheless carried away three of them as trophies*. The mocking bird is very common in this country, and sings delightfully, but it appears to be the only bird possessing much sweetness of note. Parroquets, cardinal birds, woodpeckers, and others possessing a fine plumage, abound. against the slaveholders of America, for not following directly in the wake of the mother country, when it has at last had its eyes opened to the iniquity of the practice, which it had before encouraged. I allude to the passage which occurs in vol. ii. p. 16 of his late work, which meets my disapproval, not so much on account of the statement made, which, I fear, cannot well be controverted, but on account of the sentiment conveyed, which is one I cannot too strongly deprecate. Dreary and uninteresting," he remarks, "as the aspect from Fredericksburg to Richmond in Virginia is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the curses of this horrible institution had fallen, and had greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground, than the richest and most thriving cultivation on the same place could possibly have afforded me. In this district, where slavery sits brooding, there is an air of ruin and decay, which is inseparable from the system." *I presented one of them to my friend Dr. Prichard of Bristol, who has introduced an engraving of it in his work on the Natural History of Man. mer. It is, I doubt not, rich in plants, but the season was too backward to afford an opportunity of collecting them. The prairies are said to be covered with a profusion of wild flowers in sumThese prairies, when of moderate extent, as is the case here, have much the appearance of an English park, clumps of timber being scattered over them, as if by art, and a belt of wood bounding them on all sides. The district not being advanced enough in civilisation to take advantage of such spots for country residences, they are either left deserted, or are converted into sugar plantations. We cannot indeed expect much taste to be evinced in selecting picturesque spots for habitations, when we find the proprietors of extensive estates often housed in cottages which an English bailiff would despise. On Wednesday, March 21st, I took leave with much regret of my hospitable friend Judge Porter, whose undiminished love for the Old Country leads me to cherish a hope, that he will some day or other fulfil his intention of beating up my quarters at Oxford, and of renewing in the Old World those pleasant hours, which I have spent in his company in the New.* The Swan steamer, on its way to New Orleans, took me on board, but it was not long before it gave me a specimen of the interminable delays attendant on this mode of travelling.† In the night we grounded in the lake, and it was late the next day before we were got off. Then the taking in of cargo detained us three or four times a day, and when we entered the Bayou, we were continually stopt by the abundance of drift timber carried down by the stream. At last, as we approached Plaquemine, the rapidity of the current became such, that the utmost power of the steam scarcely sufficed to battle against it, and in one place the greater part of the crew and passengers were obliged to land, and tow the boat along. Thus we scarcely made one mile in the hour, and did not reach the Mississippi till Saturday morning. Another day was required to bring us down to New Orleans, and in the night, about three miles from the city, the pilot contrived to ground us again, so that we had to walk into town. A *To my great mortification he came unexpectedly to Oxford, in the dead of the long vacation of 1840, just a fortnight after I had started for Paris. Yet a lady who was on board descanted upon the facilities afforded for going to New Orleans at present, compared to the period which she recollected prior to the introduction of steam-vessels, when the whole of this long voyage was accomplished in the little canoes of the country, and accordingly occupied several weeks. part of this detention must, I think, be attributed to the irregular habits and insubordination of the crew. The captain was himself a decent man, but the pilots, engineers, stewards, &c. seemed to be commonly playing cards when not at work. The general character of the company was but so so, gambling was their principal occupation, and their discourse sugars and cottons. Indeed, I must at once admit, that Mrs. Trollope's and Captain Hamilton's accounts of steam travelling on the Western waters have but too much foundation in fact, nor is the character of the people at New Orleans itself calculated to remove the unfavourable expressions which the voyage to it leaves upon un the mind. I have already remarked on some of the features that present themselves, the reckless thirst after gain, the absence of religious feeling, the coarse obtrusiveness of manner, and the indifference to those little attentions, which in other countries serve to disguise the real selfishness of the individual. I know not whether Moore visited this part of the United States, but to no other city in the Union do these lines of his so well apply, in none would there be so little cause to accuse him of a poet's license and exaggeration : Where every ill the Antient World could view, On Sunday evening I went to the French theatre, it being the only opportunity I was likely to have for seeing it. If not so handsome, it is more tasteful and elegant than the one in the American quarter of the city, and there was certainly more attention to dress and decorum-less Trollopism in short-than is observable in other American theatres. This arises, from the higher price of the boxes, which thus are set apart for a better dressed description of people, and also from a relic of French politeness among the Creoles. The price of the pit was a dollar, that of the boxes a dollar and a half. The ladies were principally of French extraction. They were for the most part plain, at least I did not remark amongst the whole number more than three or four pretty faces. The performances consisted of French Vandevilles, very tolerably acted. On Monday I went out with Mr. Wylie to see the Raceground, which, unlike those in England, is inclosed by a high wooden fence, so that no one can even get a sight of the sport without paying the entrance fee of a dollar. I am told, that in spite of this high price, the area is commonly crowded, so little do the New Orleans people think of money. The course is |