The Memories of Fifty Years Part 27

On one occasion, not long before our final parting, he said he had committed two great errors in his life: leaving his native home to find one in the South, and not marrying when he first commenced the practice of law. "My const.i.tution was strong and suited to a northern climate, and there home-influences would have restrained propensities that have grown with indulgence, and are threatening in their consequences. I feel this: I am not the strong man I was; mind and body are failing, and the beautiful lines of our friend Wild are constantly recurring to my mind:

"'My life is like the autumn leaf, Which trembles in the moon's pale ray: Its hold is frail, its date is brief, Restless, and soon to pa.s.s away.'

"Why did not Wild give his life to literature, instead of the musty maxims of the law. Little as he has written, it is enough to preserve his fame as a true poet; and though he has been a member of Congress, and a distinguished one, a lawyer, and a distinguished one, his fame and name will only be perpetuated by his verse, so tender, so touching, and so true to the feelings of the heart. It is the heart that he lives in. Ah! it is the heart only which forms and fas.h.i.+ons the romance of life; and without this romance, life is scarcely worth the keeping.

"'Tis midnight--on the mountains brown The cold round moon s.h.i.+nes deeply down; Blue roll the waters, blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright; Who ever gazed upon them s.h.i.+ning, And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away, And mix with their eternal ray?'

"We feel as Byron did when he imagined these lines. I see him with upturned eyes gazing on the blue expanse above, watching the stars; thinking of heaven; feeling earth, and hating it, and his soul flying away from it, to meet and mingle in the firmament above him with the spiritually bright and heavenly pure brilliants sparkling on her diadem. How mean--how miserably mean this earth, and all it gives! One diamond in a world of dirt. The soul that loves and contemplates the eternal--shall it shake off at once the miserable clod, and in a moment glisten among the millions, pure, bright, and lovely as these? There is but one idea of h.e.l.l--eternal torture! But every man has his own idea of heaven: yet, with all, its chiefest attribute is eternal happiness.

The wretch craves it for rest; he who never knew care or suffering, desires it for enjoyment; and the wildest imagination sublimates its bliss to love and beauty. And G.o.d only knows what it is, or in what it consists. But we shall know, and I, in a little time. On Him who gave me being I confidently rely for all which is destined in my future."

His spirit was eminently wors.h.i.+pful. The wisdom and goodness of G.o.d he saw in every creature; he contemplated these as a part of the grand whole, and saw a union and use in all for the harmony of the whole; he saw all created nature linked, each filling and subserving a part, in duties and uses, as designed, and, his mind filled with the contemplation, his soul expanded in love and wors.h.i.+p of the great Architect who conceived and created all.

With all this might of mind and beauty of soul, there lurked a demon to mar and destroy. It worked its end: let us draw a veil over the frailties of poor human nature, and, in the admiration of the genius and the soul, forget the foibles and frailties of the body.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ACADIAN FRENCH SETTLERS.

SUGAR _vs._ COTTON--ACADIA--A SPECIMEN OF MISSISSIPPI FRENCH LIFE--BAYOU LA FOURCHE--THE GREAT FLOOD--THEOLOGICAL ARBITRATION--A RUSTIC BALL --OLD-FAs.h.i.+ONED WEDDINGS--CREOLES AND QUADROONS--THE PLANTER--NEGRO SERVANTS--GAULS AND ANGLO-NORMANS--ANTAGONISM OF RACES.

Forty years ago, there was quite an excitement among the cotton-planters, in the neighborhood of Natchez, upon the subject of sugar-planting in the southern portion of Louisiana. At that time it was thought the duty (two and a half cents per pound) on imported sugars would be continued as a revenue tax, and that it would afford sufficient protection to make the business of sugar-planting much more profitable than that of cotton. The section of country attracting the largest share of attention for this purpose was the Teche, or Attakapas country, the Bayous La Fourche, Terre Bonne, and Black. The Teche and La Fourche had long been settled by a population, known in Louisiana as the Acadian French. These people, thus named, had once resided in Nova Scotia and Lower Canada, or Canada East as now known. When peopled by the French, Nova Scotia was called Acadia. Upon the conquest by the English, these people were expelled the country, and in a most inhuman and unchristian manner. They were permitted to choose the countries to which they would go, and were there sent by the British Government.

Many went to Canada, some to Vincennes in Indiana, some to St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Viedepouche, and Kaskaskia in Mississippi, and many returned to France.

Upon the cession, or rather donation to Spain of Louisiana by France, these, with many others of a population similar to these, from the different arrondiss.e.m.e.nts of France, were sent to Louisiana, and were located in Opelousas, Attakapas, La Fourche, and in the parishes of St.

John the Baptist, St. Charles, and St. James (parishes const.i.tuting the Acadian coast on the Mississippi). On the La Fourche they const.i.tuted, forty years ago, almost the entire population. They were illiterate and poor. Possessing the richest lands on earth, which they had reclaimed from the annual inundations of the Mississippi River by levees constructed along the margins of the stream--with a climate congenial and healthful, and with every facility afforded by the navigation of the bayou and the Mississippi for reaching the best market for all they could produce--yet, with all these natural advantages, promising to labor and enterprise the most ample rewards, they could not be stimulated to industry or made to understand them.

They had established their homes on the margin of the stream, and cleared a few acres of the land donated by the Government, upon which to grow a little corn and a few vegetables. With a limited amount of stock, which found subsistence upon the cane and gra.s.s of the woods, and with the a.s.sistance of a shot-gun, they managed to subsist--as Peake's mother served the Lord--after a fas.h.i.+on.

Their houses were unique: a slender frame, often of poles cut from the forest, and rudely squared, served the purpose. Into the studding were placed pins, extending from one to the other, horizontally, and about ten inches apart. The long gray moss of the country was then gathered and thrown by layers into a pit dug for the purpose, with the soil, until the pit was full, when water was added in sufficient quant.i.ties to wet the ma.s.s through; this done, all who are a.s.sisting in the construction of the house--men, women, boys, and girls--jump in upon it, and continue to tramp until mud and moss are completely intermingled and made of proper consistence, when it is gathered up and made into rails about two feet long. These rolls are laid over the pins, commencing at the bottom or sill of the building, when each roll is bent down at the ends, covering the intervals between the pins, pressed hardly together, and smoothed with the hands, inside and out, forming a wall some five inches in thickness, with a perfectly smooth surface. The roof is first put on, and the floors laid. When this mud dries thoroughly it is white-washed; the house is then complete, and presents quite a neat appearance. It will continue to do so if the white-was.h.i.+ng is annually continued. If, however, this is neglected, the lime falls off in spots, and the primitive mud comes out to view: then the appearance is anything but pleasant. No pains are taken to ornament their yards, or gather about them comforts. There is a pig or two in a pen in the corner of the yard, a hen-roost immediately at the house, a calf or two at large, and numerous half-starved, mangy dogs--and innumerable ragged, half-naked children, with little, black, piercing eyes, and dishevelled, uncombed hair falling about sallow, gaunt faces, are commingling in the yard with chickens, dogs, and calves. A sallow-faced, slatternly woman, bareheaded, with uncared-for hair, long, tangled, and black, with her dress tucked up to her knees, bare-footed and bare-legged, is wading through the mud from the bayou, with a dirty pail full of muddy Mississippi water.

A diminutive specimen of a man, clad in blue cottonade pants and hickory s.h.i.+rt, barefooted, with a palm-leaf hat upon his head, and an old rusty shot-gun in his hands, stands upon the levee, casting an inquiring look, first up and then down the bayou, deeply desiring and most ardently expecting a wandering duck or crane, as they fly along the course of the bayou. If unfortunately they come within reach of his fusee, he almost invariably brings them down. Then there is a shout from the children, a yelp from the dogs, and all run to secure the game; for too often, "No duck, no dinner." Such a home and such inhabitants were to be seen on Bayou La Fourche forty years ago, and even now specimens of the genuine breed may there be found, as primitive as were their ancestors who first ventured a home in the Mississippi swamps.

The stream known as Bayou La Fourche, or The Fork, is a large stream, some one hundred yards wide, leaving the Mississippi at the town of Donaldsonville, eighty miles above the city of New Orleans, running south-southeast, emptying into the Gulf, through Timbalier Bay, and may properly be termed one of the mouths of the Mississippi. Its current movement does not in high water exceed three miles an hour, and when the Mississippi is at low water, it is almost imperceptible. Large steamers, brigs, and schooners come into it when the river is at flood, and carry out three or four hundred tons of freight each at a time.

The lands upon the banks of this stream are remarkably fertile, entirely alluvial, and decline from the bank to the swamp, generally some one or two miles distant. This Acadian population was sent here during the Spanish domination, and with a view to opening up to cultivation this important tract of country. It was supposed they would become--under the favorable auspices of their emigration to the country, and with such facilities for acc.u.mulating money--a wealthy and intelligent population. This calculation was sadly disappointed. The mildness of the climate and the fruitfulness of the soil combined to enervate, instead of stimulating them to active industry, without which there can be no prosperity for any country. A few acres, though half cultivated, were found sufficient to yield an ample support, and the mildness of the climate required but little provision for clothing.

Here, in this Eden upon earth, these people continued to live in a simplicity of primitive ignorance and indolence scarcely to be believed by any but an actual observer. Their implements of agriculture were those of two centuries before. More than half the population wore wooden shoes, when they wore any at all. Their wants were few, and were all supplied at home. Save a little flour, powder, and shot, they purchased nothing. These were paid for by the sale of the produce of the poultry-yard--the prudent savings from the labor of the women--to the market-boats from the city.

There were, at the period of which I write, but half a dozen Americans upon the bayou. These had found the country illy adapted to the growth of cotton, and some of them had commenced the planting of sugar-cane.

The results from this were very satisfactory, and consequently stimulating to the enterprise of men of means, who felt they could be more profitably employed in this new culture than in cotton, even in the very best cotton regions.

There was one man of high intelligence and long experience who denied this--Stephen Duncan, of Natchez--and the subsequent experience of many brought bitter regret that they had not yielded to the counsels of Dr.

Duncan.

The great flood of 1828 had not touched the La Fourche or Teche, while the entire alluvial plain above had been covered many feet, and for many months. This was the most terrible inundation, perhaps, ever experienced in that region; and every one appeared to be now satisfied that to continue to cultivate lands already reduced to man's dominion, or to open and prepare any more, subject to this scourge, was madness.

Hence the emigration from this chosen section to the new El Dorado.

Lands rose rapidly in South Louisiana as an effect of this, while above, in the flooded district, they were to be bought for almost a nominal price. Those who ventured to purchase these and reduce them to cultivation realized fortunes rapidly; for there was not a sufficient flood to reach them again for ten years. The levees by this time had become so extended as to afford almost entire immunity against the floods of annual occurrence. The culture of sugar received a new impetus and began rapidly to increase, and capital came flowing in.

Population of an industrious and hardy character was filling up the West, and the demand from that quarter alone was equal to the production, and both were increasing so rapidly as to induce the belief that it would be as much as all the sugar lands in the State could accomplish to supply this demand. Steam power for crus.h.i.+ng the cane was introduced--an economy of labor which enhanced the profits of the production--and a new and national interest was developed, rendering more and more independent of foreign supply, at least that portion of the Union most difficult of access to foreign commerce--the great and growing West.

The Americans, or those Americans speaking English alone, immigrating into these sections of Louisiana, so far as the language, manners, and customs of the people were concerned, were going into a foreign land.

The language of the entire population was French, or a patois, as the European French term it--a provincialism which a Parisian finds it difficult to understand. The ignorance and squalid poverty of these people put their society entirely out of the question, even if their language had been comprehensible. They were amiable, kind, law-abiding, virtuous, and honest, beyond any population of similar character to be found in any country. Out of some fifty thousand people, extending over five or six parishes, such a thing as a suit for slander, or an indictment for malicious mischief, or a case of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy was not known or heard of once in ten years. This will seem strange when we reflect that at this time schools were unknown, and not one out of fifty of the people could read or write, and when it was common for the judge of the District Court to ask, when a grand jury was impanelled, if there was a man upon it who could write, that he might make him foreman. And not unfrequently was he compelled to call from the court-room one who could, and trump him on the jury for a foreman, as the action was termed. There was not upon the La Fourche, which comprised three large parishes, but one pleasure carriage, and not half a dozen ladies'

bonnets. The females wore a colored handkerchief tastily tied about their heads, when visiting or at church; and when not, not anything but blowzed, uncombed hair.

The enterprise of the new-comers did not stimulate to emulation the action of these people. They were content and unenvious, and when kindly received and respectfully treated, were social and generous in their intercourse with their American neighbors. They were confiding and trustful; but once deceived, they were not to be won back, but only manifested their resentment by withdrawing from communicating with the deceiver, and ever after distrusting, and refusing him their confidence. They were universally Catholic; consequently, sectarian disputes were unknown. They practised eminently the Christian virtues, and were constant in their attendance at ma.s.s. The priest was the universal arbiter in all disputes, and his decision most implicitly acquiesced in. They had a horror of debt, and lawsuits, and would sacrifice any property they might have, to meet punctually an obligation. Fond of amus.e.m.e.nts, their social meetings, though of most primitive character, were frequent and cordial. They observed strictly the exactions of the Church, especially Lent; but indulged the Carnival to its wildest extent. Out of Lent they met to dance and enjoy themselves, weekly, first at one, and then at another neighbor's house; and with the natural taste of their race, they would appear neatly and cleanly dressed in the attire fabricated by their own hands in the loom and with the needle.

The method of invitation to these reunions was simple and speedy. A youth on his pony would take a small wand, and tie to its top end a red or white flag, and ride up and down the bayou, from the house where the ball was intended, for two or three miles; returning, tie the wand and flag to flaunt above the gate, informing all--"_This is the place._"

All were welcome who came, and everything was conducted with strict regard to decent propriety. Nothing boisterous was ever known--no disputing or angry wrangling, for there was no cause given; harmony and happiness pervaded all, and at proper time and in a proper manner all returned to their homes.

Marriages, almost universally, were celebrated at the church, as in all Catholic countries. The parsonage is at the church, and the priest always on hand, at the altar or the grave; and almost daily, in this dense population, a marriage or funeral was seen at the church. It was the custom for the bride and groom, with a party of friends, all on horseback, to repair without ceremony to the church, where they were united in matrimony by the good priest, who kissed the bride, a privilege he never failed to put into execution, when he blessed the couple, received his fee, and sent them away rejoicing. This ceremony was short, and without ostentation; and then the happy and expectant pair, often on the same horse, would return with the party as they had come, with two or three musicians playing the violin in merry tunes on horseback, as they joyfully galloped home, where a ball awaited them at night, and all went merry with the married belle.

These people are Iberian in race, are small in stature, of dark complexion, with black eyes, and lank black hair; their hands and feet are small, and beautifully formed, and their features regular and handsome; many of their females are extremely beautiful. These attain maturity very early, and are frequently married at thirteen years of age. In more than one instance, I have known a grandmother at thirty.

As in all warm countries, this precocious maturity is followed with rapid decay. Here, persons at forty wear the appearance of those in colder climates of sixty years. Notwithstanding this apparent early loss of vigor, the instances of great longevity are perhaps more frequent in Louisiana than in any other State of the Union. This, however, can hardly be said of her native population: emigrants from high lat.i.tudes, who come after maturity, once acclimated, seem to endure the effects of climate here with more impunity than those native to the soil.

The Bayou Plaquemine formerly discharged an immense amount of water into the lakes intervening between the La Fourche and the Teche. These lakes have but a narrow strip of cultivable land. Along the right margin of the La Fourche, and the left of the Teche, they serve as a receptacle for the waters thrown from the plantations and those discharged by the Atchafalayah and the Plaquemine, which ultimately find their way to the Gulf through Berwick's Bay. They are interspersed with small islands: these have narrow strips of tillable land, but are generally too low for cultivation; and when the Mississippi is at flood, they are all under water, and most of them many feet. The La Fourche goes immediately to the Gulf, between Lake Barataria and these lakes, affording land high enough, when protected as they now are, for settlement, and cultivation to a very great extent. Its length is some one hundred miles, and the settlements extend along it for eighty miles. These are continuous, and nowhere does the forest intervene.

At irregular distances between these Acadian settlements, large sugar plantations are found. These have been extending for years, and increasing, absorbing the habitats of these primitive and innocent people, who retire to some little ridge of land deeper in the swamp, a few inches higher than the plane of the swamp, where they surround their little mud-houses with an acre or so of open land, from the products of which, and the trophies of the gun and fis.h.i.+ng-line and hook, and an occasional frog, and the abundance of crawfish, they contrive to eke out a miserable livelihood, and afford the fullest ill.u.s.tration of the adage, "Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise."

The contrast between these princely estates, and the palatial mansions which adorn them, and make a home of luxuriant beauty, and the little log huts, their immediate neighbors, tells at once that the population is either very rich or very poor, and that under such circ.u.mstances the communication must be extremely limited; for the ignorance of the poor unfits them for social and intelligent intercourse with their more wealthy and more cultivated neighbors. This is true whether the planter is French or American. The remarkable salubrity of the climate, combined with the comforts and luxuries of home, causes the planter to spend most of his time there, where he can give his attention to his business and mingle with his brother planters in a style and manner peculiar to Louisiana and the tastes of her people. Intercommunication is facilitated by steamboat travel, and as every plantation is located upon a navigable stream, the planter and family can at any time suiting his business go with little trouble to visit his friends, though they may be hundreds of miles apart. Similarity of pursuit and interest draw these together. There is no rivalry, and consequently no jealousy between them. All their relations are harmonious, and their intercourse during the summer is continuous, for at that season the business of the plantation may be safely trusted to a manager, one of whom is found on every plantation.

This social intercourse is highly promotive of a general amity, as it cultivates an intimacy which at once familiarizes every one with the feelings, situation, and intentions of the other. Sometimes the contiguity of plantations enables the families of planters to exchange formal morning and evening calls, but most generally the distance to be overgone is too great for this. Then the visiting is done by families, and extends to days, and sometimes weeks. Provisions are so abundant that the extra consumption is never missed, and the residences are always of such dimensions that the visitors seem scarcely to increase the family--never to be in the way; and the suits of apartments occupied by them were built and furnished for the purpose to which they are then devoted. The visitor is at home. The character of the hospitality he is enjoying permits him to breakfast from seven till ten, alone, or in company with the family if he chooses. Horses, dogs, and guns for the gentlemen--billiards, the carriage, music, or promenading, with cards, chess, backgammon, or dominos for the ladies, to pa.s.s away the day until dinner. At this meal the household and guests unite, and the rich viands, wines, and coffee make a feast for the body and sharpen the wit to a feast of the soul. This society is the freest and most refined to be found in the country.

Upon the coast of the Mississippi, from Baton Rouge to many miles below the city, the proximity of the large plantations presents an opportunity of close and constant intercourse. A very large majority of these are the property and habitations of the cultivated and intelligent Creoles of the State. And here let me explain the term Creole, which has led to so many ludicrous, and sometimes to painful mistakes. It is an arbitrary term, and imported from the West Indies into Louisiana. Its original meaning was a native born of foreign parents; but universal use has made it to mean, in Louisiana, nothing more than simply "native;" and it is applied indiscriminately to everything native to the State--as Creole cane, Creole horse, Creole negro, or creole cow. Many confound its meaning with that of quadroon, and suppose it implies one of mixed blood, or one with whose blood mingles that of the African--than which no meaning is more foreign to the word.

The Creole planters, or what are termed French Creoles, are descended from a very different race from the Acadian Creole, or Iberian. The first colonists who came to Louisiana were men of the first blood and rank in France. The Ibervilles, the Bienvilles, St. Denises, and many others, were of n.o.ble descent; and the proud prestige of their names and glorious deeds still clings around their descendants now peopling the lands they conquered from the desert, the savage, and the flood.

These daring men brought with them the chivalrous spirit which descended to their sons--the open, gallant bearing; the generous hospitality; the n.o.ble humanity; the honor which prefers death to a stain, and the soul which never stoops to a lie, a fraud, or a meanness degrading to a gentleman. They have been born upon the banks of the great river of the world; they have seen all the developments of talent, time, and enterprise which have made their country great as the river through which it flows. Accustomed from infancy to look upon this scene and these developments, their souls with their ideas have been sublimated, and they are a population unsurpa.s.sed in the higher attributes of humanity, and the n.o.bler sympathies of man, by any on the face of the earth--surrounded by wealth, tangible and substantial, descending from generation to generation, affording to each all the blessings wealth can give.

The spirit of hospitality and independence has enn.o.bled the sons, as hereditary wealth and privilege had the sires who planted this colony.

These sires laid the foundation of this wealth, in securing for their posterity the broad acres of this fat-land where now they are to be found. None have emigrated: conscious of possessing the n.o.blest heritage upon earth, they have remained to eliminate from this soil the wealth which in such abundance they possess. As they were reared, they have reared their sons; the lessons of truth, virtue, honor have borne good fruit. None can say they ever knew a French Creole a confirmed drunkard or a professional gambler. None ever knew an aberration of virtue in a daughter of one.

The high-bred Creole lady is a model of refinement--modest, yet free in her manners; chaste in her thoughts and deportment; generous in her opinions, and full of charity; highly cultivated intellectually and by a.s.sociation; familiar from travel with the society of Europe; mistress of two, and frequently of half a dozen languages, versed in the literature of all. Accustomed from infancy to deport themselves as ladies, with a model before them in their mothers, they grow up with an elevation of sentiment and a propriety of deportment which distinguishes them as the most refined and polished ladies in the whole country. There is with these a softness of deportment and delicacy of expression, an abstinence from all violent and boisterous expressions of their feelings and sentiments, and above all, the entire freedom from petty scandal, which makes them lovely, and to be loved by every honorable and high-bred gentleman who may chance to know them and cultivate their a.s.sociation. Indeed, this is a characteristic of the gentlemen as well as the ladies.

These people may have a feud, and sometimes they do; but this rarely remains long unsettled. No one will ever hear it publicly alluded to, and a.s.suredly they will never hear it uttered in slanderous vituperation of the absent party. I may be permitted here to narrate an incident ill.u.s.trative of this peculiarity.

A gentleman, knowing of a dissension between two parties, was dining with one of them, in company with several others. This guest spoke to the hostess disparagingly of the enemy of her husband, who, hearing the remark, rebuked his officious guest by remarking to him: "Doctor, my lady and myself would prefer to find out the foibles and sins of our neighbors ourselves." The rebuke was effectual, and informed the doctor, who was new in the country, of an honorable feeling in the refined population of the land of his adoption alien to that of his birth, and which he felt made these people the superior of all he had ever known.

No one has ever travelled upon one of those palatial steamers abounding on the Mississippi, in the spring season of the year, when the waters swell to the tops of the levees, lifting the steamer above the level of the great fields of sugar-cane stretching away for miles to the forest on either bank of that mighty river, who has not been delighted with the lovely homes, surrounded with grounds highly cultivated and most beautifully ornamented with trees, shrubs, and flowers, which come upon the view in constant and quick succession, as he is borne onward rapidly along the acc.u.mulated waters of the great river. This scene extends one hundred and fifty miles up the river, and is one not equalled in the world. The plain is continuous and unbroken; nor hill nor stream intersects it but at two points, where the Plaquemine and La Fourche leave it to find a nearer way to the sea; and these are so diminutive, in comparison with all around, that they are pa.s.sed almost always without being seen.

The fringe of green foliage which is presented by the trees and shrubs adorning each homestead, follows in such rapid succession as to give it a continuous line, in appearance, to the pa.s.sers-by on the steamer.

These, denuded of timber to the last tree, the immense fields, only separated by a ditch, or fence, which spread along the river--all greened with the luxuriant sugar-cane, and other crops, growing so vigorously as at once to satisfy the mind that the richness of the soil is supreme--and this scene extending for one hundred and fifty miles, makes it unapproachable by any other cultivated region on the face of the globe. Along the Ganges and the Nile, the plain is extensive. The desolate appearance it presents--the miserable homes of the population, devoid of every ornament, without comfort or plenty in their appearance--the stinted and spa.r.s.e crops, the intervening deserts of sand, the waste of desolation, spreading away far as the eye can reach--the streams contemptible in comparison, and the squalid, degraded, thriftless people along their banks, make it painful to the beholder, who is borne on his way in some dirty little craft, contrasting so strangely with the Mississippi steamer. Yet, in admirable keeping with everything else, all these present a grand contrast to the valley of the Mississippi, and only prove the latter has no equal in all that pertains to grandeur, beauty, and abundance, on the globe. To appreciate all these, you must know and mingle with the population who have thus ornamented, with labor and taste, the margin of this stream of streams.

As this great expanse of beauty is a fairy-land to the eye, so is the hospitality of its homes a delight to the soul. In this population, if nowhere else in America, is seen a contented and happy people--a people whose pursuit is happiness, and not the almighty dollar. Unambitious of that distinction which only wealth bestows, they are content with an abundance for all their comforts, and for the comfort of those who, as friends or neighbors, come to share it with them. Unambitious of political distinction, despising the noisy tumult of the excited populace, they love their homes, and cultivate the ease of quiet in these delicious retreats, enjoying life as it pa.s.ses, in social and elegant intercourse with each other, nor envying those who rush into the busy world and hunt gain or distinction from the ma.s.ses, through the shrewdness of a wit cultivated and debased by trade, or a fawning, insincere sycophancy toward the dirty mult.i.tude they despise. By such, these people are considered anomalous, devoid of energy or enterprise, contented with what they have, nor ambitious for more--which, to an American, with whom, if the earth is obtained, the moon must be striven for, is stranger than all else--living indolently at their ease, regardless of ephemeral worldly distinctions, but happy in the comforts of home, and striving only to make this a place for the enjoyment of themselves and those about them.

To the stranger they are open and kind, universally hospitable, never scrutinizing his whole man to learn from his manner or dress whether he comes as a gentleman or a sharper, or whether he promises from appearance to be of value to them pecuniarily in a trade. There is nothing of the huckster in their natures. They despise trade, because it degrades; they have only their crops for sale, and this they trust to their factors; they never scheme to build up chartered companies for gain, by preying upon the public; never seek to overreach a neighbor or a stranger, that they may increase their means by decreasing his; would scorn the libation of generous wine, if they felt the tear of the widow or the orphan mingled with it, and a thousand times would prefer to be cheated than to cheat; despising the vicious, and cultivating only the n.o.bler attributes of the soul.

Such is the character of the educated French Creole planters of Louisiana--a people freer from the vices of the age, and fuller of the virtues which enn.o.ble man, than any it has fallen to my lot to find in the peregrinations of threescore years and ten. The Creoles, and especially the Creole planters, have had little communication with any save their own people. The chivalry of character, in them so distinguis.h.i.+ng a trait, they have preserved as a heritage from their ancestors, whose history reads more like a romance than the lives and adventures of men, whose n.o.bility of soul and mind was theirs from a long line of ancestors, and brought with them to be planted on the Mississippi in the character of their posterity.