Documenting the American South Logo
powered by google
  Highlights   |   About   |   Collections   |   Authors   |   Titles   |   Subjects   |   Geographic   |   Classroom   |   New Additions  

The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland:
Electronic Edition.

King, Edward, 1848-1896

Illustrated by Champney, James Wells, 1843-1903


Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services
supported the electronic publication of this title.

Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc.
Images scanned by Tampathia Evans
Text encoded by Apex Data Services, Inc., Andrew Leiter, and Jill Kuhn Sexton
First edition, 2002
ca. 2.2MB
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
2002.

        © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Source Description:
(title page) The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland
Edward King
Illustrations by J. Wells Champney
xiv, [17]-802, [4] p., ill.
Hartford, Conn.
American Publishing Co.
1875
Call number C917 K52 (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

        The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the American South.
        The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
        Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. Encountered typographical errors have been preserved, and appear in red type.
        All footnotes are inserted at the point of reference within paragraphs.
        Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
        All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
        All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively.
        All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively.
        All em dashes are encoded as --
        Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
        Running titles have not been preserved.
        Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell check programs.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Languages Used:

LC Subject Headings:

Revision History:

Illustration

[Title Page Image]

Illustration

[Title Page Verso Image]

THE
GREAT SOUTH:
A RECORD OF JOURNEYS
IN
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.

Page verso

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.

Page Frontispiece

Illustration

ON THE OCLAWAHA FLORIDA.

Page i

PREFACE.

        THIS 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 Scribner's 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 investigated manufacturing enterprises and sites; studied the course of politics in each State since the advent of reconstruction; explored rivers, and penetrated into mountain regions heretofore 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

Page ii

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 contributed have done their work faithfully and well.

NEW YORK, November, 1874.

Page iii

DEDICATION.

TO MR. ROSWELL-SMITH,
Scribner & Co., 654 Broadway, New 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 unite with me in testifying 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, "The Great South" volume. Permit me, sir, to dedicate it to you, and by means of this humble tribute to express my admiration for the energy and unsparing zeal with which you have carried to completion the largest enterprise of its kind ever undertaken by a monthly magazine.

Sincerely Yours.

EDWARD KING.

NOVEMBER 1, 1874.

Page v

CONTENTS.

Page ix

ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MAPS.

Page 17

THE GREAT SOUTH.

I.

LOUISIANA PAST AND PRESENT.

        

Illustration

Bienville, the Founder of New Orleans.

        LOUISIANA to-day is Paradise Lost. In twenty years it may be Paradise 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 civilization of the past with the prosaic and leveling civilization of the present. For a century and a-half it was coveted by all nations; sought by those great colonizers of America,--the French, the English, the Spaniards. It has been in turn the plaything of monarchs and the bait of adventurers. Its history and tradition are leagued with all that was romantic in Europe and on the Western continent in 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

Page 18

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, Missouri, 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 America Claiborne the territorial administrations were dramatic, diplomatic, bathed in the atmosphere of conspiracy. Superstition 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 untutored 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 fragment 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.

        

Illustration

The Cathedral St. Louis--New Orleans.

        Don Andre gave the Cathedral its dower in 1789, while the colony was under the domination of Charles the Fourth of Spain. The original edifice is gone now, and in its stead, since 1850, has stood a composite structure which is a monument to bad taste. Venerable

Page 19

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.

        

Illustration

"A blind beggar hears the rustling of her gown, and stretches out his trembling hand for alms."

        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 flourished 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 minutes of rapid walking will bring him to streets and squares as generically American as any in Boston, Chicago, or St. Louis.

        

Illustration

"A black girl looks wonderingly into the holy-water font."

        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

Page 20

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.

        

Illustration

The Archbishop's Palace--New Orleans.

        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 levée; 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 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 thoroughly 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,

Page 21

before 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 appellation of "Jackson Square," through the older quarters of the city, one may readily recall the curious, changeful past of the commonwealth and its cosmopolitan 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, 1712, 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 1713 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

Page 22

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 successful and unharmed. Cadillac's temper soon caused his own downfall, and others, equally unsuccessful, succeeded him. Crozat's schemes failed, and he relinquished 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 commercial 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 Eldorado; dupes were made by millions; princes waited in John Law's anti-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

Page 23

and stately dames promenaded in this queer, swamp-surrounded, river-endangered 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 scared missions. The principal avenues within the fortified enclosure were named after princes of the royal blood--Maine, Condé, 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. Sundays 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 hamstrung 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 colonists, the building of levées along the river front near New Orleans, and the

Page 24

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 1792 to 1797? 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 architecture, 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."

Page 25

        The priests and friars are half-mad with despair because the mixed population 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 constructed 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 transformation, into a French city.

        

Illustration

Some aged private dwellings, rapidly decaying."

        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 buildings finally disappear, leaving only the "Principal," next the Cathedral, its fellow on the other side of the old church, some aged private dwellings, rapidly decaying, and a delicate imprint 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

Page 26

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 possess 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 farther commercial regulations are made by Spaniards at the Mississippi's outlet.

        

Illustration

A brace of old Spanish Governors.--From portraits owned by Hon. Charles Gayarré, of New Orleans.

        Napoleon the Great has three things to gain by the possession of the Territory: the command of the Gulf; the supply of the islands owned by France; and a place of settlement for surplus 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 follows: "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 1812 Congress declares that war exists between Great Britain and the United States, and early in 1815 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

Page 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

Illustration

"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 Abbé.

Page 28

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 nightmare 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

Page 29

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 ça! Auguste a Confederate, of course--and is yet; but the pauvre garçon 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 café, 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.

        

Illustration

"A lazy negro, recumbent in a cart."

        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 precisely four o'clock, on the --." The notice is 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 gayly-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 Frenchwomen, 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

Page 30

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 matinées, 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; nowhere a more tastefully-dressed and elegantly-mannered assembly.

        

Illustration

"The negro nurses stroll on the sidewalks, chattering in quaint French to the little children."

        The quiet which has reigned in the old French section since the war ended is, perhaps, 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 peaceful; 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 style and fashion in the city; quiet home society, match-making and marrying of

Page 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. They 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 astonishing to see how little the ordinary American citizen of New Orleans knows of his French neighbors; how ill he appreciates them. It is hard for him to talk five minutes about them without saying, "Well, we have a non-progressive element here; it will not be converted." Having said which, he will perhaps paint in glowing colors the virtues and excellences of his French neighbors, though he cannot forgive them for taking so little interest in public affairs.

        

Illustration

"The interior garden, with its curious shrine."

        Here we are again at the Archbishop'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 completed by the French Government in 1733, and is the oldest in Louisiana. Its Tuscan composite architecture, its porter's lodge, and its interior garden with its curious shrine, make it well worth preserving, even when the tide of progress shall have reached this nook on Condé 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-constructed 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 régime who could flee, fled; and a prominent historian and gentleman

Page 32

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

Illustration

The New Ursuline Convent--New Orleans.

the late struggle were so broken that even a residence in the State was distasteful to him and the society he represented; 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 characteristic 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 hospitality 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 determination 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

Page 33

realize it themselves; and it was not to be expected that strangers, of differing 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, generous, 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 every one. 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 régime. 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 hundred 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 unprofitable 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

Page 34

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 helplessness, which has possessed their features. Sometimes the owners of the faces are one-armed and otherwise crippled; sometimes they bear no wounds or marks of 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 tending 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 exclamations on the slightest pretext. The French of the negroes is very much like that of young children; spoken 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 tugging 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

Page 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 pronounced in savagery as any of her Congo ancestors.

        But the negroes, taken as a whole, seem somewhat shuffling and disorganized; 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

Illustration

"And while they chatter like monkeys, even about politics, they gesticulate violently."

intelligence and accomplishments, but, as a rule, the negro of 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 subscriptions 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

Page 36

out, puff cigarettes, and sip iced raspberry-water and absinthe in the cafés, 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, especially 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;

Illustration

"The old French and Spanish cemeteries present long streets of cemented walls."

and, consequently, burials in sealed tombs above ground are universal. The old French and Spanish cemeteries 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 processions 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
Page 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 traversed 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 beautiful in this country, and the great inner

Illustration

The St. Louis Hotel--New Orleans.

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 splendor. 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 thoroughly French in character; cafés, 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.

Page 38

III.

THE CARNIVAL--THE FRENCH MARKETS.

        CARNIVAL keeps it 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

Illustration

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
Page 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 début, 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 1860 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, Manhood 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 entrées of a

Page 40

gourmand's dinner, from oysters and sherry to the omelette brûlée, the Kirsch and Curaçoa. 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-discoverers, 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 beautiful 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

Illustration

"The coming of Rex, most puissant King of Carnival." [Page 41.]

Page 41

"The Lord of Misrule and his Knights;" in 1871, "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

Illustration

"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 anecdotes 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

Page 42

her from destruction, but no one presented himself. The King did not stop to deliberate; he wrapped his robes closely about him, called for a wet cloth --which he threw aside--then rushed to his carriage, and drove rapidly to the theatre, where he passed the evening listening to the singing of 'If ever I cease to love.'"

        This is published seriously in the journals, next to the news and editorial paragraphs; and yearly, at one o'clock on the appointed day, the King, accompanied by Warwick, Earl-Marshal

Illustration

"When Rex and his train enter the queer old streets, the balconies are crowded with spectators." [Page 43.]

of the Empire, and by the Lord High Admiral, who is always depicted as suffering untold pangs from gout, arrives on Canal street, surrounded by troops of horse and foot, fantastically dressed, and followed by hundreds of maskers. Sometimes he comes up the river in a beautiful barge and lands amid thunderous salutes from the shipping at the wharves. This parade, which is gradually becoming one of the important features of the Carnival, is continued through all the principal streets of the city. The Boeuf-Gras--the fat ox--is led in the procession.
Page 43

The animal is gayly decorated with flowers and garlands. Mounted on pedestals extemporized from cotton-floats are dozens of allegorical groups, and the masks, although not so rich and costly as those of Comus and his crew, are quite as varied and mirth-provoking. The costumes of the King and his suite are gorgeous; and the troops of the United States, disguised as privates of Arabian artillery and as Egyptian spahis, do escort-duty to his Majesty. Rumor hath it, even, that on one occasion, the ladies of New Orleans presented a flag to an officer of the troops of "King Rex" (sic), little suspecting that it was thereafter to grace the Federal barracks. Thus the Carnival has its pleasant waggeries and surprises.

        Froissart thought the English amused themselves sadly; and indeed, comparing the Carnival in Louisiana with the Carnival in reckless Italy, one might say that the Americans masquerade grimly. There is but little of that wild luxuriance of fun in the streets of New Orleans which has made Italian cities so famous; people go to their sports with an air of pride, but not of all-pervading enjoyment. In the French quarter, when Rex and his train enter the queer old streets, there are shoutings, chaffings, and dancings, the children chant little couplets on Mardi-Gras; and the balconies are crowded with spectators. But the negroes make a somewhat sorry show in the masking: their every-day garb is more picturesque.

        Carnival culminates at night, after Rex and the "day procession" have retired.

Illustration

"The joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor." [Page 44.]

Page 44

Thousands of people assemble in dense lines along the streets included in the published route of march; Canal street is brilliant with illumination, and swarms of persons occupy every porch, balcony, house-top, pedestal, carriage and mule-car. Then comes the train of Comus, and torch-bearers, disguised in outré masks, light up the way. After the round through the great city is completed, the reflection of the torch-light on the sky dies away, and the Krewe betake themselves to the Varieties Theatre, and present tableaux before the ball opens.

        This theatre, during the hour or two preceding the Mardi-Gras ball, offers one of the loveliest sights in Christendom. From floor to ceiling, the parquet, dress-circle and galleries are one mass of dazzling toilets, none but ladies being given seats. White robes, delicate faces, dark, flashing eyes, luxuriant folds of glossy hair, tiny, faultlessly-gloved hands,--such is the vision that one sees through his opera-glass.

        Delicious music swells softly on the perfumed air; the tableaux wax and wane like kaleidoscopic effects, when suddenly the curtain rises, and the joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor. They dance; gradually ladies and their cavaliers leave all parts of the galleries, and come to join them; and then,


                         "No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet,
                         To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."

        Meantime, the King of the Carnival holds a levée and dancing party at another place; all the theatres and public halls are delivered up to the votaries of Terpsichore; and the fearless, who are willing to usher in Lent with sleepless eyes, stroll home in the glare of the splendid Southern sunrise, yearly vowing that each Mardi-Gras has surpassed its predecessor.

        Business in New Orleans is not only entirely suspended on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi-Gras), but the Carnival authorities have absolute control of the city. They direct the police; they arrest the mayor, and he delivers to them the keys, while the chief functionaries of the city government declare their allegiance to "Rex;" addresses are delivered, and the processions move. The theatres are thrown open to the public, and woe betide the unhappy manager who dares refuse the order of the King to this effect. On one occasion a well-known actor arrived in the city during the festivities to fulfill an engagement, but as the managers of the theatre at which he was to act had refused to honor the King's command for free admission to all, the actor was at once arrested, taken to the "den" of the Earl-Marshal, and there kept a close prisoner until a messenger arrived to say that the recalcitrant manager had at last "acknowledged the corn." The violet is the royal flower; the imperial banner is of green and purple, with a white crown in the centre; and the anthem of the mystic monarch is, "If ever I cease to love." The accumulation of costumes and armor, all of which are historically accurate, is about to result in the establishment of a valuable museum.

        The artist's pencil has reproduced in these pages one of the many comical incidents which enliven the Carnival tide, and calls his life sketch "Beauty and

Page 45

Illustration

"Many bright eyes are in vain endeavoring to pierce the disguise."

the Beast." From the gallery of the Varieties Theatre, many bright eyes are in vain endeavoring to pierce the disguise under which a fashionable member of the Comus Krewe parades before their gaze.

        From early morning until nightfall the same quaint, distorted street-cries 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 recklessly

Page 46

Illustration

"The French market at sunrise on Sunday morning."

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 picturesque than anything else appertaining to the city. They lie near the levée, and, as markets, are indeed clean, commodious, and always well stocked. But they have another 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 Sunday 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, balconied, 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-laughing 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 pineapples, 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 delicious

Page 47

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

Illustration

"Passing under long, hanging rows ot bananas and pine-apples." [Page 46.]

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; quavering 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

Page 48

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. Sometimes, 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,

Illustration

"One sees delicious types in these markets." [Page 47.]

Page 49

Illustration

"In a long passage, between two of the market buildings, sits a silent Louisiana Indian woman." [Page 47.]

escorted by pale and querulous invalid fathers, or by spruce young men, who swelter in their thick garments, made to be worn in higher latitudes. 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 confidingly 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 passage-ways; the accents of twenty languages are heard; and the childlike, comical French of the negroes rings out above the clamor.

Illustration

"Stout colored women, with cackling hens dangling from their brawny hands."

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 incomprehensible yell, yet brings crowds around him; on his clean block lies the pompano, the prince of Southern waters, which an enthusiastic admirer 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.

Page 50

IV.

THE COTTON TRADE--THE NEW ORLEANS LEVEES.

        COTTON furnishes to New Orleans much of its activity and the sinews of its trade. It stamps a town, which would otherwise resemble some decayed but still luxurious European centre, with a commercial aspect. Americans

Illustration

"These boats, closely ranged in long rows by the levée." [Page 52.]

and Frenchmen are alike interested 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;

Page 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 feverishly 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 reading 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 tremendous in future. In 1824-'25 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-'61 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 incomplete 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 1866-'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 1869-'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 multiplication of railroad and steamboat lines is shown by the fact that more than 150,000 bales of the crop of 1870-'71 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

Page 52

197,386 bales; for 1870-'71 they amounted to 284,313 bales; and the Ouachita River sent to the metropolis 89,084 bales in 1871-'72, and 151,358 in 1870-'71.

        

Illustration

"Whenever there is a lull in the work they sink down on the cotton bales."

        Knowing these statistics, one can hardly wonder at the vast masses of bales on the levée 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 levée, and seeming like river monsters which have crawled from the ooze to take a little sun, the negroes swarm in crowds, chatting in the broken, colored English characteristic of the river-hand. They are clad in garments which hang in rags from their tawny or coal black limbs. Their huge, naked chests rival in perfection of form the works of Praxiteles and his fellows.

Illustration

"Not far from the levée, there is a police court, where they especially delight to lounge."

Their arms are almost constantly bent to the task of removing 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 levée there is a police court, where they especially delight to lounge.

        In 1871-'72 (the commercial year extends from September to September) the

Page 53

value of the cotton received at New Orleans was $94,430,000; in 1870-'71 it was $101,000,000; and in 1869-'70 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 pruchaser, and they have pocketed the proceeds.

        They often pay the planter and his coöperating 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 advantages 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 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 Gayarré for access to historical portraits; and to Collector Casey and his able deputy, Mr. Champlin, for reference to official statistics.


 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.

Page 54

        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 exhausting 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 commercial year 1871-'72, brought into it forty thousand bales, thus adding about four million dollars to the trade.

        When the levées 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

Page 55

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 which it is to rest until sold and removed. While the bales remain on the levées, the cotton thieves now and then steal a pound or two of the precious staple.

        

Illustration

"The cotton thieves."

        This army of "roustabouts" is an ebony-breasted, tough-fisted, bullet-headed, toiling, awkward mass; but it does wonders at work. It is generally good-humored, even when it grumbles; 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 concentrated 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

Illustration

"There is the old apple and cake woman." [Page 56.]

gangs, nor the cheery and mirth-provoking responses of the help, mingled with the sibilations of escaping 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

Page 56

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 levée. 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 Mississippi 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.

        

Illustration

"The Sicilian fruit-seller."

        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 levées are encumbered with goods of every conceivable description. 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 levées run the branch lines of the Jackson, the Louisiana and Texas, and the New Orleans, Mobile and

Page 57

Texas railways, and teams drive recklessly on the same tracks on which incoming trains are drawn by rapidly moving locomotives. The freight depots, the reception 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,

Illustration

"At high water, the juvenile population perches on the beams of the wharves, and enjoys a little quiet fishing." [Page 56.]

from time to time, before the torrents of business. At night a great silence falls on the levée. Only the footsteps of the watchmen, or of the polite, but consequential negro policeman, 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!

        

Illustration

"The polite, but consequential negro policeman."

        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 this commerce at nearly $400,000,000 per annum.

Page 58

        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 transportation 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 merchandise, 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 merchandise 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 revenue 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, communicate directly with Liverpool, while other lines are projected.

Page 59

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

Illustration

The St. Charles Hotel--New Orleans. [Page 61.]

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 considerable size run through them and the lake to the Gulf, and thence along the Southern Atlantic coast; and schooners and barks, laden with lumber 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 levée 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 levée was an imperative necessity, the action of the lake making the perfecting of the city's present system of drainage impossible otherwise.

        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 merriment. But on a week day it is almost deserted. Schooners on the canal glide

Page 60

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

Illustration

The New Basin. [Page 59.]

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 levée'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 levée, 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

Illustration

The old Spanish Fort.

his brother of Gotham. The "roust-abouts" from the levée, 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
Page 61

dinner, with their cotton-hooks clenched in their brawny hands. The ropers for gambling-houses--one of the curses of New Orleans--haunt each conspicuous corner, and impudently scan passers-by.

        From twelve to two the American ladies monopolize Canal street. Hundreds of lovely brunettes may be seen, in carriages, in cars, in couples with mamma, or accompanied by the tall,

Illustration

The University of Louisiana--New Orleans. [Page 62.]

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 matinées 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 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

Illustration

The Theatres of New Orleans

mostly on Louisiana and Napoleon avenues and on Prytania, Plaquemine, Chestnut, Camp, Jena, Cadiz, Valence, Bordeaux, and St. Charles streets. Along St. Charles street, near Canal, are the famous St. Charles Hotel; the Academy of Music, and the St. Charles Theatre, both well
Page 62

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

Illustration

Christ Church--New Orleans.

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 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 offices, 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 régime of slavery, little or no attention was paid to fine buildings; exterior decoration, save that which the magnificent foliage of the country gave, was entirely disregarded. Now, however, the citizens begin to take pride in their public edifices.

        

Illustration

The Canal street Fountain--New Orleans.

        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 ordinary seasons, as healthy a people as can be found in the United States. Although a lifetime spent in the soft

Page 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.

        

Illustration

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 quarantine 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 examining 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.

        

Illustration

The old maison de Santé--New Orleans [Page 64.]

        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 accident

Page 64

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 healing

Illustration

The United States Marine Hospital--New Orleans.

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 noteworthy charities.

        The Maison de Santé, long one of the most noted infirmaries of New Orleans, is now deserted, and like the United States Marine Hospital, which has not been used since 1860, is rapidly falling into decay. During the war the fine United States Hospital, 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

Illustration

Trinity Church--New Orleans.

        St. Paul's Church--New Orleans.

Page 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 principal 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 enjoyed the spiritual guidance of the eloquent Dr. Palmer, a divine of national reputation. The principal Baptist society assembles at the Coliseum Place Church. There are great numbers of colored church organizations, many of which are in a flourishing condition,

Illustration

First Presbyterian Church--New Orleans.

having been largely aided by Northern 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 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

Illustration

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

Page 66

a front of 334 feet on Canal street, and nearly the same on the levée. 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

Illustration

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 temporary roof, but his recall came before the work was begun.

        The Ionic building at the corner of Esplanade and New Levée streets, once used as a United States branch mint, is noted as the place of execution of Mumford, 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.

Illustration

The United States Branch Mint--New Orleans.

Page 67

VI.

ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER--THE LEVÉE 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 levée 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 levées 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 levée building has been pressed forward even when the Commonwealth has been prostrated by a hundred evils. Detailed surveys are constantly 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 condition, she possessed 1,200 miles of levées, 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 levées 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 levées 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 levées 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 levées, or the banks on which the levées are erected; and that this blow is delivered at the average rate of about six miles an hour, a force equal to

Page 68

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 levées upon the river! On these grounds they object to paying all the expenses of levée building in their own State; and they are supported by able scientists.

        

Illustration

"Sometimes the boat stops at a coaling station."

        The United States certainly is the only power in America which can ever control the Mississippi, and prevent 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, exhilarating. 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 solemnly 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, carries to the furnaces.

        I went down from Vicksburg on one of the larger and finer of the steamers; and the journey was a perpetual 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.

Page 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,

Illustration

"The Wasp."

generally kind and well-disposed towards the negroes, despite his rough ways, broke into appeal, threat, and entreaty, crying 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 transferred 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.

Page 70

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

Illustration

"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

Page 71

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 bellowings 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 extending 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 laughing 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.

Page 72

        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 article 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, mopping 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 Washington, are you going to tell me a lie?" with a buzz and a sting and a swear.

        

Illustration

The monument on the Chalmette battle-field.

        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 finally end by rendering up the belt, and retiring to the shade of a cotton bale, followed by the laughter of his comrades.

        You come to a plantation landing where some restive steers are to be taken aboard, and notice the surprising manner in which those playful creatures 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

Page 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 levées 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, 1816, 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 levée 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 à 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.*

        * For these and many other interesting details, the writer gratefully acknowledges his obligations to Major C. W. Howell, Captain of United States Engineers, and to Captain Frank Barr, United States Revenue Marine.


 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 supposed

Page 74

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 improvement 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 number of processes for deepening--such as stirring up the river bottom with suitable 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 appropriated 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 harrows 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;

Illustration

Light-house -- South-west Pass. [Page 75.]

and in 1868, the "Essayons," a steam dredge-boat, constructed by the Atlantic Works, of Boston, was employed upon the bar at Pass à l'Outre. The plan of this boat, which had been recommended by General McAllister, was a powerful steamer with a cutting propeller, 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 "Essayons" has been a complete
Page 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 main 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,

Illustration

"Pilot Town"--South-west Pass.

are all under the direction of Major C. N. Howell, of the Engineer Department. Pass à l'Outre is generally considered 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 improvements 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 establishments 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 à l'Outre" and "South-west Pass" the Government maintains a "boarding-station" for protection

Page 76

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 levée." 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 navigating 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 Natchitoches, will make Shreveport within twelve hours of New Orleans. The journey formerly occupied three or four days. Morgan's "Louisiana and Texas" railroad 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 connection 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 suburban 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 Northwest to the gulf and the ocean. Railroad routes along the banks of the Mississippi 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

Page 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 quadruple 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.

        

Illustration

"A Nickel for Daddy."

Page 78

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 Louisiana 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 1860 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

Page 79

planters were compelled to devote much of their old cotton land to the production 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. Pasturage 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 1751, 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 1816 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:

        
Year. Production, Hogsheads.
1834 100,000
1835 30,000
1836 70,000
1837 65,000
1838 70,000
1839 115,000
1840 87,000
1841 90,000
1842 140,000
1843 100,000
1844 200,000
1845 186,000
1846 140,000
1847 240,000
1848 220,000
1849 247,000
1850 211,000
1851 236,000
1852 321,000
1853 449,000
1854 346,000
1855 231,000
1856 74,000
1857 279,000
1858 362,000
1859 221,000
1860 228,000
1861 459,000
1864.. War, 7,000
1865 15,000
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

Page 80

the State. But it is thought that it has deteriorated very much, and an association 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 coöperative 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 cane 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 coöperative 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 Mississippi 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 1860, one hundred and fifty thousand 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.*

        *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.

        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

Page 81

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 purchasing 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 grouping 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 Johnson, 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 housed, and the cane is brought to be crushed; and, ranging in front of a cane-field containing many hundreds of acres, is a great orange orchard, the branches of whose odorous trees bear literally golden fruit; for, with but little care, they yield their owner an annual income of $25,000.

        The massive oaks and graceful magnolias surrounding the planter's mansion give grateful shade; roses and all the rarer blossoms perfume the air; the river current hums a gentle monotone, which, mingled with the music of the myriad insect life, and vaguely heard on the lawn and in the cool corridors of the house, seems lamenting past grandeur and prophesying of future greatness. For it was a grand and lordly life, that of the owner of a sugar plantation; filled with culture, pleasure, and the refinements of living;--but now!

        Afield, in Mr. Lawrence's plantation, and in some others, one may see the steam-plough at work, ripping up the rich soil. Great stationary engines pull it rapidly from end to end of the tracts; and the darkies, mounted on the swiftly-rolling machine, skillfully guide its sharp blades and force them into the furrows. Ere long, doubtless, steam-ploughs will be generally introduced on Louisiana sugar estates. Four of these stationary engines, built at Leeds, England, and

Page 82

supplied with water brought from the river in mule carts, suffice to do the work upon the ample plantation of Mr. Lawrence.

        As to the details of plantation work, the negroes, evidently, do not attend to them with quite the thoroughness exacted under the rigid discipline of slavery. Evidences of neglect, in considerable variety, offer themselves to the critical eye. Entering the sugar-house, the amiable planter will present you to a venerable, mahogany-looking individual in garments stained with saccharine juices, and with a little tone of pride in his voice will tell you that "this is Nelson, overseer of this place, who has been here, man and boy, forty years, and who knows more about the process of sugar-making than any one else on the plantation."

        

Illustration

"A cheery Chinaman."

        Nelson will, therefore, conduct you into the outer shed, and, while showing you the huge rollers under which the canes, when carted in from the fields in November or December, are crushed, will impress upon you the danger of early winter frosts which may baffle every hope of profit, will explain to you how difficult and how full of risks is the culture of the juicy reed, which must be nursed through twelve or thirteen weary months, and may leave but a meagre result. He will take you across the delightfully-shaded way into one of the fields, passing on the walk a cheery Chinaman wearing a smile which is seven times childlike and bland, and point you to the stalks of the cane left at the last harvest to lie all winter in the furrows and furnish young sprouts for the spring. These shapely and rich-colored stalks have joints every few inches along their whole length, from which spring out the new buds of promise. When the spring ploughing begins, these stalks are laid along the beds of the drills, and each shoot, as it makes its appearance, is carefully watched and cultured that it may produce a new cane, a great portion of the crop being thus reserved, each year, for seed.

        The complaisant overseer will give you a profusion of details as to how the cane, if safe from the accidents of the seasons, is cut down at its perfection and brought to the sugar-house; how all hands, black and white, join, for many days, in "hauling" it from the fields, and then keep the mill going for a week night and day; how there is high wassail and good cheer in the intervals of the work, and every nerve is strained to the utmost for the completion of the task. He will show you the great crushers which bring the sweetness out of the fresh canes as they are carried forward upon an endless series of rollers, and will then point out the furnace into which the refuse is thrown to be burned, thus furnishing the motive power for crushing the stalks and for all the minor and subordinate mechanical details in the processes of the manufacture. The baggasse, as this refuse is called, usually furnishes steam enough for this purpose, and leaves nothing but a kind of coke in the ash-pit of the furnace; no coal being used except in the refining mill's furnace.

Page 83

        Out from the crushed arteries of the cane wells a thick, impure liquid, which demands immediate attention to preserve it from spoiling; and then the clarifying process is begun and continued, by the aid of hundreds of ingenious mechanisms, whose names even you will not remember when Nelson takes you into the refinery.

        You enter a set of huge chambers, the floors of which are sticky with sugar, and watch the juice passing through various processes. There are the great open trays, traversed by copper and iron steam-pipes; there are the filter-pans filled with bone dust, from which the liquid trickles down. Now it wanders through separators, and then through bone dust again, onward toward granulation in the vacuum pans, and then into coolers, where the sugar is kept in a half

Illustration

Sugar-cane Plantation--"The cane is cut down at its perfection." [Page 82.]

liquid state by means of revolving paddles, until, finally, it comes to the vessels, in which, by rapid whirlings, all the molasses is thrown out; and the molasses, leaving the dry sugar ready for commerce, goes meandering among the pipes under the floors, and round and round again through the whirling machines, until there is no suspicion of sweetness in it, and it is ignominiously discharged.

        It seems a pity that such fine machinery should be in use only during one-sixth of the year, as it would be injured far less by being kept constantly running than by remaining idle. The new steam-mills are, in every point of view, so vastly superior to the old horse-mills, that they have been adopted on the greater portion of the sugar plantations, and are desired by every planter; but

Page 84

they are so enormously expensive, that coöperative or joint ownership is, in many cases, essential.

        The division of the large plantations into small farms seems, sooner or later, inevitable; as no one owner can, under the new condition of things, make the necessary and continuous outlay. In a few years the cane now crushed at one of these immense sugar-houses in the winter months will belong, in small lots, to a hundred different men, instead of to the one aristocratic and wealthy planter, as under the old régime.

        There is not a parish in Louisiana which does not offer powerful inducements to immigration; not one which will not most bitterly need it if the present political condition, which is driving the original inhabitants from their homes, is continued. Closely following upon the bloodshed in Grant parish, came a hurried, voluminous emigration of its citizens to Texas. They flocked to the new Eden in the greatest terror, seeming eager to leave their homes forever behind them. Still, these troubles must some day have an end, because, save in the final disruption of the world, there is no end to the fairy beauty and fertility of the bayou lands, or to the luxuriant vegetation of the vast plains.

        The parishes bordering on the Red river are especially adapted to the staples--sugar, cotton, wheat, corn, rye and oats--and are always accessible, the river in their vicinity remaining navigable at all seasons of the year. These parishes, six in number, comprise more than 8,500 square miles of rich alluvial land, and some of the largest towns are situated in them. Shreveport, on the west bank of the river, is the second city in the State. It is now the great centre of emigration into Eastern and Northern Texas, and a line of railway is projected to it from Vicksburg, which will give it increased commercial importance.

        In the parishes which comprise South-western Louisiana, there are more than 3,000,000 acres of land of almost inexhaustible fertility. The forests are composed of oak, ash, locust, pine, gum, maple, cypress, elm, willow, hickory, pecan, persimmon, dogwood, mulberry, and magnolia trees. The giant cypresses along the lakes and bayous are abundant enough to last for a century. Employment to hundreds of mills and thousands of workmen could readily be furnished, the lumber being easily floated down the innumerable bayous and along the lakes to market.

        By the borders of the great desolate sea-marshes of St. Mary and Iberia runs a grand belt of timber from one to two miles wide. A western editor once said that if the Teche lands of Louisiana were in Illinois, they would bring from $300 to $500 per acre. And they could be made worth that sum in their present situation in five years from this writing by the introduction of intelligent and laborious immigrants, and by the amplification of the State's railway system. The "Attakapas" region, as the five parishes or counties of St. Mary, Iberia, Vermilion, St. Martin and Lafayette were originally called, from the name of a tribe of Indians, is certainly seductive enough to tempt the most fastidious.

        The cattle-grazing regions are as extensive as remarkable. There are seven great prairies, respectively named Grand Choiseuil, Attakapas, Opelousas, Grand Prairie, Prairie Mamon, Calcasieu, and Aubine, all covered with rich pasturage.

Page 85

Thousands of cattle roam over these prairies; the population is pastoral and to a certain extent uncultivated. There are Frenchmen and Frenchwomen among them who are as remote from any active participation in the politics of the State or the country at large, as if they lived in France. Cattle and horses subsist even in the marshes, and graze the year round upon a treacherous surface, in which such animals, bred on solider ground, will instantly sink and flounder. I am not willing to vouch for the Louisiana statement that these marsh-bred cattle and horses are web-footed, though such is the affirmation. One informant assured me that a proper system of transportation from the marshes to New Orleans would develop this now almost useless section immensely. Thousands of cattle might be turned in to grow fat and bide the time when their owners should seek them for the New Orleans market. They would not even need a cowherd's care.

        All the prairies in Western Louisiana are perennially green; and upon them were once located the largest vacheries in the United States--vacheries whose owners sometimes branded five thousand calves apiece yearly. Sheep by thousands were also raised, but both these important industries seem to have largely fallen off since the war. The French paid great attention to the cattle and sheep husbandry in this section of Louisiana early in the last century, and it has been estimated by a competent authority that, allowing one animal to every five acres, more than 220,000 cattle could be annually reared and transported from the single prairie of Opelousas--a vast expanse of natural meadow. It was not uncommon for a stock raiser to possess from 30,000 to 40,000 head of cattle, and twenty-five years before the war, the stock raisers of one parish in that section owned 100,000 cattle and 30,000 horses.

        There is no good reason why Louisiana should not be known in future as an extensive a cattle-raising State as her neighbor, Texas. She has nothing to fear from the dangers incurred by proximity to a foreign frontier, and there are no Indians to manifest their unconquerable longing for "raids."

        But if you wish once again to find the lost gate of Eden, if you wish to gain the promised land, if you wish to see in this rude, practical America of ours an "earthly paradise," where life is good, because Nature has invested it with everything that is delicious and fairest; if you wish to see plantations at the height of culture--lawns as fragrant, as clean-shaven, as nobly shaded by graceful trees as any sovereign's--seek the Teche country. It is the pearl of Louisiana; it is the gem of the South. Thither, more than a century ago, when the cruel order of the English dispersed them from their homes, Andry and the exiled Acadians took their mournful way. Thither they went, threading the swamps and wandering up the beautiful Atchafalaya, and her lakes, where


                         "Water lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations
                         Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty the lotus
                         Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.
                         Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia blossoms,
                         And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands,
                         Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses,
                         Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber."

Page 86

        Now, as then, the traveler, pushing his way in a tiny steamer, or in a shallop or pirogue, can hear--


                         "Far off, indistinct, as of wave or wind in the forest,
                         Mixed with the whoop of the crane, and the roar of the grim alligator,"
strange sounds from the dark forests and the lonely lands.

        From Berwick's Bay, where the rich fields lie trustingly upon the water, and strange vines and creepers seem to caress the waves, and bid them be tranquil, ascend the Teche bayou, and lose yourself in the tangled network of lake and lakelet, plain and forest, plantation and swamp. By day you shall have the exquisite glory of the sun, which, gleaming on the seigniorial residences, on the great white sugar-houses with their tall chimneys, on the long rows of cabins for the laborers, on the villas peering from orange groves and bosquets of the mespilus, makes all doubly bright and beautiful; and at evening the moon will lend her witchery to swell your surprise and admiration.

        You will drift on by superb knots of shrubbery, from which sprightly birds are singing madrigals; past floating bridges and garden bowers; past ruined plantations, the wrecks of the war; past dense cypress swamps, bordered by picturesque groupings of oaks and ash and gum-trees; through that fine region stretching from the entrance of the bayou into the parish of Iberia and the town of New Iberia, where the beautiful water willows and forest trees lean forward from the banks as if to see themselves reflected in the stream; where the wheels of passing steamers rudely brush the arching foliage; where the live oak spreads its ample spray over some cool dell upon whose grassy carpet grow strange bright-hued flowers; and where vistas of forest glade--happy sylvan retreats--open as by enchantment, and moonlight makes delicious checkerwork of gleam and shadow.

        Below New Iberia, on Petit Anse Island, there is a salt mine sixty feet beneath the level of the Gulf of Mexico, and you may go down through fifty-eight feet of solid rock-salt, to watch the miners pick out the crystal freight which has proved superior to any other salt found in the Southern market. Or you may penetrate the romantic country near Lake Peigneur, and even hunt the genial comedian--the noble artist who created the rôle of "Rip Van Winkle,"--in his "Orange Island" retreat.

        The richness of Louisiana may perhaps be best illustrated by this same island. It is one of many in the lake, rising high above it and the surrounding prairie. It possesses delicious lawns miles in length, sloping gently southward; orange groves, which in 1868, after a neglect of ten years, produced half a million oranges; bold banks and knolls with northward outlook; and delightful sea breezes constantly blowing over the whole length and breadth of its lovely lands. On Grand Cote Island you may wander among wide fields of cotton and of corn, or you may climb steep hill-sides to find a lake of purest water high up among them, its surface covered with water lilies; or you may sit in garden bowers over which the Scuppernong grape-vines run riot, and gaze out upon the towering magnolia, the blooming cotton and the waving cane.

Page 87

        The forests in the parish of St. Martin, in the Teche valley, contain millions of tall, straight cypress-trees; and beyond are stretches of ash, gum, hickory, black walnut, magnolia, live, white and red oaks, linn, pecan, sycamore, and other trees. There are also here some grand estates, notably those of General Declouet, Mr. Lestrapes, and Dr. Wilkins. General Declouet's mansion is a fine type of the old Creole house, with spacious halls and corridors, baronial dining-room, and portrait galleries from which look down the faces of a hundred ancestors. Avenues, bordered with China-trees or with pines, lead up to it; while magnolias, fig-trees, and live oaks are scattered throughout the grounds.

        One finds superb forests everywhere in Louisiana. They are among the chief glories of the State. One may purchase, for an insignificant sum, a lovely natural park, with trees in it which an English duke might covet for his estate.

Illustration

"The beautiful 'City Park'"--New Orleans.

The oaks which stud the beautiful "City Park," and the "race-course" grounds, in New Orleans, are exceedingly fine. City and country alike abound in the most delicious foliage.

        St. Mary's parish formerly contained 170 sugar plantations, scattered along the banks of the Teche, the Atchafalaya, and the various bayous and waterways in that section. In the same parish, 13,000 slaves were owned before the war, and more than 100 vessels plied between Franklin (a pretty, cultured town, twenty miles from Brashear) and various Northern and Southern ports. The fertile lands readily yield a hogshead of sugar to the acre, and

Illustration

MAP SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Illustration

THE GULF STATES AND ARKANSAS.

Page 88

the manufacture may begin early in November. Flooded rice-lands produce ten barrels to the acre; unflooded, six. There are orange orchards in this parish producing 3,000,000 of oranges annually. Such facts are eloquent.

        Lands in certain of the parishes, not very far from towns and trade centres, can be generally purchased at from $3 to $15 per acre; those more remote are only worth $1 or $1.50 per acre. The general health of South-western Louisiana is good; there is no greater error than the common supposition in the North that the lowland climate is fatal to health. There is not a heartier or healthier population in the Union than that of South-western Louisiana; none more frank, unsuspicious and generous. Of course hostility and even ostracism, at the present time, are the lot of such as take sides for the Kellogg Government; but for him who does not take active part, no matter what his opinions may be, there is never even a harsh word. The recent operations of the "White League" in Northern Louisiana have been prompted by the extremists of the Democratic party, in the vain hope of intimidating negro' voters, and driving out "Yankees" who are settled in some of the parishes, and who vote the Republican ticket. The assassinations of which this League has been guilty, and the proscriptive measures which it has adopted, are condemned in the strongest terms by large numbers of native Conservatives in other sections of the State, who realize that no reform is possible on the basis of an exclusive white man's government, and who appreciate the immense harm done the material interests of the commonwealth by a revival of the old Ku-Klux tactics which once disgraced the State.

        Louisiana has some few valuable minerals, and the discovery of rock-salt in Vermilion parish, and of crystalline sulphur on the Calcasieu river, has encouraged a search for others. Iron is scattered at various depths below the surface of the State south of Red river, and in some of the parishes it is so abundant as to obstruct the ploughs or the hoes of the farmers. Valuable deposits of organized peat are found in many places near the coast, and the investment of a little capital might soon develop a great industry in the preparation of this important fuel. Coal abounds in certain regions through which railway lines are already projected, and the petroleum wells in Bossier, Bienville, and Natchitoches parishes, as well as in a broad belt extending nearly to the Gulf in Calcasieu parish, promise a remarkable development. The salt region runs through five islands, ranged along the coast for about twenty miles west of the mouth of the Atchafalaya. One of these islands is 140 feet above the sea-level.

Page 89

VIII.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN LOUISIANA.

        THE testimony of most of the planters in Louisiana, as elsewhere throughout the South, is that the free negro works well, and earns his wages, save when he is distracted by politics. Indeed, there are none who are willing to assert that free labor has not been a success; and the majority would prefer it to the most arbitrary days of ownership, if the State were otherwise in a settled condition.

        It is, nevertheless, evident that political excitements, gotten up by adventurers with the hope of obtaining power, take the negro's attention altogether too much from his work, and constitute a species of mild intellectual dissipation, which he thinks it vastly fine to indulge in, but which only unfits him for serious efforts at progress, and factitiously elevates him to a position directly opposed to the interests of his fellow-citizens.

        Judging from conversations with great numbers of persons, there is not much hope that the equality of races will be at present recognized by the white man in Louisiana. He will not admit that the negro is at all competent to legislate for him, or to vote with him on matters of common importance to white and black.

        While he has no desire to see any of the conditions of that kind of society which prevailed before the war re-established, he refuses to recognize or acquiesce in the actual condition. Having been, as he considers, doomed by the revolution, he sits haughtily tranquil, wrapped in reserve, save when he ventures to predict the downfall of the Republic, and to lament the despotism under which he asserts that he is kept. He is fond of gloomy horoscopes, and delights in announcing to the world that the precedent established in Louisiana by the Lynch returning-board and the Durell decision will yet be disastrous to New York and Massachusetts.

        He is not more glad to be rid of slavery than he would be to see the last negro vanish from the soil. He is weary of the whole subject of politics; anxious for immigration, yet doubtful of its practical results; willing to guarantee, to the extent allowed by his impaired fortunes, any reasonable enterprise tending toward the commercial development of the State, but discouraged, and often-times distracted.

        Impulsive, intensely individual, and extremely sensitive, he fancies that he sees fresh humiliations in the thousand changes which are but the inevitable attendants of the revolution. In the parishes, the tyranny of those who use the new political element for base purposes is constantly increasing in boldness and violence--now

Page 90

showing itself in an appetite for public plunder, and now in shielding from richly merited punishment some infamous scoundrel.

        Sometimes the negro, annoyed and perplexed, takes the reins into his own hands, and then follow scenes of bloodshed and violence; then comes to the front the question of black versus white, and the commonwealth is, as nearly always when the Legislature is in session, convulsed to its centre. Meantime professional politicians and lobbyists constantly arrange new plans for the pacification of parties, for compromises never to be effected, and victories never to be won.

        The citizens are willing and anxious to work, but all their energy, all the intense commercial ambition of New Orleans is neutralized by the incubus of a legislature which in no wise properly represents the people. The negro afield, with his sturdy family around him, cultivating the little plot which has at last become his, and the white man, with his own hand to the plough, showing that he no longer thinks labor degrading, are, to be sure, gratifying sights, which present themselves from time to time; but they are by no means so common as they would be if the State were not constantly anguish-stricken, overwhelmed with taxation and myriad debts, and hindered from making the improvements necessary to the securing of new trade and consequent prosperity.

        There are in Louisiana men of brilliant and imposing eloquence; men of entrain and magnetism, who seem fashioned for leadership; and yet, strange as it may appear, who take but little interest in the affairs of their own State; who either content themselves with deriding their inferiors, or with watching chances for personal elevation by taking advantage of the weakness or insincerity of those in power. They laugh at the discomfiture of their fellows, while the house is being pulled down over their own heads. With anarchy at their doors, they refuse to take the first step toward reconciliation, or a proper understanding between the races now so equally divided as to numbers within the State limits.

        In 1864 Michael Hahn was chosen first free State Governor of Louisiana. On the occasion of his inauguration, the celebrated Gilmore, then a band director in the Federal army; gave his first mammoth jubilee. Cannon roared, drums rolled, the earth shook. A constitutional convention was next held, and a constitution prohibiting slavery was a few months later adopted by the Reconstruction party. In 1865 Henry C. Warmoth was elected a delegate from the "territory" of Louisiana to the National Congress. The negroes placed him in office, and supplied him with funds. Under Banks, he had been provost judge of the parish of Orleans, and there had acquired influence over, and the confidence of, the colored voters.

        In the fall of 1865 the first general election under the new State constitution was held, and the Democrats were overwhelmingly successful in all sections. They elected J. Madison Wells Governor, and at the first session of their Legislature passed several bills which placed them in direct antagonism with the colored people. Among the measures instrumental in bringing on a conflict of races was a bill for the regulation of labor, which the negroes bitterly opposed.

Page 91

        In 1866 a new constitutional convention was held, the members of the Radical party desiring to check the Democratic successes by remodeling the constitution. Riots occurred, in which white and black men lost their lives. This led to the appointment of a special committee of investigation by Congress, and to the inauguration of the policy of reconstruction.

        In the fall of 1867 another convention met, which had been provided for by the Reconstruction Act, and in May of 1868 a thoroughly radical constitution was adopted, Henry C. Warmoth being elected Governor, and a Republican Legislature, of course largely composed of ignorant negroes, coming into power. This legislative session was occupied by petty squabbles, and by the passage of many bills in the interest of corrupt jobs. The Conservatives did not, however, yield their power without some show of resistance, and the Presidential campaign of 1868 was the occasion of much severe fighting in the State. The negroes were very shamefully intimidated, and but few of them succeeded in casting their votes for President.

        However, the new party, composed of ignorant and immoral negroes, led on by reckless and greedy white adventurers, held Louisiana completely in its power, and gross frauds were perpetrated. Ignorance, captivated by the glitter of money, and misled by wily sharpers, thrust ruin in a hundred ways upon the unfortunate State. For two or three years the most scandalous plundering was indulged in. The Governor was himself disgusted with such manoeuvres, and gradually showed a leaning toward the respectable Conservatives, who now and then gathered around him. But the Conservatives had waited too long before attempting a policy of conciliation. The negroes were thoroughly estranged, and could not be persuaded to listen to anything which they might say. A division took place in the Republican party; the Legislature became hostile to Governor Warmoth, and in the summer of 1871 a new convention was held in New Orleans. Both wings of the now divided Republican party attempted to obtain control of this convention, which was held in the Custom-House. The Federal appointees in New Orleans--Mr. Casey, the collector of the port, Mr. Packard, the United States Marshal, and others--refused the opposite faction admission to the convention, the services of a company of United States infantry being secured to prevent Warmoth's entrance.

        Upon this, Warmoth and his party declared war against the Federal appointees, held an opposition convention, and even sent a committee to President Grant asking for the removal of Packard and Casey. The President disregarded this request, and Warmoth and his friends therefore opposed his re-election, Warmoth even braving the anger of the Administration by participating in the Cincinnati "Liberal" convention of 1872.

        The division in the Republican ranks grew daily more pronounced, and when the time came to choose a new governor candidates were abundant. The Conservatives finally united upon John McEnery; Warmoth ran on an independent ticket, and the Federal, or "Custom-House" party, brought forward William Pitt Kellogg, the then United States Senator from the State. Mr. Kellogg had been collector of the port of New Orleans under President Johnson, and had acquired

Page 92

some little knowledge of Louisiana politics. He was, without doubt, beaten in the election for governor, McEnery being unquestionably elected, although it is conceded on all hands that frauds were liberally practiced by both parties.

        The Conservatives, who had doubtless learned wisdom from their political experiences since the close of the war, were about to resume power, not a little glad to be freed from the contest of factions which had so long paralyzed the State, when their hopes were dashed by sudden Federal intervention.

        The history of the infamy which, in the name of law, was perpetrated in New Orleans, in December of 1872, is well known to all who have taken any interest in general politics. The non-elected Legislature was placed in power by Federal bayonets, called into requisition by an order issued by a Federal judge named Durell. A returning-board which had not, and did not pretend to have the election returns before it, yet which was the only one recognized by Judge Durell, who was firm in his policy of usurpation, seated the Kellogg government, and struck a direct blow at the will of the majority. It pushed Louisiana to the very verge of ruin.

        

Illustration

The Supreme Court--New Orleans.

        In his speech on the Louisiana bill, made before the United States Senate early in 1873, Carl Schurz has briefly summed up the whole matter in the following words. Speaking of the Legislature mentioned above, he says:

        "There was, I believe, not a single one of them who was returned by a board that had the official returns of the election in its hands or had ever seen them. By virtue of what, then, were those men put in the Legislature? Not by virtue of votes, not by virtue of returns, but upon the ground of newspaper reports, of wild guesses, of forged affidavits, of the usurpation of a Federal judge, and of Federal bayonets. That was their whole title to the legislative capacity which they assumed.

        "What was their first act? They impeached the Governor. Throwing aside all the forms of impeachment prescribed by law, they impeached and suspended the Governor, if a summary decree can be called impeachment and suspension. They who had not a shadow of right based upon law, upon votes, upon an election, upon legal returns, proceeded to undo one governor and to make another. That second governor was Pinchback. The National Government recognized him as the Governor of Louisiana.

        "Then they proceeded to what they called the canvass of the votes in the Legislature, not canvassing legal returns of voters in any legal form, but a canvass on the ground of newspaper reports, wild guesses, and forged affidavits. What I say here is by no means an exaggerated assertion, for it is distinctly

Page 93

proven by the testimony, and I think it is denied by no one. Then they declared the men of their choice: Kellogg, Governor; Antoine, Lieutenant-Governor, and so on all the State officers of Louisiana.

        "Thus the usurpation is consummated--a usurpation without the shadow of a law as an excuse; with nothing but fraud and force to stand upon; a usurpation palpable, gross, shameless, and utterly subversive of all principles of republican government; a usurpation such as this country has never seen, and probably no citizen of the United States has ever dreamed of. The offspring of this Legislature is the Kellogg government."

        What has been the result of this usurpation? The State has been broken down by taxation and debt; the negro has been demoralized; the principal cities and towns are impoverished.

        Had the usurpation been confined within bounds, the people of Louisiana would doubtless have borne it in silence; but the usurping government was not content with ordinary measures. Possessed of arbitrary power, it proceeded to exercise it in the most odious fashion. Scarcely ninety days after the Durell decision, the judges whom, by large majorities, the people of the parish of Orleans had elected to preside over certain district courts, and who had been commissioned by Warmoth and sworn in, were unseated by force, and the candidates who had been defeated were put in their places.

        This was the signal for an uprising. The incipient riot, however, was speedily quelled, and the natives of the State who did not propose to compromise their loyalty by a collision with the United States troops, stationed in New Orleans, were remanded to their condition of a subjugated class.

        Resistance to taxation, which began in 1873, was pretty effectually checked by the proclamation of the President, which made such resistance dangerous. People who wish to keep in their hands what little property now remains to them are compelled in one manner or another to pay up.

        New Orleans has suffered peculiarly, its taxable property being cumbered with two huge debts, that of the city itself, now estimated at about $22,500,000 and over three-fifths of the State's various liabilities. While the city groans under such enormous taxation, it has been loaded down with grievous licenses on all trades, professions, and occupations, amounting to nearly $1,000,000 annually.

        

Illustration

The United States Barracks--New Orleans.

        Under these burdens it is not astonishing that real estate in the city has declined from thirty to more than fifty per cent. The double public debt of the city is already more than one-fourth of its property assessment, and many times more than the value of all the available property now owned by

Page 94

the corporation. The annual expenditures of the city were increased from $3,767,000 in 1862, to $6,961,381 in 1872; and still mount upward. Meantime the streets remain uncared for, and the treasury is empty. Where has the money gone?

        The city certificates are sold on the street at enormous discounts; the Legislature's sessions cost the people half a million dollars yearly, instead of $100,000 as in 1860, and this also the city is compelled mainly to pay; whoever, therefore, buys property in the city of New Orleans buys with it a share of a great and discouraging public debt.

        There is some hope, however, at present, for the administration of the metropolis. The economy inaugurated in 1873 will be but of small avail for a year or two, for the sums expended around the City Hall in New Orleans were so enormous that gradual reduction will not relieve the people much. The budget of 1872 provided for the payment of the sum of $229,000 to the various employes about the City Hall, or more than is annually paid to the President, Vice-President, judges of the Supreme Court, and cabinet officers of the United States, and the State officers of Louisiana. There was a veritable army of office-holders and dependents about the municipal head-quarters.

        The government of the city is now entirely vested in a mayor, and seven "administrators," respectively charged with the administration of finance, commerce, improvements, assessments, police, public accounts, and water works and public buildings. These eight gentlemen constitute what is known as the City Council, and are elected biennially at the time of the election for members of the General Assembly.

        The famous Board of Metropolitan Police, created by Warmoth, is in no manner under the direction of the City Council, the administrator of the police department being merely an ex-officio member of that board. The Metropolitan Police constitute a body directed by a board controlled by the State Executive, and which is paid by taxes levied upon the city. It is in reality an armed military force which the central State Government maintains in the capital for the enforcement of its measures and the prevention of riots. Since Warmoth created it, its cost has been enormous, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly. The police expenses for the year ending October 1st, 1869, were $930,809.09; for 1870, $725,357.73; and for 1871, about $800,000. The municipality constantly threatens rebellion against the control of its action by State interference, but, meantime, that control increases in strength and extent.

        The speculation in warrants, the creation of certain courts out of elements diametrically opposed to the real interests of the people of the State, are evils which are even worse than they have been represented by the injured, and for which there is no excuse. The Federal Government may and should protect the freedman in the rights given him by the revolution consequent on the war; but it should not permit the use of ignorant masses of negroes as stepping-stones to tyrannical, centralized power; it should not allow interlopers to array the black freedman against the white freeman, under any pretense whatsoever.

Page 95

        To give an account of the condition of the State finances is somewhat difficult. It was stated, in 1872, that the amount of the actual funded and unfunded debt was between $24,000,000 and $25,000,000; that the contingent liabilities amounted to $5,483,602; and that the amount of bonds "authorized" by the Legislature, but not yet issued, was $10,770,000, making a total of actual, contingent, and prospective liability which is far from cheering, especially as from 1860 to 1871 the valuation of property in the State decreased from $435,000,000 to $250,000,000.

        With the possibility of a war of races constantly thrusting forward its ugly head, it is easy to perceive how industrial development is hindered and capital frightened away; it is easy to see how passions which should long since have become extinct still smoulder, and are ready at a moment's warning to burst forth into anarchy and chaos.

        It is now and then asserted that corruption, consequent upon despair and disgust, has affected the ranks of the native born citizens; and that there have been cases where even they have crowded the lobbies of the hybrid legislature in the interests of corporations. This seems hardly credible, when it is remembered that the masses of the conservative citizens vehemently assert that the returning-board which established that legislature in power had no official statements in its possession on which to base its conclusion, and since they are supported in their assertion by the declaration of a Committee of the United States Senate that the Lynch returning-board's canvass "had no semblance of integrity."

        A visit to Mechanics' Institute, the seat of the Kellogg Legislature, during the session, is a curious experience. At the doors stand negro policemen, armed with clubs and revolvers; and crowds of blacks obstruct the passage-ways.

Illustration

Mechanics' Institute--New Orleans.

Mounting a staircase covered with old, tobacco stained matting, one finds himself in the House of Representatives, where sit the law-makers with their feet upon their desks. Nearly all the honorable members are black; some of them are so completely ignorant that they cannot follow the course of debate. But all are so drilled by the adventurers who control them that their opposition to anything likely to better the present horrible political condition is firm and determined. There are also many blacks in the Senate. When a colored man is in the chair, he is always falling into profound errors with regard to his rulings and decisions. He finds it difficult to
Page 96

follow the course of any bill the moment half-a-dozen members are speaking of it, and constantly submits to corrections and suggestions from some lean white man, dressed in new clothes, who smiles contemptuously, as, from a carpet-bag point of view, he superintends this legislative farce. And this scene has been enacted for six weary years--the State meantime sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of crushing taxation. It is not wonderful that "White Leagues," in opposition to negro government, are springing up throughout Louisiana.

        Here are some instances which will show how greatly property has decreased in value under the present crushing taxation and wholesale plundering.

        A gentleman in New Orleans was, some time since, offered a loan of $6,000 on the security of certain real estate owned by him. He did not then need the money; but recently went to the capitalist and said, "I will now accept your kind offer." Said the capitalist, "I would not now lend you $600 on the property. It is worth nothing as security. No property in the city, in the current condition of politics, is worth anything."

        A gentleman who purchased, a short time before the war, a finely wooded estate in a rich section of Louisiana, for $100 in gold per acre, informed me that he had tried repeatedly to borrow upon the security of that estate, and that he could not get any one to lend a sum equivalent to one dollar per acre on it.

        Some three years ago a prominent capitalist was addressed by a citizen of Louisiana, who represented that a great many rich estates could be purchased in various sections of the commonwealth for at least one-third of their original value; and added, as an inducement to speedy decision, that he did not think property would ever be lower in Louisiana. The capitalist replied that he differed with his much esteemed friend; that in a few years those estates would, by the various derangements consequent on the then predominant legislation, be reduced to almost no value whatever, and that he was therefore determined to wait.

        During a visit to New Orleans, in March of 1874, my attention was called to a number of notable instances of the rapid decline of property. One gentleman pointed out a house which, in 1868, he would have been glad to purchase for $12,000; a little later it was sold for $8,000; then for $6,000, and now no one could be found to take it at $4,000. Many houses are given rent free to persons who will occupy them, that they may not be allowed to fall into decay.

        The sheriff is the prosperous man in New Orleans. His office has been made worth $60,000 yearly.

        The annual session of the Legislature, fortunately limited by the Constitution to sixty days, is a terrible trial. The state government cannot be depended upon. Earnest men, on the conservative side, are deterred from conciliatory action by the insincerity of those in power. At one time the dominant party seemed really desirous of inaugurating reform in the management of certain affairs, and called for a committee of investigation to be composed of the property-holders. But as, at nearly the same time, it voted away $500,000 worth of State bonds for a doubtful enterprise, the property-holders could not be made to believe that there was, in truth, any desire for "retrenchment" and "reform."

Page 97

        Time and time again the legislature which the Federal Government placed in power in Louisiana has sworn in as members men whom the returning-boards did not even pretend had been elected; and these men have been allowed to sit as representatives of people whom they have never seen.

        One of the worst features of the situation in Louisiana is the entire absence of the intelligent and well-to-do negroes from politics there. It is only the rascals and the dubious who get into power; and they are more terrible than the white rogues. They practice all the vices in the calendar; they take the thousands of dollars diverted from their proper channels, and lavish them upon abandoned white women; they enrich themselves and boast of it.

        The present condition of the educational system of Louisiana is encouraging, although disfigured by evils which arise from the political disorganization. The State superintendent of education, at the time of my visit, was a mulatto gentleman of evident culture--seeming, indeed, quite up to the measure of his task, if he only had the means to perform it. He could not tell me how many schools were in operation in the State; nor how much the increase had been since the war. There was, he explained, the greatest difficulty in procuring returns from the interior districts, even the annual reports being forwarded tardily, or sometimes not at all. The school-tax has heretofore been two mills on the dollar, but it is to be raised to one-fourth of one per cent. The State is in six divisions, one of which comprises New Orleans, and there is a superintendent for each division.

        There are now in Louisiana 291,000 youth between the ages of six and twenty-one; and it is fair to presume that at least one-half of them are children of colored parents, since the population of Louisiana is pretty equally divided into white and black. The Legislature appropriates half a million dollars yearly for the use of the schools, of which about seven-eighths is annually expended. There are a few mixed schools now in the State, although the mingling of colors has not been insisted upon.

        Great numbers of private schools have sprung into existence, especially in New Orleans, where the predominant religion is the Catholic; and the Germans have shown their fear of mixed schools by establishing special schools for their own children. The Catholic clergy in New Orleans have not gone so far as to forbid the attendance of children of Catholic parents in the public schools; but the organ of that clergy announced, some time since, that the poverty, and not the will of the parties, acceded the permission to attend secular schools. Immense progress has certainly been made since the war. In 1868, when the real work of school reform in the State began, there was no supervision whatever exercised over school funds, and millions of dollars were uselessly squandered. There were then less than one hundred public schools in the entire State. But it was estimated at the first educational convention ever held in Louisiana, which met in New Orleans, in 1872, that there were at that time 1,100 schools in operation, with nearly 100,000 pupils. The old system, or lack of system, had had most painful results. There were no means of obtaining proper reports; there was no certainty that the few teachers who were employed did their duty.

Page 98

        The present school-law is well adapted to the condition and wants of the State. There is one ugly fact in the way of progress in the interior of the commonwealth, and that is, as asserted by the superior officials, that the money appropriated to the different parishes for school funds, has, in many cases, never been used for schools; and prosecution of officers supposed to have retained that money is of but small avail. There are ostensibly parish boards of school directors in office in every section of the State; but they do not all perform their duty.

        The school-law provides for the maintenance of a proper normal department; and good teachers are yearly sent out therefrom. New Orleans now has about seventy public schools, and a little more than $700,000 invested in school property. The teachers in those schools exclusively attended by white children are all white; in the few mixed schools there are some colored teachers. The superintendent said that it would not do to insist upon mixed schools in remote districts, as the people would in that case refuse to have any school at all.

        The Louisiana State University, temporarily located at Baton Rouge until its new buildings at Alexandria are completed, is a struggling institution, which needs and merits much aid from richer States; and an agricultural college and a system of industrial schools have been projected. The colored children in the public schools manifest an earnestness and aptitude which amply demonstrates their claim to be admitted to them. People in all sections have ceased grumbling at the "school-house taxes," and that in itself is a cheering sign.

Page 99

IX.

"HO FOR TEXAS!"--GALVESTON.

        ONE of the saddest sights in New Orleans or Galveston is the daily arrival of hundreds of refugees from the older Southern States, seeking homes on the Texan prairies. The flood of emigration from South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia is formidable, and turned the tide of politics in Texas, in a single

Illustration

Going to Texas.

year, from Republican flood to Democratic ebb. Old men and little children, youths and maidens, clad in homespun, crowd the railway cars, looking forward eagerly to the land of promise. The ignorance of these poor people with regard to the geography of the country in general, is dense. "I never traveled so much befo'," is a common phrase; "is Texas a mighty long ways off yet?" The old men, if one enters into conversation with them, will regale him with accounts of life in their homes "befo' the surrender." With them,
Page 100

everything dates from the war, leaving the past irrevocably behind its yawning gulf, while in front there is only poverty--or flight.

        The route from New Orleans to Brashear City is, in the delightful months of April and May, one of the most beautiful in the South. The railroad which connects at Brashear City with the Morgan steamers sailing to Galveston, and along which the tide of emigration constantly flows, traverses weird forests and lofty cane-brakes, and passes over bayous, swamps, and long stretches of sugar plantations.

        Crossing the Mississippi by the great railroad ferry to Algiers, the traveler soon leaves behind the low, green banks, studded with neat, white houses embowered in a profusion of orange groves; and is borne out of sight of the black lines of smoke left upon the cloudless sky by the funnels of the river steamers. He passes Bayou des Allemands, and a low country filled with deep, black pools; hurries across the reedy and saturated expanse of Trembling Prairie, dotted with fine oaks; rattles by Raceland, and its moist, black fields, to La Fourche Bayou, on which lies the pretty, cultivated town of Thibodeaux.

        He next passes Chacahoula swamp, a wilderness of shriveled cypresses and stagnant water; Tigerville, with its Indian mounds; the rich Bæuf country, along the banks of whose lovely bayou lie wonderful sugar lands, once crowded with prosperous planters, but now showing many an idle plantation. He passes immense groves, from the boughs of whose trees thousands of Spanish moss beards are pendent; and through which long and sombre aisles, like those of a cathedral, open to right and left. He wonders at the presence of the bearded moss on all the trees, and his commercial eye perhaps suggests that it be made available in upholstery; but he is told that the quaint parasite already does good service as the scavenger of the air.

        At Brashear City he finds a steamer for Texas at the fine docks built by the enterprising proprietor of the "Morgan line," and notes, as he passes out to the blue waters of the Gulf, the richness of the vegetation along the shores of the inlet. An afternoon and a night--and he is in Galveston.

        The coast line of Texas, bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico from Sabine Pass to the Rio Grande,--from the Louisiana boundary to the hybrid, picturesque territory where the American and Mexican civilizations meet and conflict, is richly indented and studded with charming bays. Trinity, Galveston, West, Matagorda, Espiritu Santu, Aransas, and Corpus Christi harbors, each and all offer varied possibilities for future commerce. The whole coast, extending several hundred miles, is also bordered by a series of islands and peninsulas, long and narrow in form, which protect the inner low-lying banks from the high seas.

        The plains extending back from the coast in the valleys of the Sabine, the San Jacinto and the Colorado, seem in past centuries to have formed a vast delta, whose summit was probably near the Colorado, and whose angles were formed by the Sabine and the Nueces. Great horizons, apparently boundless as the sea, characterize these plains; the wanderer on the Gulf sees only the illimitable expanse of wave and alluvial; the eye is fatigued by the immensity, and gladly seeks rest upon the lines of ancient forest which cover the borders

Page 101

of the Colorado and the Nueces. Beyond these plains comes the zone of the prairies, whose lightly undulating surface extends inland as far as the Red river, while the mountains on the north-west crown the fertile knolls of rolling country.

        These mountains are portions of the Sierra Madre, which is itself but a spur from the grand Andean chain. Running to the north-west in the State of Coahuila (once a portion of Texas), the Sierra Madre spur bifurcates to enter the Texas of the present, and continues in a north-westerly direction, under the name of the San Saba, in whose breasts are locked the rich minerals which the Spaniard, during his period of domination, so often and so vainly strove to unearth.

        The Texan coast sweeps downward and outward by a wide curve to the Mexican boundary. Approaching it from the sea, the eye encounters only a low-lying level of white sand, with which, however, at all hours, the deep colors of the gulf are admirably contrasted.

        The great sea highway to which I have previously alluded, from Brashear City, on Berwick's Bay, on the Louisiana coast, to Galveston, is well known and fascinating to the modern traveler. The enterprise and liberal expenditure of a citizen of New York, Mr. Charles Morgan, has covered the waves of this route with steamships, which, until recently, furnished the only means of communication between Texas and the rest of the United States. The Morgan Line was not merely the outgrowth of an earnest demand; it was the work of an adventurous pioneer; and although its importance, in view of the grand railroad development of Northern Texas, can henceforth be but secondary, its founder will always be remembered for his foresight and daring. The improvements in the channels from Berwick's Bay outward are also the work of the owner of this line. They comprehend the dredging of a great bar which once obstructed the short passage to the Gulf, and when completed will be of infinite importance to the commerce of the whole south-west. Thousands of tons of shells have been dragged out of the dark-blue water to make room for the prows of the Morgan fleet, pointed toward Galveston and Indianola.

        And what is Galveston? A thriving city set down upon a brave little island which has fought its way out of the depths of the Gulf, and given to the United States her noblest beach, and to Texas an excellent harbor. Seen from the sea, when approaching under the fervid light of a Southern dawn, or when sailing away from it in the white moonlight, so intensely reflected on the sand, it is indeed a place where


                         "Myrtle groves
                         Shower down their fragrant wealth upon the waves
                         Whose long, long swell mirrors the dark-green glow
                         Of cedars and the snow of jasmine cups."

        It is a city in the sands; yet orange and myrtle, oleander and delicate rose, and all the rich-hued blossoms of a tropic land, shower their wealth about it. In the morning the air is heavy with the perfume of blossoms; in the evening the light, to Northern eyes, is intense and enchanting.

Page 102

        Thirty-one miles of picturesque beach are constantly laved by the restless waters. It is only a few steps from an oleander grove to the surf, the shell-strewn strand, and the dunes. The approach from the mainland will instinctively remind the traveler of Venice. A great bridge, two miles in length, connects the islet

Illustration

"It is only a few steps from an oleander grove to the surf."

with the continent. Dismantled fortifications near the bridge show one that the war reached even to the Gulf; and the mass of low-lying, white, balconied houses forms a pleasant group.

        Much of the island is unkempt and neglected-looking. Cattle wander freely about. There are a few market-gardens, and some meat-packeries in the suburbs of the city. Galveston itself, however, is as trim and elegant as any town in the South. The business quarter looks quaint and odd to strangers' eyes, because of the many long piers and jetties; the mule-carts, unloading schooners anchored lightly in the shallow waves; and the hosts of slouching darkies, shouting and dancing as they move about their tasks.

        The "Strand," the main business thoroughfare, has been twice ruined by fire, but has sprung up again into quite a magnificence of shop and warehouse; and Tremont, and other of the commercial avenues, boast of as substantial structures as grace the elder Northern cities. There is a network of wharves and warehouses, built boldly out into the water, in a manner which recalls Venice even more forcibly than does the approach from the mainland.

        The heat is never disagreeably intense in Galveston; a cool breeze blows over the island night and day; and the occasional advent of the yellow-fever,--the dread intruder who mows down hundreds of victims,--is a mystery. It comes, apparently, upon the wings of the very wind which puts health and life into every vein; and many a midsummer is rendered memorable by its ravages.

        Yet there could hardly be imagined a more delightful water-side resort than Galveston, during, at least, four months in the year. My first visit to the beach was in February, and the air of Northern June fanned the waves. The winter months could certainly be delightfully spent in Galveston; and the little city has built a splendid hotel as a seductive bait for travelers.

Page 103

        Galveston is memorable in Texan history as the retreat of the dread pirates of the Gulf--the smugglers and outlaws of Barataria. Though discovered in 1686 by La Salle, it remained uninhabited until 1816, when Lafitte and his pirate brethren from the Louisiana coast tested the capacities of the harbor, and shortly after it was occupied by the forces of the "Mexican Republic." Privateers went out from the bay to cruise against Spanish commerce, and the fleets of Spain were swept from the Gulf.

        The island also became a depot for the sale of negroes, to be imported into Louisiana, the native African's market value being one dollar per pound. At one time the followers of "Lafitte, the Galveston buccaneer," numbered a thousand refugees from justice. Lafitte was appointed "governor of the island" by the Mexican authorities, who cared little for the character of their public servants, provided they were efficient.

        But in due time the prince of pirates was compelled by the Government of the United States to leave Galveston forever, as his followers had so far forgotten themselves as to plunder American shipping. The island again became a waste, and only an occasional superstitious hunter for the spoils of the pirates visited the sandy shores.

        As the republic of Texas grew in after years, however, so grew Galveston. It was a promising town before the late war, with perhaps ten thousand population. While the rude interior towns were still in their infancy, Galveston was a port of entry, the station of the navies of the little republic, and the scene of many courtly festivities in honor of foreign ambassadors.

        During the war its commerce was, of course, utterly broken, and it was occupied in turn by Union and Confederate soldiers. Latterly it has assumed a commercial importance which promises to make it a large and flourishing city,

Illustration

"The mule-carts, unloading schooners anchored lightly in the shallow waves." [Page 102.]

Page 104

although it has many rivals in the field whence it expects to draw its trade. The cotton factors of the city are enthusiastic in their belief that they shall succeed in bringing to their port the majority of the cotton grown in Texas, but they overlook the formidable rivalry of St. Louis. The capitalists of that city intend to control the whole cotton crop of Northern Texas, bringing it into their market over the new Cairo and Fulton line and over the railroads running through Central Northern Texas; and in case the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas railroad should connect Houston with New Orleans, Houston might take the remainder of the cotton crop, diverting it from the Galveston channel, and throwing it into the New Orleans market. Galveston has but one railroad exit, the line leading to Houston, where all the railroads of the grand new system will centre. Although the business men of Galveston are confident that the

Illustration

"Galveston has many huge cotton presses"

cotton crop will all fall into their hands, those of Houston think differently. Galveston has many huge cotton presses, in whose sheds thousands of bales lie stored.

        It is to be hoped that such a large proportion of the twenty millions of acres of cotton-bearing lands in Texas will speedily come under cultivation that all the channels of trade will be filled to repletion. The freed negroes, who are throughout Texas an industrious and prosperous class, although, of course, characterized by the failings of their race, and the crudities consequent on their sudden change of station, are extensively engaged in the culture of cotton. The negro who is fortunate enough to have secured a tract of land, grows all the cotton he can, and if he would take the necessary pains to clean and prepare it, would soon enrich himself in the profitable culture.

Page 105

        The lands at the head of Galveston Bay, and on the adjoining San Jacinto Bay, as well as all the lands in immediate proximity to the Gulf, are well adapted to the culture of sea-island cotton--equal in quality to the best grown upon the islands along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. It would be difficult to imagine a better paying culture than that of this excellent staple, the yield being from $200 to $300 in gold per acre. The alluvial lands along the Gulf demand the presence of the Chinaman; great fortunes lie hidden in their flats.

        The export of sea-island cotton is trivial as yet, but growing daily. In 1870 the exports amounted to $17,719; in 1871, to $44,863, and in 1872, to $84,437. Some of the exports of the ordinary upland cotton from Galveston since the war are shown in the appended table:

        
Year. Bales. Dollars.
1866 16,417 $2,146,224
1867 66,271 6,730,257
1868 87,794 7,687,464
1869 84,485 9,997,661
1870 144,123 14,476,550
1871 233,737 16,060,794
1872 186,073 11,898,870
1873 333,502 32,423,806
The commercial year begins May 1st.

        The total amount of dutiable and free imports for each year since the re-establishment of business, May 1st, 1866, in the Galveston Custom-House, until December 31st, 1872, is as follows: 1866, $366,388; in 1867, $766,627; in 1868, $251,052; in 1869, $276,588; in 1870, $774,918; in 1871, $1,586,408; and in 1872, $1,940,292.

        The number of entrances of foreign and coastwise vessels in Galveston harbor yearly varies from 700 to 1,400. Steamships loaded with cotton run regularly between Galveston and Liverpool;

Illustration

The Custom-House--Galveston.

and, returning, bring out English, Irish, and Scotch emigrants, giving them credit for their passage-money, and binding them by contract to work for a fixed sum for a certain term after their arrival in Texas. This plan has thus far succeeded admirably, and is bringing hundreds of worthy families from the slums of English cities into the inspiring atmosphere of the Texan uplands. The main shipments of cotton are, of course, to Liverpool although London, Bremen, and Hamburg receive some of the crop.

        There are now fifteen steamers running to Berwick's Bay; eight to New

Page 106

York; a line to Baltimore; bayou steamers to Houston, and river steamers from the Trinity and the Brazos. The steamship line between New York and Galveston carries about ninety-five per cent. of all the merchandise sent into Texas from New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore. The foreign trade of the

Illustration

"Primitive enough is this Texan jail." [Page 107.]

port is increasing with wonderful rapidity; tallow and cotton-seed oil-cake are important exports; and on my second visit to Galveston I saw the famous steamer "Hornet" loading with cattle for Havana. It is proposed to supply the West Indian market hereafter entirely with Texan cattle, the transit requiring only three days; and there are large exports of hides and wool.

        The imports are salt, coffee, crockery, iron and tin, and best of all--though non-dutiable--a steady current of sturdy Germans, who tame the wildness of Texas faster than the natives themselves can do it. Galveston is likely to remain the best coffee market in the United States. The importation of lumber from Florida, Louisiana, and Northern ports, employs a large number of vessels yearly, for Galveston stands in a timberless region; there is not an acre of forest land for miles on miles around.

        Thus much for the present commerce of Galveston; its future would be perfectly certain were it not for the rivalry forced upon neighboring towns by the marvelously rapid development of transit lines. Very little fear have the Galvestonians, the cheery "sand-crabs," as the people of Houston affectionately call them, of being "left out in the cold." And they go on building superb new avenues, planting their oleanders, and trellising their roses, without any worry for the morrow. The rebound since the war has certainly been surprising. Galveston was almost depopulated at the close of the great struggle, hardly two thousand people remaining there. Let us take a picture or two from the life of the "Island City."

        Morning: A bright sunlight on the silver-rippling water, and one catches the inspiring breath of the waves. Yonder is a mass of dense foliage, from whose

Page 107

green peer out faintest red and purest white, the color of the blossoms and the gleam of the house-walls. Here the oleanders have arched their boughs and made a shaded walk; the magnolia towers above a little balconied cottage, on whose gate a couple of half-naked negro children are swinging; a mocking-bird is imitating the strange whir of the insect-life about him; there is very little din or rattle of carriages or drays; the town seems to have wakened lazily, and to be lolling in the sun-bath, and rejoicing in the hints of the


                         "Salt and spume o' the sea"
which drift lightly inland.

        At the doors of the Custom-House half-a-dozen negroes are lying with their heads upon the broad steps, yawning and joking; at the long, white-painted market-sheds, the market-men and women have done their shouting, and relapsed into a kind of contented rest as they feel the day's heat coming on; under the wooden awnings in the principal avenues of lighter trade a few black-robed, dark-eyed ladies pass quietly to and fro; and from the sea drifts up the chant of dusky watermen loading their mule-carts.

        Noon: From this balcony we can overlook the jail, the cathedral, and the town beyond. Primitive enough is this Texan jail--a common two-story brick structure--surrounded with a high wall, garnished with cruel glass, set in cement. In the jail-yard you may see still life--very still life. The jailer has just let the prisoners out from their steaming ovens, and they are stretched on the scant grass, a motley crew--an old man, with a hang-dog look, and eyes which seem to fear any one's face as he blinks in the sun's glare; a frowsy, mean negro girl, slouched down upon a water-butt, smoking a corn-cob pipe; and half-a-dozen stout black men, hideous in rags and dirt.

        At the jail's front there is a little tower and a kind of mediæval gate, where the prisoners sometimes huddle to watch a passing circus or to note the advent of a new prisoner. Invitingly near stands the Court-House, whence now and then issue legal-looking gentlemen, furiously masticating tobacco.

        

Illustration

The Catholic Cathedral--Galveston.

        Beyond the Cathedral, with its graceful group of roofs, there is a stretch of dusty roadway, and, farther still, a herd of young horses quietly feeding. Yon dusky horseman means to bring them in. Ha! Like the wind they fly--every nerve and sinew strained. Escaped? No: The black centaur speeds beyond them like a flash, and the homeward race begins--wild but decisive. Here and there dead cattle lie scattered.

Page 108

Here is the very aspect of the San Antonio plains within a mile of the principal seaport of Texas.

        Evening: The tide is out, and you may promenade the Gulf shore along a hard, unyielding track left by the receded water, and watch the negro fisherman as he throws his line horizonward, to see it swirl and fall in the retreating surf to come up laden with scaly treasure. The blue of the water, the dark of the seemingly endless strip of beach, the faint crimson, or the purple, or the gold of the sunset sky, form delicious contrasts. A few sails steal seaward like unquiet ghosts; miles away, at a rugged promontory, where the tide is beginning to set about and come in again, the sky seems to have come down to kiss the sea,

Illustration

"Watch the negro fisherman as he throws his line horizonward."

so exquisitely do colors of heaven and water blend; the long line of carriages hurries cityward; lights seem to spring from the very bosom of the sea, so low and trustingly does the little islet-town lie on the Gulf's surface; the orange-trees and the fig-shrubs send forth a delicate perfume in the cool air of the twilight.

        The depth of water on the various bars at the ports along the Texan coast is so shallow that most of them can never receive the largest shipping; but the plan of Captain Howells, the department engineer, for the improvement of the entrance to Galveston Bay, is an excellent one, and contemplates the admission of vessels drawing eighteen feet of water.

Page 109

        The merchants of Galveston will hardly be contented until they have Liverpool ships of largest draught at their very docks. They have built a wharf railroad which enables the loading of vessels directly from the cars, avoiding tedious transfers. They are also planning for a canal to connect the Rio Grande with the Mississippi. This canal would be of immense advantage to South-western Louisiana and South-eastern Texas; and it is estimated that it would bring into cultivation nearly 4,000,000 acres of land adapted to the raising of sea-island cotton. But this is one of the measures which will probably come with the "moving of the Mexican frontier."

        Society in Galveston is good, cultured and refined; and the standard of education is excellent, judging from the large number of institutions of learning in the city. The Collegiate Institution, the Catholic College, the Convent for Women, the Galveston Female Seminary, the Medical College, and several German schools, all have fine reputations. The new Methodist and Episcopal churches, and the Cathedral are the finest religious edifices in the State.

        On Tremont street stands the beautiful Opera House, where is also located the office of The Galveston News. This paper, founded by Willard Richardson, is by far the ablest Democratic journal in Texas, and takes high rank in the South-west. Its founder has been conspicuous in aiding by word and work, the upbuilding of Texas, and through a long series of years, has published the "Texas Almanac," a voluminous and faithful record of the great common-wealth's progress.

        Galveston also has its Club, "The Gulf City," frequented by many of the prominent citizens of the State. Few cities, with a population of twenty-five or thirty thousand are more spirited; though manufacturing, as a solid basis is, nevertheless, a supreme need.

Page 110

X.

A VISIT TO HOUSTON.

        THE need of manufactures is, indeed, strongly felt throughout Texas. In nearly every county farmers and merchants are paying treble and quadruple the prices they can afford to pay for goods brought thousands of miles, whereas, local investment in manufacturing establishments would enable them to multiply facilities for agricultural development, and for the comfort and culture of which the interior is now so barren.

        Now that transit facilities have come, such an outgrowth of manufactures may be looked for.

        The wheat region of Texas comprehends 40,000 square miles. What millions of barrels of flour, if proper mills were at hand, might be placed in the market two months in advance of consignments from the West!

        Houston has already begun the manufacture of cotton cloth, and applicants for situations in the mills are so numerous that the employers are embarrassed by them. At Hempstead, New Braunfels, and the State Penitentiary, this manufacture

Illustration

"The cotton train is already a familiar spectacle on all the great trunk lines."

is prosperous; yet I doubt if more than $1,000,000 is thus invested in the whole State. The people of Texas are learning that they have in their very midst all the elements necessary to support life and make it comfortable and even luxurious; and they are making a genuine effort to secure and hold Northern and Western capital.

        In a few years cotton and woolen mills will rapidly multiply in Texas; labor will be cheap, because of the cheapness of provisions and the ease with which life is sustained; and Northern capital will find one of its most profitable fields in the very region which, ten years ago, was hardly counted among the cotton and woolen producing sections of the South. The "cotton train" is already a

Page 111

familiar spectacle on all the great trunk lines. It is carefully guarded against danger from fire by vigilant negroes, and when seen at a distance, crawling across the level lands, looks like some huge reptile, from whose nostrils issue smoke and steam.

        Houston is one of the most promising of Texan towns. It lies fifty miles inland from Galveston, on Buffalo Bayou, and is now the central point of a complicated and comprehensive railway system. It was christened after the resolute, strong-hearted and valiant man whose genius so aided in creating an independent Texas, and it cherishes his memory tenderly. It is the ambitious rival of Galveston, and because nature has endowed its streets with unusual capacity for muddiness, Galveston calls its inhabitants "mud-turtles." A free exchange of satiric compliments between the two infant cities is of frequent occurrence.

        In the days of the Texan republic, when Houston was the capital, it was an important point. Only fifteen miles below the present town limits, on the banks of the picturesque bayou, that republic was born; for the travail of San Jacinto certainly brought it to the light. Audubon, the naturalist, has left a curious memorial of Houston as it was during the republic. The residence of President Houston was a typical Southern log-cabin, two large frame-works, roofed, and with a wide passage-way between. Audubon found the President dressed in a fancy velvet coat, and trowsers trimmed with broad gold lace, and was at once invited to take a drink with him. All the surroundings were uncouth and dirty, in Audubon's eyes; but he did not fail to recognize that the stern men who had planted a liberty pole on that desolate prairie in memory of the battle of San Jacinto would make Texas an autonomy. They did their rough work in their rough way; but it will stand for all time. The old "Capitol," now a hotel, stands on the main street of modern Houston. It is a plain two-story wooden structure, painted white; and contains the "Senate Chamber" which once resounded to the eloquence of the early heroes.

        Houston was a little settlement which had sprung up near the town of Harrisburg, the scene of many dramatic events when the republic was struggling with Santa Anna for its life; and the Texan Congress first met there in 1837. There, too, was finally and definitely established the first Texan newspaper, The Houston Telegraph, an adventurous sheet which had been forced by Mexican invasion to flee from town to town, until Houston's victory confirmed its right to live. To-day it is one of the institutions of Texas; has been edited by men of rare culture; showed wonderful enterprise in obtaining news during the war of secession, and is a credit to the State.

        My first visit to Houston was in winter. It was late at night when, after a long ride from the frontier of the Indian territory, where snow was still on the ground, I


                         "Dropt into that magic land."

        Stepping from the train, I walked beneath skies which seemed Italian. The stillness, the warmth, the delicious dreaminess, the delicate languor were most intoxicating. A faint breeze, with a hint of perfume in it, came

Page 112

through the lattice of my window at the hotel. The magnolias sent their welcome; the roses, the dense beds of fragrant blossoms, exhaled their greeting. Roses bloom all winter, and in the early spring and May the gardens are filled with them.

        The bayou which leads from Houston to Galveston, and is one of the main commercial highways between the two cities, is overhung by lofty and graceful magnolias; and in the season of their blossoming, one may sail for miles along the channel with the heavy, passionate fragrance of the queen flower drifting about him.

        

Illustration

"There are some notable nooks and bluffs along the bayou."

        Houston is set down upon prairie land; but there are some notable nooks and bluffs along the bayou, whose channel barely admits the passage of the great white steamer which plies to and from the coast. This bayou Houston hopes one day to widen and dredge all the way to Galveston; but its prettiness and romance will then be gone.

        On the morning of my arrival I was inducted into the mysteries of a "Norther," which came raving and tearing over the town, threatening, to my fancy, to demolish even the housetops. Just previous to the outbreak, the air was clear and the sun was shining, although it was cold, and the wind cut sharply. This "dry Norther" was the revulsion after the calm and sultry atmosphere of the previous day. A cloud-wave, like a warning herald, rose up in the north, and then the Norther himself


                         "Upon the wings of mighty winds
                         Came flying all abroad."

Page 113

        It was glorious, exhilarating, and--icy. Suddenly the cloud vanished; only a thin mist remained, and after his brief reign of a brace of hours, the Norther was over. He is the physician of malarious districts, from time to time purging them thoroughly. Sometimes he blows down houses, trees, and fences, forcing the beasts on the plains to huddle together for safety; rarely, however, in his coldest and most blustering moods, bringing the mercury of the thermometer below twenty-five degrees.

        

Illustration

"The Head-quarters of the Masonic Lodges of the State."

        Houston is well laid out, and grows rapidly, prosperous business houses lining its broad Main street. The head-quarters of the Masonic lodges of the State are there; the annual State Fair, which brings together thousands of people from all the counties, every May, is held there; and the Germans, who are very numerous and well-to-do in the city, have their Volks-fests and beer-absorbings, when the city takes on an absolutely Teutonic air.

        The colored folk are peaceable and usually well-behaved; they have had something to do with the city government during the reconstruction era, and the supervisor of streets, and some members of the city council, at the time of my sojourn there, were negroes. The railroads are hastening Houston's prosperity. The quiet inhabitants who came to the town a quarter of a century ago, and who, frightened by the fancied perils of the Gulf, have never since been back to "the States," hear of the route from "Houston to St. Louis in sixty hours," with

Illustration

"The railroad depots are everywhere crowded with negroes, immigrants, tourists and speculators." [Page 114.]

Page 114

superstitious awe. It opens a new country to them. Northern Texas, even, seems to them like a far-off world. They hardly realize that within twenty-four hours' ride a new Texas is springing up, which, in commercial glory and power, will far surpass the old.

        The future commercial importance of Houston can readily be seen by examining its location with regard to railway lines. The Houston and Texas Central connects it by a direct line

Illustration

The New Market-Houston. [Page 115.]

with Denison in Northern Texas, with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway through the Indian Territory and South-western Missouri, and thence by the Missouri Pacific with St. Louis. The Houston and Great Northern route, with which the "International" road has been consolidated (the united lines taking as a new title the "International and Great Northern"), gives a through route from Columbia near the coast to Houston, thence to Palestine and Longview in Northern Texas, and over the "Texas and Pacific," via Marshall to Texarkana, on the Arkansas border. There it connects with the new Cairo and Fulton and Iron Mountain route to St. Louis. The Texas and Pacific road also gives it connection with Shreveport and with the road projected from that point across Northern Louisiana to Vicksburg in Mississippi. Houston is connected with Galveston by the Galveston, Houston and Henderson road, now under the control of Thomas W. Pierce of Boston, who is also building the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio road, now completed to within forty miles of San Antonio. The extension of the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas railroad through Louisiana to the Texan border will be of immense advantage to Houston.

        

Illustration

"The ragged urchin with his saucy face." [Page 115.]

        At the time of my visit there were about 1,100 miles of completed railroad in Texas; and the projected routes, and surveys, indicated a determination to build at least as many more lines, opening up the whole of Northern Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Although the roads have been laid down with surprising rapidity, they are generally good, and bright little towns are springing up at all the junctions and termini. The railroad depots are everywhere crowded with negroes, immigrants, tourists, and speculators. The head-quarters of the Houston and Texas Central,

Page 115

and of the International and Great Northern roads, are at Houston. The former route, of which William E. Dodge, of New York, is president, was chartered in 1848, and had built eighty miles of its line before the war. All the rest has been done since 1861, and it now stretches, 340 miles from Houston to the Red river, 115 miles from Hempstead to Austin, the Texan capital, and 45 miles from Bremond to Waco, one of the most promising towns of the northern section. Galusha A. Grow, the noted Pennsylvania politician, has taken up his abode in Texas, and presides over the destinies of the International and Great Northern railroad.

        Thus connected with the outer world, Houston grows daily in commercial importance, and should be made a prominent manufacturing centre. At present, however, there are only the Eureka and Houston City cotton mills, running a few thousand spindles; the various railroad machine and repair shops; a fine new market and opera-house combined; a few brick yards, beef packeries, and foundries. In the vicinity, among the pineries along the bayou, there are numbers

Illustration

"The negro on his dray, racing good-humoredly with his fellows." [Page 116.]

of steam saw-mills, which furnish lumber to be worked into the "saloons," hotels, and shops of the ambitious new towns in the recently opened northern region.

        There is a frankness and cordiality about the society of Houston which is refreshing to one coming from the more precise and cautious East; the manners of the people are simple, courteous, delightful; there are, in the little city, many families of culture and social distinction, whose hospitality renders a sojourn among them memorable. The Texan of the South is, if possible, possessed of more State pride than his brother of Northern Texas: he is never tired of declaiming of the beauties of the climate, and is extremely sensitive to criticism. Above all, do not tell the Texan maiden that her land is not the fairest; for the women of this Southern commonwealth are even more idolatrous of their beautiful homes than are the men. There is a touch of defiance in the loving manner with which they linger over the praise of Texas; they talk best and look prettiest when they are praising "stars which Northern skies have never known." They show the same content with their own section as is found in France, and a leaning

Page 116

toward incredulity if one speaks of landscapes more perfect or of flowers more rare than those of the "Lone Star State!"

        The street life is interesting; the negro on his dray, racing good-humoredly with his fellows; the ragged urchin with his saucy face and his bundle of magnolia-blossoms; and the auctioneer's "young man," with mammoth bell and brazen voice, are all interesting types, which, as the reader will observe, the genial and careful artist has faithfully reproduced.

        

Illustration

"The auctioneer's young man."

Page 117

XI.

PICTURES FROM PRISON AND FIELD.

        ABOUT fifteen miles from Houston, on the banks of the bayou, and upon a dull, uninteresting plain, is the site of the famous battle of San Jacinto. The character of Houston who fought it, annihilating a Mexican force more than twice as large as his own, and capturing the redoubtable Santa Anna, is, and always will be, the subject of much heated discussion in Texas.

        Few men have ever left such firm friends and such implacable enemies. There are two versions of every episode of Texan history with which he was connected, his enemies invariably representing him as a man of bad and designing nature, without special ability, while his friends magnify the real excellence of his character into exalted heroism.

        "Sam Houston" was a man of extraordinary merit, sternness, strength of will, and was possessed of a foresight quite beyond the ordinary range. He was a

Illustration

Sam Houston.

Virginian by birth, the hardy son of hardier and noble parents, going in his youth with his widowed mother to Tennessee, then the boundary between the white man and the Cherokee Indian. His education was slight, and, being refused, when at school, the privilege of learning Greek, which he desired after reading a translation of the Iliad, he swore that he would never recite another lesson, and kept his word.

        He crossed the Tennessee river and joined the Indians, remaining with them until his manhood. Some time later he distinguished himself in the war against the Creeks, and in 1823 was elected to Congress from

Page 118

Tennessee. An unfortunate marriage seems finally to have decided his career. While governor of Tennessee, in 1829, he suddenly separated from his newly married wife, resigned his high office, and returned to his friends the Cherokees.

        After remaining with them for some years he again mingled with white men, and in 1833, entering Texas politics, leaped to the front, became the commander-in-chief of the Texan armies, and, in the face of the determined opposition of an empire of 8,000,000 of people established the independence of the State.

        

Illustration

View on the Trinity River.

        There is but little of interest on the battle-ground of San Jacinto to-day. The ride down the bayou from Houston is delightful; but, arriving at the plain, one sees only a dreary expanse, and the line of rising ground where, on the 21st of April, 1836, the Texans established their camp. On that field, with his little band of war-worn Texans, General Houston made his final stand against the formidable forces of Santa Anna. Suddenly rallying his almost exhausted men, he charged upon the enemy, smote them hip and thigh, trampled them into the morasses and bayous, and terribly avenged the Alamo, and its kindred massacres.

        The Texans engaged in the battle numbered 783, and the Mexicans lost 630 killed! The next day Santa Anna was found lying prone in the grass near the field of battle,--his disgraced head covered with a blanket,--and was made prisoner. Texas was effectually wrested from the cruel grasp of Mexico.

        Houston possessed remarkable eloquence and great magnetic power. His speech had a certain majesty about it which was in itself convincing to the popular ear. A man of many faults, he was full of the pride and joy of life, although at times intemperate and choleric. There are many traditions in Houston of his fondness for gaming, his adventures after drinking freely, and his power of control over others. When the late war came he stood a magnificent bulwark against the waves of secession and indecision, and always spoke his mind. Never, in the maddest moments, was he denounced; his person and his opinions were held sacred, and he died peacefully at Huntsville before the great struggle was ended. In the various portraits extant of him there is as much difference as in the opinions of his friends and enemies. The most authentic gives him a keen, intellectual face, somewhat softened from its original determination by age and repose, but emphatically a manly and powerful one.

        The courtesy of President Grow, of the "International and Great Northern" railroad, placed a special train at the disposition of the artist and myself during our stay in Houston, and we visited the banks of that charming stream, the Trinity river, and the fertile lands beside it; then turning aside to look at the great State Penitentiary, where nearly a thousand convicts are registered,

Page 119

more than half of whom are employed, like galley slaves, as hewers of wood and stone on the railroads and highways.

        The sight of the "convict train" is one of the experiences of Texan travel which still clings like a horrid nightmare in my memory. To come upon it suddenly, just at twilight, as I did, at some lonely little station, when the abject, cowering mass of black and white humanity in striped uniform had crouched down upon the platform cars; to see the alert watchmen standing at each end of every car with their hands upon their cocked and pointed rifles; to see the relaxed muscles and despairing faces of the overworked gang, was more than painful.

        Once, when we met this train, a gentleman recognized an old servant, and cried out to him, "What, Bill, are you there?" and the only answer was a shrinking of the head, and a dropping of the under jaw in the very paralysis of shame.

        

Illustration

"We frequently passed large gangs of the convicts chopping logs in the forest by the roadside." [Page 120.]

        The convict labor is contracted for, and is of great value in the building of the railways and the clearing of forests. As a rule, the men are worked from dawn to dark, and then conveyed to some near point, to be locked up in cars or barracks constructed especially for them. They are constantly watched, working or sleeping; and the records of the Penitentiary show many a name against which is written, "Killed while trying to escape."

Page 120

        We frequently passed large gangs of the convicts chopping logs in the forest by the roadside; they were ranged in regular rows, and their axes rose and fell in unison. When they had finished one piece of work, the stern voice of the supervisor called them to another, and they moved silently and sullenly to the indicated task. In the town where the Penitentiary is located, it is not unusual to see convicts moving about the streets, engaged in teaming, carpentry, or mason work; these are commonly negroes, sent to the Penitentiary for trivial offences, and denominated "trusties." Sambo and Cuffee have found the way of the transgressor unduly hard in Texas and most of the Southern States, since the war liberated them. The pettiest larceny now entitles them to the State's consideration, and the unlucky blackamoor who is misty as to the proper ownership of a ragged coat, or a twenty-five cent scrip, runs risk of the "convict train" for six months of a year. One good result, however, seems to have followed this unrelenting severity; you may leave your baggage unprotected anywhere on the Texan lines of travel, and no one will disturb it.

        A branch line of rail leads from the main trunk of the "International and Great Northern" to the Penitentiary, prettily situated among green fields and pleasant hills. It is vigilantly guarded everywhere by armed men. Inside, the shops are light and cheery, and the men and women, even the "lifers," who have stained their hands with blood, look as contented in the cotton spinning room as the ordinary factory hand does after a few years of eleven hours' toil daily. The prisoner make shoes, clothing, furniture and wagons, weave good cottons and woolens, and it is even proposed to set them at building cars.

        The large number of prisoners serving life sentences seemed surprising until, upon looking over the register, we noted the frequency of the crime of murder. The cases of murderous assault--classified under the head of "attempt to kill"-- were generally punished by a term of two to five years; never more. At the time of my visit there were seventy persons so sentenced.

        Since the passage of the act making the carrying of concealed weapons illegal, these commitments are not so common. Yet the Democratic Legislature last assembled--true to its principle of undoing all which had been done by its Republican predecessors--would gladly have repealed the law.

        In a corridor of the Penitentiary I saw a tall, finely-formed man, with bronzed complexion, and long, flowing, brown hair--a man princely in carriage, and on whom even the prison garb seemed elegant. It was Satanta, the chief of the Kiowas, who with his brother chief, Big Tree, is held to account for murder. Being presently introduced to a venerable bigamist who, on account of his smattering of Spanish, was Satanta's interpreter, I was, through this obliging prisoner, presented at court.

        Satanta had stepped into the work-room, where he was popularly supposed to labor, although he never performed a stroke of work, and had seated himself on a pile of oakum. His fellow-prisoner explained to Satanta, in Spanish, that I desired to converse with him, whereupon he rose, and suddenly stretching out his hand, gave mine a ponderous grasp, exclaiming as he did so, "How!" He then replied through his interpreter to the few trivial questions I asked, and

Page 121

again sat down, motioning to me to be seated, with as much dignity and grace as though he were a monarch receiving a foreign ambassador. His face was good; but there was a delicate curve of pain at the lips which contrasted oddly with the strong Indian cast of the other features. Although much more than sixty years old, he hardly seemed forty, so erect was he, so elastic and vigorous.

        When asked if he ever expected liberation, and what he would do if it should come, he responded, with the most stoical indifference, "Quien sabe?" "Big Tree" was meanwhile briskly at work in another apartment plaiting a chair seat, and vigorously chewing tobacco. His face was clear cut and handsome, his coal black hair swept his shoulders, and he paused only to brush it back, give us a swift glance, and then turn briskly to his plaiting as before. The course pursued toward these Indians seems the proper one; it is only by imposing upon them the penalties to which other residents of the State are subject that they can be taught their obligations.*

        * Satanta and Big Tree have since been set at liberty.

        

Illustration

"Satanta had seated himself on a pile of oakum."

        The Penitentiary in Texas is satisfactorily conducted, being leased from the State by enterprising persons who make it a real industrial school, albeit a severe one. But certain of the jails in the State are a disgrace to civilization, and many intelligent people at Austin spoke with horror of the manner in which criminals were treated in the "black-hole" in that place. All the barbarities of the Middle Ages seemed in force in it.

        There is also a certain contempt for the ordinary board or brick county jail, manifested by a class of desperadoes and outlaws, unhappily not yet extinct in the remote sections of the State. During my last visit to Austin, the inhabitants were excited over a daring jail delivery effected in an adjacent county by a band of outlaws. Some of their fellows had been secured, and the outlaws rode to the jail, in broad daylight, attacked it, and rescued the criminals, killing one or two of the defenders, and firing, as a narrator told me, with a touch of enthusiasm in his voice, "about eighty shots in less 'n three minutes." Not long after, tidings were brought us of the descent of an armed body of men upon the jail in Brenham, a large and prosperous town, and the rescue of criminals there.

        As a rule, however, such acts of lawless violence are due more to the carelessness of the law officers in securing their prisoners than to any defiance of law. It would be singular if, in a State once so overrun by villains as Texas, there were

Page 122

no defiant rascals still unhung. Governor Davis, in his last annual message, admitted that in four-fifths of the counties the jails were not secure, and that the constant escape of prisoners was made the excuse for a too free exercise of lynch law upon persons accused of offences. He also added that the jails so constructed as to secure the prisoners confined in them were dens unfit for the habitation of wild beasts.

        To the credit of Texas, however, it should be said that political bitterness rarely, if ever, has any part in the scenes of violence enacted in certain counties; the rude character of the people, and the slow return to organized society after the war, being the real causes of the troubles in those regions. Under the reconstruction government, law and order had returned, and it is to be hoped that the now dominant legislators will do nothing to hinder their supremacy in the by-ways as well as the highways of the State. The Democratic Legislature can ill afford to undo the wise legislation which established a State police for the arrest and punishment of outlaws, and which forbade the carrying of concealed weapons.

        The little towns along the International and Great Northern railroad are as yet very primitive, and constructed upon the same monotonous, stereotyped plan as those on the Red river. From Houston to Palestine the road runs through a country of great possibilities. On all these new lines the picture is very much the same. Let us take one as it looks in the early dawn.

        Morning comes sharply on the great plains, and sends a thrill of joy through all nature. The screaming engine frightens from the track a hundred wild-eyed, long-horned cattle that stand for a moment in the swampy pools by the roadside, jutting out their heads, flourishing their tails angrily, and noisily bellowing, as if resenting the impertinence of the flame-breathing iron monster, and then bound away like deer.

        On the slope of a little hill stand a dozen horses, gazing naïvely at the train; a shrill yell from the steam-throttle sends them careering half a mile away, their superb necks extended, their limbs spurning the ground. Behind them gallop a hundred pigs, grimy and fierce, snorting impatiently at being disturbed.

        In the distance one can see an adroit horseman lassoing the stupid beef creature which he has marked for slaughter. He drives it a little apart from the herd, and it turns upon him; a quick twirl of his wrist, and he has thrown the deadly noose about its neck; a rapid gallop of a few seconds, and he has tightened the long rope. The horse seems to enjoy the sport, bracing himself as the animal makes a few angry struggles, and then gallops rapidly once more away. The poor beef, now in the tortures of suffocation, falls upon his knees and staggers blindly and heavily forward, bellowing hoarsely and brandishing his horns; again he falls headlong; and once more piteously bellows as much as his choked throat will permit. The disturbed herd walk slowly and mournfully away, huddling together as if for protection. At last the horseman, loosening a little the dreadful noose, forces the subdued creature to follow him submissively, and so takes him to the slaughter.

Page 123

        This wonderful expanse of plain, which melts away so delicately into the bright blue of the cloudless sky, has inspiration in it. The men and women whom one meets at the little stations along the road are alert and vigorous; the glow of health is upon them; the very horses are full of life, and gallop briskly, tossing their heads and distending their nostrils.

        Every half hour we reach some small town of board shanties, crowned with ambitious signs. Each of these hamlets is increasing weekly by fifties and hundreds in population. As the train passes, the negroes gather in groups to gaze at it until it disappears in the distance. At one lonely little house on the edge of a superb wheat country a group of Germans, newly come, is patiently

Illustration

"As the train passes, the negroes gather in groups to gaze at it until it disappears in the distance."

waiting transportation into the interior. The black-gowned, bare-headed women are hushing the babies and pointing out to each other the beauties of the strange new land.

        Not far away is the timber line which marks the course of a little creek, whose romantic banks are fringed with loveliest shrubbery. A log cabin's chimney sends up a blue smoke-wreath, and a tall, angular woman is cutting down the brush near the entrance. A little farther on, half-a-dozen small tents glisten in the morning sun; the occupants have just awoke, and are crawling out to bask in the sunshine and cook their coffee over a fire of twigs. The air is filled with joyous sounds of birds and insects, with the tinkling of bells, with the rustling of leaves, with the rippling of rivulets. One longs to leave the railroad, and plunge into the inviting recesses which he imagines must lie within reach.

Page 124

        The Houston and Texas Central railroad route runs through neither a bold nor broken country, but is bordered for at least a hundred miles by exquisite foliage and thickets. At Hearne, 120 miles from Houston, it meets the International line running to Longview, and furnishing the route to Jefferson, at the head of the chain of lakes extending to Shreveport, in Louisiana.

        These lakes were formed by the obstructions created by the Red river raft, and Jefferson has become, by the diversion of the waters of this river from their natural channel, the head of navigation in that section. An important steamboat commerce with New Orleans, St. Louis, and Cincinnati has sprung up here, and Jefferson now exports nearly 100,000 bales of cotton annually. Before the Texas Pacific railroad branch from Marshall was completed, 20,000 wagons freighted with cotton yearly entered the town. Though the war found Jefferson a miserable collection of one-story shanties, it is now a city of 10,000 inhabitants, with elegant brick buildings, and a trade of $20,000,000 annually. To what it may grow, now that it is connected with the direct route to St. Louis, and that 15,000 square miles of territory in Northern Texas are opened to settlement, no one can tell. Marshall not only enjoys much the same advantages as Jefferson, but is the head-quarters in Texas of the great Texas and Pacific railway which the famous Scott is stretching across the country to El Paso, and which is already completed beyond Dallas. The same genius now presides over the destinies of the Transcontinental line, to run through the upper counties from Texarkana to Fort Worth, where the two routes are merged in the main line, which shoots out thence straight to the Mexican frontier.

        The International railroad as originally planned was to extend via Austin and San Antonio into Mexico; but a Democratic Legislature refused to accord the aid offered by its Republican predecessor.

        North-eastern Texas has extensive iron interests, and, throughout the counties in the vicinity of Jefferson, large foundries are grouping villages around them. These beds of iron ore, lying so near the head of steamboat navigation, are destined to an immense development. All the north of the State is rich in minerals.

        In the wild Wichita regions, where exploring parties have braved the Indians, there is an immense copper deposit, continuing thence hundreds of miles, even to the Rio Grande. The copper ore from some of the hills has been tested, and will yield fifty-five per cent. of metal. Notwithstanding even the expense of transporting ore 500 miles by wagon, the copper mines of Archer County have proved profitable. All the requisites for building furnaces and smelting the ores exist in the immediate vicinity of the deposits. The whole copper region is exquisitely beautiful. The mountains are bold and romantic; the valleys mysterious and picturesque; the plains covered with flowers--and Indians! But who will let the ignoble savage stand in the way of mineral development?

        The Indian troubles in North-western Texas are quite as grave as those in the extreme western part of the State. Now and then an adventurous frontiersman is swept down by the remorseless savage, who seems to delight in waiting until his victim fancies he has attained security before murdering him and his family.

Page 125

Government should certainly afford better protection to the settler on the extreme frontier--by some other method if it cannot do it by means of the regular army.

        Waco, now a fine town, on a branch of the Texas Central, was once an Indian village, and, long ago, was the scene of a formidable battle between the Wacos and some Cherokee forces. The noble Wacos had acquired, in a surreptitious manner, a good many Cherokee ponies, and, in the pursuit and battle which followed, the Waco village was plundered and burned, and extensive fortifications--traces of which still remain--were heaped with the conquered thieves' dead bodies. Waco, situated on the Brazos river, is to-day a handsome, solidly-built town, possessing many manufacturing establishments. Throughout all the adjacent region stock-raising is fast giving way to agriculture; and great fields of cotton, corn and cane are springing into existence. Every one has heard of Dallas, set down on the banks of the Trinity river, and contributed to by the great feeders of the Texas Central and Texas Pacific. It grows like an enchanted castle in a fairy tale. Dallas is the centre of Northern Texas; has superb water power, and lumber, coffee, iron, lead, and salt fields to draw upon. In the midst of the rich, undulating prairies, and near a plateau covered with noble oaks, elms and cedars, it promises to be beautiful as well as prosperous. It is also one of the centres of the wheat region, some of the finest wheat lands on the continent being in its vicinity. The absolutely best wheat region is said to be in Lamar, Hunt, Kaufman, and Navarro counties.

        The eastern corners of the lands now settled in Northern Texas were nearly all held by emigrants from Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi until the railroad's advent, when the North-westerner joined them in the country, and the Northerner mingled with them in the towns. Slavery flourished there before the war, and the revolution improved neither the negro nor his old master much; so that both are gradually yielding before the new-comers.

        In the northern and middle counties, however, slavery never was popular. Some 3,000 families from Indiana and Illinois were introduced into those counties between 1843 and 1854. They owned no slaves and never desired any; and the influence of their example was good even before emancipation came. Hundreds of intelligent and cultured families live there, happy and well-to-do, sowing their wheat and rye in October, and reaping it in June; planting corn in February, to harvest in September; and raising great herds of cattle and horses.

        The black, sandy lands are admirably suited for orchards and vineyards; and the "black-waxy,"--a rich alluvial,--for all the cereals. As all the cotton lands of Northern Texas will readily produce a bale to the acre, how many years will pass before the cotton crop of the Lone Star State will be 10,000,000 bales?

        The labor question is to be an engrossing one in Texas very soon. The proportion of the colored to the entire population being small, the negroes' share in the labor of cultivation is, of course, not large. The Chinaman is already at St. Louis; the completion of the Texas Pacific railroad will establish him along the whole Texan coast. At present, in great numbers of the counties,

Page 126

there is hardly one negro to fifty white people, so that Cuffee stands no whit in the way of John.

        With one single field of coal covering 6,000 square miles; with apparently inexhaustible copper and iron stores; with lead and silver mines; with 20,000,000 of acres of cotton-bearing land, and with agricultural resources equal to those of any State in the Union, Texas can enter upon her new career confidently and joyously. As a refuge for the ruined of our last great revolution, she is beneficent; as an element of greatness in the progress of the United States, she has no superior. She has peculiar advantages over her sister Southern States. While they vainly court emigration, the tide flows freely across her borders, and spreads out over her vast plains. Whatever danger there may be of political disagreements and disturbances within her limits, nothing can permanently impede her progress. Lying below the snow line, she furnishes the best route to the Pacific; fronting on the Gulf, she will some day have a commercial navy, whose sails will whiten every European sea.

        Few persons who have not visited the South appreciate the vast extent of territory which the Texas and Pacific route has opened up. Its most beneficent work will be the chasing of the Indian from the vicinity of the "cross-timber" country, which is an excellent location for small farmers. The settlers there are bravely holding on to their lands, keeping up a continual warfare with the redskins, in hopes that they may preserve their lives until the advent of the rail.

        The Indian reserves in this section of the State have, according to the testimony of competent authorities, all been failures, whether considered as protection to the white man or as a means of civilization to the Indian. For ten years the savage has been master of all that part of Texas. The new Pacific route will not only send a civilizing current through there, but will also develop a portion of the great "Staked Plain" territory, now one of the unknown and mysterious regions of Northern Texas. The Transcontinental branch is doing good pioneer work in new counties. It also runs through some of the oldest and most cultured sections of the State.

        Clarksville, in Red River county, has long been a centre of intelligence and refinement; it was settled early in 1817, and in 1860 had under cultivation nearly 17,000 acres of corn and 8,000 acres of cotton. It is noteworthy that in this county lands which have been steadily cultivated for fifty years show no depreciation in quality. Paris, a handsome town in Lamar county, is also touched by this line. These towns and counties offer a striking contrast to other portions of the northern section which lie within a day's journey of them. They are like oases, but the rest of the apparent desert is being so rapidly reclaimed, that they will soon be noticeable no longer. By all means let him who wishes to cultivate fruit, cotton, or the cereals in Texas visit these elder counties.

Page 127

XII.

AUSTIN, THE TEXAN CAPITAL--POLITICS--SCHOOLS.

        MY various journeys to Austin, the capital of Texas, enabled me to judge of its winter and summer aspects, and I do not hesitate to pronounce them both delightful. The town itself is not so interesting at first sight as either Galveston or Houston; but every day adds to the charm which it throws about the visitor. At Austin the peculiarities of Western and Eastern Texas meet and compromise; one sees the wild hunter of the plains and the shrewd business man of the coast

Illustration

The State Capitol--Austin.

side by side in friendly intercourse. The majority of the public buildings are not architecturally fine; the Capitol, the Land Office, the Governor's Mansion, are large and commodious, but not specially interesting. But a touch of the grand old Spanish architecture has crept into the construction of the Insane Asylum, which is built of the soft gray sandstone so abundant in that region; and the edifice, standing in a great park, whose superb trees seem to have been cultured for centuries, rather than to be mere gifts of nature, is very beautiful.

        It is, however, overcrowded with unfortunates, and the State's imperative duty is to build another asylum at once. Under the rich glow of the February sun the white walls of the structure formed a delicious contrast to the foliage of the live oaks near at hand, making it seem more like a temple than like the retreat of clouded reason. In wandering through the wards I came suddenly upon a group of idiot girls, seated on benches in a niche before a sunny window. These poor creatures cowered silently--grimacing now and then--as I stood gazing upon them, when suddenly one or two of them, doubtless excited by the

Page 128

presence of a visitor, rose and began dancing and shrieking. The suddenness of the transition, and the fearful, mysterious nature of these idiotic saturnalia, appalled me. I avow that I could hardly drag my limbs to the door, and when once more in the sunlight I felt as if I had come from Dante's Hell. The cheery German physician in charge complained of the overcrowded condition of the asylum, adding that as the majority of the cases brought him had already become chronic, it was a hopeless throng with which he had to deal.

        

Illustration

The State Insane Asylum--Austin.

        In a yard of the asylum, comfortably inclosed, and covered by a picturesque roof upon which a vine had been trained, I saw the sty in which "Queen Elizabeth," a filthy and dreadful old negress, wallowed all day long. Behind green lattices neatly set into the walls of another building, I could hear the furiously insane groaning and shouting. It is said that there are more than 1,200 insane in the State, for most of whom an asylum is necessary.

        Not far from the Lunatic Asylum, in another beautiful nook, is the institution for the blind, which comprises a school for the industrial training of the patients whose vision is hopelessly lost. The Colorado river flows to the westward of Austin, close to the city, issuing from a romantic mountain range, a long gap in which forms what is known as the Colorado Valley; and on the west bank of the river is an efficient and pleasant school and home for the deaf and dumb of the State.

        

Illustration

The Texas Military Institute--Austin.

        One of the notable sights of Austin, too, is the well-drilled little company of cadets from the "Texas Military Institute," originally located at Bastrop, but now situated on a lovely hill-side near the capital. The school, which is one of general and applied science, is modeled after West Point and the Virginia Military Institute, and can receive one hundred cadets, whose gray uniformed company is often seen in martial array in the lanes and fields near the town.

        Austin is very prettily set down in an amphitheatre of hills, beyond which rises the blue Colorado range. The little town, which boasts "from 8,000 to

Page 129

10,000 inhabitants," is very lively during the legislative session. One passenger train daily, each way, connects it with the outer world; beyond are the mesquite-covered plains, and only wagon roads.

        The governor, whose term of office lasts four years, has a special mansion, which was the president's house when Austin was the capital of the Texan republic; and the surroundings of his office at the Capitol are of Spartan plainness. In both the Senate and the House of Representatives I noticed a good deal of the freedom of Western and South-western manners, which would be counted strange in the older States. There were no objections, apparently, to the enjoyment of his cigar by any honorable senator on the floor of the Senate, if the session was not actually in progress; senators sat with their feet upon their desks, and the friendly spittoon handy; but these are eccentricities which prevail in many a State beside Texas. There were men of culture and refinement in the Senate, others who were coarse in manners and dress; the president was amiable and efficient. One or two negroes occupied senatorial chairs, although the Thirteenth Legislature, which I saw, was almost entirely Democratic. The House of Representatives was a sensible, shrewd-looking body of men, with no special Southern type; a Northerner might readily have imagined himself in a New England legislature during the session, save for certain peculiarities of dialect. Here, also, there were negroes, more numerous than in the Senate, and mingling somewhat more freely in the business of the session. The portraits of Austin and Houston looked down benignantly upon the lawgivers.

        

Illustration

The Governor's Mansion--Austin.

        Texas went through a variety of vexatious trials during the period between the close of the war and the election of what is known as the "Davis party." A. J. Hamilton was appointed provisional governor by President Johnson, but surrendered his power in 1866 into the hands of Governor Throckmorton, the successful "Conservative Union" candidate, who was elected after the adoption of a new State constitution by a majority of more than 36,000 votes over E. M. Pease, the "Radical" candidate. The advent of reconstruction brought Texas into the Fifth Military District with Louisiana, and under the control of General Sheridan. In 1867 Governor Throckmorton, who was considered an "obstacle" to reconstruction, was removed, and the defeated candidate Pease made governor in his stead. During his administration, he had a controversy with General Hancock, who had meantime been appointed commander of the district in place of Sheridan, and was prevented from undertaking several arbitrary measures which the military authorities deemed inexpedient at that time.

Page 130

        The new registration which came into force in Texas, as elsewhere in the South, reduced the number of white voters from 80,000 to a little less than 57,000. A second Constitutional Convention was held in June of 1868, in obedience to an order from the army authorities, then represented by General Rousseau, who succeeded General Hancock in command. This convention was presided over by Edmund J. Davis, an uncompromising loyal man, who had once had a Confederate rope around his neck in war-time, The State was at that time in a very bad condition. Murder and lawlessness were rampant; it was said that there had been nine hundred homicides in the State between 1865 and 1868. The Conservative and Radical wings of the Republican party had much sharp discussion in the convention, which was finally adjourned until the last days of November. Meantime, the differences of opinion between the wings of the party brought forward Mr. Davis as the Radical, and A. J. Hamilton as the Conservative candidate for governor. The constitution was submitted to the people in November, and ratified by more than 67,000 majority. Mr. Davis and his party were at the same time elected to power, and the military force was withdrawn.

        Governor Davis certainly succeeded in restoring order and maintaining peace in the State during the four years of his administration, although some of his measures were bitterly opposed. He inaugurated the militia act, which the Democrats of course fought against. It was an act delegating to the governor the power to suspend the laws in disturbed districts, and was perfectly efficient in the only three cases in which it was ever resorted to. During his term, also, the "State Police"--a corps for the maintenance of order throughout the State--was established, and did much to rid Texas of outlaws and murderers.

        A tax-payers' convention, held at Austin in September, 1871, united all the elements of opposition against the Davis party. Ex-Governors Throckmorton, Pease and Hamilton participated in it. The Democrats re-organized, and succeeded in securing the Legislature, which is elected annually in Texas. Toward the close of Governor Davis's term, as the tenure of office of some of the State officials was involved in doubt, the Legislature passed an act providing for a general election in December. A new and vehement political contest at once sprang up. The Republicans renominated Governor Davis, and the Democrats, who had been powerfully reinforced by thousands of immigrants from Alabama, Georgia, and other cotton States, put forward Judge Richard Coke as their candidate. In the election which followed, the Democrats elected Judge Coke as governor by more than 40,000 majority; and the State was completely given over to the Conservative element.

        This election caused great excitement among the Republicans. Governor Davis, backed up by the declaration of the Supreme Court of the State that the recent election was unconstitutional, at first refused to yield his power, and called on the President for troops to maintain him in office. But the United States declined to interfere; the Democrats took possession of the Capitol; and Governor Davis finally withdrew his opposition. The Democrats propose in due time to hold another Constitutional Convention, and threaten to undo much of

Page 131

the legislation which, under reconstruction and the régime of the Radicals, had proved salutary to the State.

        On the steps of the Capitol stands the small and unambitious monument built of stone brought from the Alamo. It is but a feeble memorial of one of the most tragic events in American history, to which the State would do well to give lasting commemoration by some stately work in bronze or marble on Alamo plaza, in San Antonio.

        

Illustration

The Alamo Monument--Austin.

        In the office of the Secretary of State at Austin, one may still see the treaties made with France, England, and other nations, when Texas was a republic, when Louis Phillippe was King of the French, and Victoria was young. Three years after Texas had declared her independence of Mexico, the commissioners appointed under President Lamar's Administration selected the present site on the Colorado as the capital, and, in grateful remembrance of the "father of Texas," called it Austin. It seems, indeed, strange that it has not grown to the proportions the commissioners then predicted for it; for the best of building stone and lime and stone-coal abound in the vicinity, and it has an immense and fertile back-country to draw upon. These same commissioners also fondly hoped, by building the town, effectually to close the pass by which Indians and outlaws from Mexico had from time immemorial traveled to and from the Rio Grande and Eastern Texas. In October, 1839, President Lamar's Cabinet occupied Austin,--and, although Indian raids in the neighborhood were frequent, the brave little government remained there. Those were great days for Texas,--a State with hardly the population of one of her counties to-day, yet holding independent relations with the civilized world.

        The European governments had their representatives at the Court of Austin, while hosts of adventurers thronged the Congressional halls. Gayly-uniformed officers of the Texan army and navy abounded; and the United States daily felt the pulse of the people as to annexation. Once in a while there was a diplomatic muddle and consequent great excitement, as when,--the owner of some pigs which had been killed for encroaching on the French Minister's premises having abused said minister in rather heated language,--Louis Phillippe felt himself insulted, and very nearly ruined the infant republic by preventing it from obtaining what was then known as the "French Loan."

        The Texan government in those early days had always been a great straggler, moving from town to town, and when, in 1842, the Administration proposed to remove the archives to Houston, because a Mexican invasion was feared, the citizens of Austin revolted, and General Houston, the then President, was compelled to leave the records where they were.

Page 132

        In the Secretary of State's office I was shown the original ordinance for the secession of Texas from the Union,--a formidable parchment, graced with a long list of names,--and a collection of the newspapers printed in the State during the war, a perusal of which showed that there are several sides to the history of all our battles, and that in those days the Texans were taught that the Confederates invariably won.

        The four presidents of the Texan republic, Burnet, Houston, Lamar and Jones, were all strong men, but of widely different character. Lamar was a brilliant writer and talker, clear-headed and accomplished; Jones was an intellectual man, bitter against the Houston party, and to judge from his own memoirs, jealous and irritable. He died by his own hand.

        The population of Texas has increased, since its annexation to the Union in 1845, from 150,000 to more than a million of inhabitants. Its principal growth has, of course, been since the war, for before that time Northern Texas was as much a wilderness as is Presidio county to-day. The greatest needs of the State at the present time are more people, and more improvement along the lines of travel. The coarse cookery, bad beds, and villainous liquor-drinking which one now finds in remote towns will vanish when people and manufactures and inducements to ease and elegance come in.

        A favorable sign on the railroads is the occasional entrance of some rough fellow into the Pullman car, and his intense enjoyment of it. I recall now, vividly, the gaunt drover who went to bed before dark in one of the berths of a palace car one evening between Austin and Hempstead. "Never was in one of these tricks befo'," he said; "I reckon I'll get my money's worth. But look yere," he added, to a gentleman near him, confidentially, "if this train should bust up now, where'd the balance of ye go to, d'ye reckon?" He appeared to think the berth a special protective arrangement, and that he was perfectly safe therein.

        The negro and the Mexican are both familiar figures in Austin, and the negro seems to do well in his free state, although indulging in all kinds of queer freaks with his money; he saves nothing. Sometimes he undertakes long journeys without the slightest idea where he is going, and finding he has not money enough to return, locates anew. As a rule, he does not acquire much property, expending his money on food and raiment--much of the former, and little of the latter. The commercial travelers in Texas all carry large stocks of confectionery, with which, when they fail to tempt Sambo to expend his little hoard in any other manner, they generally manage to exhaust his means. There is no idea of economy in the Texan negro's head. On the Texas railroads, the candy venders are allowed to roam at large through the trains and practice the old swindle of prize packages, by which they invariably deplete the darkey's purse. They display the tempting wares, and hint at the possibility of gold dollars and greenbacks in the packages; of course, appetite triumphs, and Sambo falls.

        The Land Office is one of the important institutions of Texas, and a main feature of Austin. The United States has no government lands in the commonwealth;

Page 133

and the land system, although somewhat complicated, on account of the various colonization laws and old titles acquired under them, is a good one. In the Land Office there is an experienced corps of men, who have the history of each county and its records at their fingers' ends, and who can trace any old title back to its Spanish source. Plans of all the counties, and every homestead on them, are also to be seen. This, in a State where the counties comprise areas of from 900 to 1800 square miles each, is of the utmost importance to persons buying land and wishing to establish a clear title to it; although, as a general rule, the settler who acquires land under the preëmption laws of the State, has no trouble, and runs no risk.

        An attempt was once made to sectionize all the State public lands,--now amounting to nearly 90,000,000 of acres,--and to offer them, as the United States does, in open market, but it was thought wiser to continue the original plan. The legislation of Texas favors preëmption, and the new settler had best go with it; but he may also become the legal owner of a portion of the public domain

Illustration

The Land Office of Texas--Austin.

by "locating a land certificate," at from thirty-five to sixty-five cents in gold per acre, and then proving his title to it by forming a perfect chain of deeds from the original grantee down to himself. In doing this the facilities afforded by the Land Office are, of course, invaluable. The State Bureau of immigration, located at Galveston, has commissioners constantly in the Southern and Western States, and in Europe, soliciting immigrants to take up the millions of acres in the Western and Northern parts of the State. Judging from the statistics of 1872-3, I should say that fully three thousand persons monthly land at Galveston, coming from the older Southern States. How little we at the North have known, in these last few years, of this great, silent exodus, this rooting up from home and kindred, which the South has seen, and the anguish of which so many brave hearts have felt! But your true American is peripatetic and migratory, so that perhaps the struggle is less intense with him than with the Europeans who crowd our shores.

        Texas owes but little money--a trifle more than $1,500,000--and her taxable property, which was estimated in 1871 at $220,000,000, and was then thought to be undervalued, must now be nearly $300,000,000. In most respects the outlook of the State is exceedingly good; certainly as favorable for immigration as the majority of the States of the West. The grand middle ground, more than 1,000 miles in extent, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, it must be covered with railroads in every direction; and even the barbarity of the savages can last but little longer.

Page 134

        Journalism has had an astonishing growth in Texas since the war. Out of 140 newspapers now printed in the State, 110 have been started since the close of the great struggle. Most of the small new towns have two or three papers each, and support them handsomely. The proprietor of a weekly journal, in one of the mushroom cities, told me that five columns of his paper paid him $6,000 clear profit yearly.

        Everybody--merchant, gambler, railroad contractor, clergyman, desperado--patronizes the newspaper, and pays large prices for advertising. The majority of the papers are Democratic, but in the cities the Republicans usually have influential organs. "Democratic" does not always mean a full support of the party, but a kind of independent journalism, to which the air of Texas is more conducive than even that of the North. The Age and Union in Houston, the Civilian, Post, and Standard in Galveston, the Times in Jefferson, the Reporter in Tyler, and the State Journal, Gazette, and Statesman in Austin, and the Red River Journal in Denison, are among the principal newspapers published either daily or triweekly. Almost every county has an excellent weekly, filled with enthusiastic editorials on the development of the State, and appeals to the people to appreciate their advantages. The Germans have also established several influential journals both in Western and Eastern Texas; and all of them are very prosperous. In Galveston, Houston, and all the principal towns there are elegantly-appointed German book-stores, whose counters are freighted weekly with the intellectual novelties of the Old Country.

        The school question, so seriously and severely disputed in all the Southern States, has created much discussion in Texas; and, indeed, the people do well to occupy themselves with the subject; for it is estimated that in 1873 there were yet in the State 70,895 white, and 150,617 colored persons over ten years of age who could neither read nor write. This appalling per centage of ignorance is gradually decreasing under the beneficent workings of the new system, which came in with reconstruction, and to which there was, of course, a vast deal of opposition.

        Texas has always been reasonably liberal in matters of education; as early as 1829 the laws of Coahuila and Texas made provisions for schools on the Lancastrian plan; the republic inaugurated the idea of a bureau of education, and its Congress took measures for establishing a State university. After annexation, free public schools were established, and supported by taxation on property. In 1868 the reconstruction convention established a school fund amounting to more than $2,000,000; and in April, 1871, the Legislature passed an Act organizing a system of public free schools, and the schools were begun in September of the same year.

        The opposition to them took the form of complaint of the taxes, and in most of the leading cities the courts were overrun with petitions asking that collection of the school tax be restrained. In this manner the progress of the system has been very much embarrassed. The Texan of the old régime cannot understand how it is right that he should be taxed for the education of his neighbor's children; neither is he willing to contribute to the fund for educating his former bondsmen.

Page 135

        There have been at different times about 127,000 pupils in the public schools of the State, and the average number taught during the year is 80,000, while the whole number of children in the commonwealth is estimated at 228,355. During the first year of the application of the system, over 6,500 teachers were examined and accepted. The number of colored pupils in the public schools cannot be accurately determined, and mixed schools seem to be nowhere insisted upon. In many counties where the opposition to the payment of the tax was persistent, the schools were forced to close altogether.

        In the large towns, as in Houston, the Germans have united with the leading American citizens in inaugurating subscription schools in which the sexes are separated, and have introduced into them some of the best German methods. There has been much objection to the compulsory feature of the

Illustration

"The emigrant wagon is a familiar sight there." [Page 136.]

free system, parents furiously defending their right to leave their children in ignorance. Texas needs, and intends soon to found, a university and an agricultural college. The latter should be opened at once. There are a good many thriving denominational schools scattered through the counties; the Baptists have universities at Independence and Waco; the Presbyterians at Huntsville; the Lutherans at Columbus; the Methodists at Chappell Hill; and the Odd Fellows have a university at Bryan. Wherever the public school has been established there is a private one which is patronized by all the old settlers, who thus gratify their desire for exclusiveness, and embarrass the growth of the free system.

        Between Austin and Hempstead the river Brazos is crossed, and not far from its banks stands the populous and thriving town of Brenham, in Washington

Page 136

county, one of the wealthiest and most thickly settled in the State. The beauty of the famous La Bahia prairie has not been exaggerated; I saw its fertile lands where the great oaks stood up like mammoth sentinels; where the pecan-tree, the pride of Texas, and one of the noblest monarchs of the sylvan creation, spread his broad boughs; where the cotton-wood, the red cedar, and the ash shot up their noble stems; where the magnolia and the holly swore friendship; where the tangled canebrake usurped the soil, and where upon the live oak the grapevine hung lovingly encircling it with delicate leaves and daintiest tendrils. How fair, too, were the carefully cultivated lands, hedged in with the Osage orange and the rose, the vineyards and the pleasant timber lines along the creeks! What beautiful retreats by the Brazos! One might fancy himself in the heart of the richest farming sections of England. Tobacco, rye, hops, hemp, indigo, flax, cotton, corn, wheat and barley, as well as richest grapes, can be profitably grown; deer bound through the forests, wild turkeys stalk in the thickets, and grouse and quails hide in the bosquets. The emigrant wagon is a familiar sight there, and the wanderers from the poorer Southern States find that this rich tract realizes their wildest dreams of Texas. In this section small farms are rapidly increasing in number, land being rented to new-comers unable to buy.

        One's senses are soon dulled by satiety. When I first traversed Texas, fresh from the white, snow-covered fields of the North, how strange seemed the great cypresses, hung with bearded moss; the tall grasses rustling so uncannily; the swamps, with their rank luxuriance and thousands of querulous frogs; the clumps of live oaks, and the tangled masses of vines!

        But a winter in the South had familiarized me with all these things, and on my return I sought in vain the impressions of my earlier trip. Extraordinary rural charms are like the perfume of the jessamine. At first it intoxicates the senses, but, as familiarity grows, it ceases to attract attention. Even absence will not restore its sweetness and subtlety.

Page 137

XIII.

THE TRUTH ABOUT TEXAS--THE JOURNEY BY STAGE TO SAN ANTONIO.

        GALUSHA A. GROW, once speaker of the national House of Representatives, and now the energetic and successful manager of a railroad in the Lone Star State, has changed the once memorable words, "Go to Texas!" from a malediction into a beneficent recommendation. The process was simple: he placed the curt phrase at the head of one of those flaming posters which railway companies affect, and associated it with such ideas of lovely climate and prospective prosperity, that people forthwith began to demand if it were indeed true that they had for the last twenty years been fiercely dismissing their enemies into the very Elysian Fields, instead of hurling them down to Hades.

        The world is beginning to learn something of the fair land which the adventurous Frenchmen of the seventeenth century overran, only to have it wrested from them by the cunning and intrigue of the Spaniard; in which the Franciscan friars toiled, proselyting Indians, and building massive garrison missions; which Aaron Burr dreamed of as his empire of the south-west; and into which the "Republican" army of the North marched, giving presage of future American domination.

        Austin and his brave fellow-colonists rescued Texas from the suicidal policy of the Mexican Government, and the younger Austin accepted it as his patrimony, elevating it from the degraded and useless condition in which the provincial governors had held it. Under his lead, it spurned from its side its fellow-slave, Coahuila, and broke its own shackles, throwing them in the Mexican tyrant Guerrero's face; its small but noble band of mighty men making the names of San Felipe, of Goliad, of the Alamo, of Washington, of San Jacinto, immortal.

        It crushed the might of Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West; it wrested its freedom from the hard hands of an unforgiving foe, and maintained it, as an isolated republic, commanding the sympathy and respect of the world; it placed the names of Houston, of Travis, of Fannin, of Bowie, of Milam, of Crockett, upon the roll of American heroes and faithful soldiers, and brought to the United States a marriage-gift of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand square miles of fertile land.

        The world is beginning to know something of this gigantic south-western commonwealth which can nourish a population of 50,000,000; whose climate is as charming as that of Italy; whose roses bloom and whose birds sing all

Page 138

winter long; whose soil can yield the fruits of all climes, and whose noble coast-line is broken by rivers which have wandered two thousand miles in and out among Texan mountains and over vast Texan plains. It is a region of strange contrasts in peoples and places: you step from the civilization of the railway junction in Denison to the civilization of Mexico of the seventeenth century in certain sections of San Antonio; you find black, sticky land in Northern Texas, incomparably fertile; and sterile plains, which give the cattle but scant living, along the great stretches between the San Antonio and the Rio Grande.

        You may ride in one day from odorous, moss-grown forests, where everything is of tropic fullness, into a section where the mesquite and chaparral dot the gaunt prairie here and there; or from the sea-loving populations of Galveston and her thirty-mile beach, to peoples who have never seen a mast or a wave, and whose main idea of water is that it is something difficult to find and agreeable as a beverage.

        The State has been much and unduly maligned; has been made a by-word and reproach, whereas it should be a source of pride and congratulation. It has had the imperfections of a frontier community, but has thrown off the majority of them even while the outer world supposed it to be growing worse and worse. Like some unfamiliar fruit supposed to be bitter and nauseous, it has gone on ripening in obscurity until, bursting its covering, it stands disclosed a thing of passing sweetness, almost beyond price.

        Much of the criticism to which Texas has been subjected has come from people very little acquainted with its actual condition. Border tales have been magnified and certified to as literally true. The people of the North and of Europe have been told that the native Texan was a walking armament, and that his only argument was a pistol-shot or the thrust of a bowie-knife. The Texan has been paraded on the English and French stages as a maudlin ruffian, sober only in savagery; and the vulgar gossipings of insincere scribes have been allowed to prejudice hundreds of thousands of people.

        Now that the State is bound by iron bands to the United States, now that, under good management and with excellent enterprise, it is assuming its proper place, the truth should be told. Of course, it will be necessary to say some disagreeable things; to make severe strictures upon certain people and classes of people; but that is not, by any means, to condemn the State by wholesale or to write of it in a hostile spirit. The first impression to be corrected--a very foolish and inexcusably narrow one, which has, nevertheless, taken strong hold upon the popular mind--is, that travel in Texas, for various indefinite reasons, is everywhere unsafe. Nothing could be more erroneous; there is only one section where the least danger may be apprehended, and that is vaguely known as the "Indian country." Hostile Comanches, Lipans, or predatory Kickapoos might rob you of your cherished scalp if you were to venture into their clutches; but in less than three years they will have vanished before the locomotive--or, possibly before the legions of Uncle Sam, who has a pronounced mania for removing his frontier quite back to the mountains of Mexico.

Page 139

        Indeed, this apprehension with regard to safety for life and property in Texas is all the more inexplicable from the very fact that the great mass of the citizens of the State were and are determined to maintain law and order, and to fight with bitter persistence the outlaws who have found their way into the country.

        It is true that during the war, and for two years thereafter, things were in lamentable condition. Outlaws and murderers infested the high-roads, robbed remote hamlets, and enacted jail deliveries. There were a thousand murders per year within the State limits; but at the end of the two years the reconstruction government had got well at work, and annihilated the murderers and robbers.

        It is a noteworthy fact, too, that the people then murdered were mainly the fellows of the very ruffians who murdered them--shot down in drunken broils, or stabbed in consequence of some thievish quarrel. Of course, innocent people were occasionally plundered and killed; but then, as now, most of the men who "died with their boots on" were professional scoundrels, of whom the world was well rid.

        It may with truth be said that there exists in all of the extreme Southern States a class of so-called gentlemen who employ the revolver rather suddenly when they fancy themselves offended, sometimes killing, now and then only frightening an opponent. These people are not, as yet, treated with sufficient rigor in Texan society. There are even instances of men who have killed a number of persons and are still considered respectable. The courts do not mete out punishment in such cases with proper severity, sometimes readily acquitting men who have wantonly and willfully shot their fellow-creatures on the slightest provocation.

        A correct summary of the present condition of Texas may, it seems to me, be stated as follows: A commonwealth of unlimited resources and with unrivaled climate, inhabited by a brave, impulsive, usually courteous people, by no means especially bitter on account of the war, who comprise all grades of society, from the polished and accomplished scholar, ambassador, and man of large means, to the rough, unkempt, semi-barbaric tiller of the soil or herder of cattle, who is content with bitter coffee and coarse pork for his sustenance, and with a low cabin, surrounded with a scraggy rail fence, for his home.

        The more ambitious and cultured of the native Texans have cordially joined with the newly-come Northerners and Europeans in making improvements, in toning up society in some places, and toning it down in others; in endeavoring to compass wise legislation with regard to the distribution of lands, and the complete control of even the remote sections of the State by the usual machinery of courts and officials; and in the binding together and consolidation of the interests of the various sections by the rapid increase of railway lines.

        It was a charming morning in April that I climbed to the high box-seat by the driver of the San Antonio stage, and sat perched above four sleek and strong horses in front of the Raymond House, at Austin, the Texan capital.

        Heavy heat was coming with the growing day; the hard, white roads glistened under the fervid sun, and the patches of live oak stood out in bold relief against a cloudless sky. The shopkeepers were lolling under their awnings, in

Page 140

lazy enjoyment of the restful morning, and a group of Mexicans, lounging by a wall, cast wild glances at us from beneath their broad sombreros and their tangled and matted black hair. In the distance, Mount Bonnel showed a fragment of its rock-strewn summit, and white stone houses peered from the dark green of the foliage, while the State House, crowning a high knoll, and flanked on either side by the Land Office and the Governor's Mansion, hid from us the view of the rich plain, extending back to the bases of the hills which form an amphitheatre in whose midst Austin is prettily set down.

        

Illustration

Sunning themselves.--"A group of Mexicans, lounging by a wall."

        Nine inside and three outside. "Now, then, driver, are you ready? Here is your way-bill; here are half-a-dozen mail bags; ballast up carefully, or you will have your coach upset!" The driver, a nut-brown man, handsome and alert withal, clad in blue overalls, velvet coat, and black slouch hat, springs lightly into his seat, cracks his long whip-lash, and we plunge away toward the steep banks of the Colorado, bound for an eighty-mile stage ride to the venerable and picturesque city of. San Antonio.

        Rattle! we are at the bank, and must all dismount to walk down the declivity, and cross the almost waterless river channel on a pontoon bridge. We toil painfully across a sandy waste, and then up the bank on the other side, turning to look at the town behind us, while the horses pant below.

        A cavalcade of hunters passes us, mounted on lithe little horses and grave, sure-footed mules, returning toward Austin. The men are brown with the sun, and carry rifles poised across their high-peaked Mexican saddles. Their limbs are cased in undressed skin leggings, and their heads are covered with broad hats, entwined with silver braids. Each man bows courteously, and all canter briskly down to the stream.

        Mounting once more to our perches, beside the driver, artist and writer alike are inspired by the beauty of the long stretch of dark highway, bordered and covered with huge live oaks, or with the wayward mesquite, whose branches are a perpetual danger to the heads of outside passengers.

        The driver nervously inspects us; then lights a cigar, and, in a gentle voice, appeals to his horses with: "Git up, ye saddle critturs!"--evidently a mild

Page 141

reproach. The saddle critturs dash forward at a rapid gait. Each glossy flank is branded with the name by which the animal is known; and whenever a leader lags or a wheel horse shows a disposition to be skittish, the loud voice says, "You Pete!" or "Oh Mary!" and Pete and Mary alike prick up their pretty ears with new energy. The driver's tones never rise beyond entreaty or derision; and the animals seem to feel each stricture upon their conduct keenly.

        So we hasten on, past pretty farm-houses with neat yards, where four-year-old boys are galloping on frisky horses, or driving the cattle or sheep afield; past the suburbs of Austin, and out into the open country, until we have left all houses behind, and only encounter from time to time wagons, drawn by oxen, and loaded with barrels and boxes, with lumber and iron, toiling at the rate of twenty miles a day toward the West. Behind each of the wagons

Illustration

"We encounter wagons drawn by oxen."

marches a tough little horse, neatly saddled; and a forlorn dog with a general air of wolfishness about him, and showing his teeth as we dash past, brings up the rear.

        Presently the driver turns to us with, "I'm a dreadful good hand to talk, if ye've got any cigars." Then, in another breath, "From New York, hey? Ain't ye afraid to come away out here alone?" (Implying a scorn for the outside impression of Texan travel.) A moment after, in a tone of infinite compassion, as if regarding Gotham as a place to be pitied, driver adds:

        "Wal, I s'pose thar are some good souls thar" (confidentially); "I've hauled more 'n two thousand o' them New Yorkers over to San Anton within the last year. Heap o' baggage. We told one young feller on the box here, one day, lots of Injun stories, just as it was gittin dark. Reckon he was n't much afeared. Oh, no!" Suppressed merriment lurking in the handsome brown face. "You Pete! you ain't fit for chasin' Injuns! Git up!"

        San Antonio is 2,270 miles from New York by present lines of rail and stage, and is situated in one of the garden spots of South-western Texas. To the newly-arrived Northerner, Galveston certainly seems the ultima-antipode of Gotham; but once across the Brazos and the Colorado, and well into the fertile plains and among the glorious prairies of Western and South-western Texas, the sense of remoteness, of utter contrast, is a thousand-fold more impressive. To think, while clinging to the swaying stage-seat, that one may journey on in this pleasant way for eight hundred miles still within Texan limits, gives, moreover, a grand idea of the great State's extent.

Page 142

        Whirling thus, hour by hour, away from railroads, from houses, taverns, and bridges, and beaver-hatted and silk-bedizened folk, one cannot resist the growing feeling that he is in a foreign land, and as he sees the wild-eyed children staring at him from the fields, or notes the horseman coursing by, with clang and clatter of spur and arms, he has a vague expectation that if addressed it will be in a foreign tongue.

        A halt:--at a small stone house, through whose open door one sees a curious blending of country-store, farm-house and post-office. Here the mail for the back-country is delivered. "Morning, Judge," from a lean by-stander, meditatively chewing tobacco, to an outside passenger. "Got them radical judges impeached yet? Driver, won't you bring me a copy of the Texas Almanac next time you come out? Reckon I kin use it." A drove of pigs curiously inspect the open entrance to the store, whereupon two dogs charge them, flank the youngest of the swine, and teach them manners at the expense of their ears.

        Lime-flavored water is brought in a tin dipper and passed around; such of the passengers as choose, perfume the vessel with a drop of whiskey. "Wal! sha'n't git ye to San Antonio 'fore this time to-morrow, if ye drink the rivers all dry," is the mild remonstrance. As we move off, the driver vouchsafes:

        "Thar was Mose--Judge, you remember Mose; he wouldn't let no stranger talk to him, he wouldn't. Crossest man on this line; had a right smart o'swear-words: used 'em mostly to hosses, tho'! Had one horse that was ugly, and always tied his tail to the trace. Outsides mostly always asked him: 'What do you tie that horse's tail to the trace for?' You oughter hear Mose answer. Took him half an hour to get the swear-words out. One day, a feller from New York went over with Mose, and didn't say a word about the horse's tail all the way to the relay; when they got to the unhitching place, Mose offered the New Yorker half a dollar--'Stranger,' he says, 'I reckon you've gin me that worth of peace of mind; you are the first man that never asked me nothing about that'ar critter's tail.'"

        A ford, the sinuous road leading to the edge of a rapidly-rushing streamlet, on whose banks, among the white stones, lie the skeletons of cattle perished by the wayside! Buzzards hovering groundward indicate some more recent demise. Ah! a poor dog, whose feet no longer wearily plod after the wagon train. The collar is gone from his neck, some lonely man having taken it as a remembrance of his faithful companion.

        A mocking-bird sings in some hidden nook; a chaparral cock runs tamely before us, fanning the air with his gray plumes, and gazing curiously at the buzzards. An emigrant wagon is lumbering through the shallow, bluish-green water; the children of yonder grim-bearded father are wading behind it: inside, the mother lies ill on a dirty mattress. Two old chairs, with pots and kettles, a Winchester rifle, a sack of flour, and a roll of canvas, are strung at the wagon's back. The horses display their poor old ribs through their hides, and their tongues protrude under the intense heat.

        Our steeds splash through the stream. We come upon a Mexican camp, where a group of lazy peons, who have wandered across from Mexico, braving

Page 143

danger and death daily, have at last found a safe haven. The dingy father sleeps under his little cart. His mules crop the dry grass, tethered near a small, filthy tent, wherein reposes an Indian girl, with a cherub-child's head resting upon her exquisite arm. A gipsy-looking hag is munching dried meat before a little fire where coffee is boiling.

        Now along a rolling prairie, in a route disfigured by what is known as the "hog-wallow;" then, up to a range of hills: and O gioja! the matchless beauty of a wide expanse of vale below filled with masses of dense foliage, and beyond, forest-clad hills peered down upon by a blue, misty range, far away. A comfortable farm-house crowns the hill up which we climb; shepherds are driving flocks of sheep afield; horsemen are mounting and dismounting; bright-eyed maidens flit about the yard, bareheaded and barearmed; half-naked negro

Illustration

"Here and there we pass a hunter's camp."

children tumble about on the turf, and little white boys on ponies play at Comanche. Majestic waves of sunlight flit across the valley; the campagna to which we are now coming swims in the delicious effulgence of the perfect Texas April noon. Here and there we pass a hunter's camp. We spin forward merrily, having had plenty of relays of fresh horses, and put the Blanco river behind us almost without wetting their hoofs, so low is it; though in times of freshet it holds the whole country round in terror for weeks.

        A halt for dinner, which is served in a long, cool kitchen; a swart girl standing at one end and a swart boy at the other. Each agitates a long stick adorned with strips of paper, and thus a breeze is kept up and the flies are driven off. Buttermilk, corn-bread, excellent meat, and the inevitable coffee are the concomitants

Page 144

of the meal. The landlady stares at the paper-currency offered, as only gold and silver are known in this section. The farmer comes in from the field for his dinner, and his pleasant, homely talk recalls one to America. After all, then, this is not a foreign land. "Stage ready; come, now, if ye want to git anywhar to-night!"

        Onward to the San Marcos, another small, but immensely powerful stream, running through rich lands, and passing hard by the prosperous town of San Marcos, the shire of a county whose best products are cotton, corn, and sorghum. The river, which has its source not far from the town, and near the old homestead of Gen. Burleson, the noted Indian fighter, affords water-power which cannot fail to tempt Northern capital some day. Wood and building-stone of the best quality are abundant; San Marcos may yet be a second Lawrence or Manchester. We pass the court-house and the Coronal Institute; pass the long street lined with pretty dwellings, and ride forward all the hot afternoon towards the Guadalupe.

        The fields, in which the corn is already half a foot high, are black; the soil is like fruit-cake. In obscure corners we find little cabins--erected by the Mexicans who abound along the way. Toward sunset we come upon neat stone houses, with quaint German roofs. "Everything Dutch now," ejaculates the driver, and indeed we are about to see what German industry and German thrift have done for Western Texas.

        The stage rumbles on through the "lane" which extends for miles on either side of New Braunfels, bounded by fertile, well-fenced, well-cultivated fields, such as the eye of even a New England farmer never rested upon. It is dark as we rattle past the cottages; the German families, mother, father, and the whole gamut of children, from four to fourteen, are coming in from work.

        The women have been afield ploughing, with the reins round their necks and the plough handles grasped in their strong hands. Yet they are not uncouth or ungracious; their faces are ruddy, their hair, blown backward by the evening breeze, falls gracefully about their strong shoulders. Surely, this is better than the tenement house in the city!

        At last we reach the Comal, and crossing its foamy, greenish-blue waters, rattle on to New Braunfels, the cheery town which the German Immigration Company settled in 1845, and which is now an orderly and wealthy community of 4,000 inhabitants, set down in the midst of a county which has probably 10,000 residents.

        The Germans were the pioneers in this section, endured many hardships, and had many adventures, many battles with the Indians, before they were allowed to push forward from New Braunfels and create other settlements. As we enter the long main street of the town, the lights from the cottage doors gleam forth cheerily. The village maidens are walking two by two with their arms about each others' waists, and crooning little melodies, and the men are smoking long pipes at the gates. Suddenly we dash up to the hotel, and a pleasant-faced old gentleman, in a square silk cap, hastens to welcome us into a bright room, where little groups of Germans sit ranged about clean tables, drinking their foaming

Page 145

beer from shiniest of glasses. Are we then in Germany? Nay; for supper is spread in yonder hall, and the new driver whom we took up at the last relay is calling upon us, in our English tongue, to make haste.

        New Braunfels bears as many evidences of wealth and prosperity as any town in the Middle States. It has always been liberal in sentiment, and for many years boasted of having the only free school in Texas. The shrewd Germans have taken advantage of the admirable water-power of the Comal and Guadalupe, and have established manufactories in the county.

        The Comal, one of the most beautiful streams in Texas, gushes out at the foot of a mountain range not far from New Braunfels, from a vast number of springs; and from its sources to its confluence with the Guadalupe, a distance of three miles, has forty feet of fall, and mill-sites enough for a regiment of capitalists. Indeed it is easy to see that the place will, at some future time, become a great manufacturing centre. White labor is easily obtained, and the community is peaceful and law-abiding.

        A large cotton factory was established on the Comal some years ago, but was destroyed by an exceptionally disastrous tornado in 1869. There are many water-mills in the county, all engaged in the manufacture of flour for export via the port of Indianola, settled by the same immigration company which founded New Braunfels, or via Lavaca. The trees along the river and creek bottoms are almost overborne with the mustang grape; the county abounds in fruit, while cotton, corn, and the other cereals are raised in profusion. Irrigation is not difficult.

        It is quite dark, and a cool night wind is blowing when we mount once more to the coach-top, and settle ourselves for a ride which will last until two in the morning. The driver cracks his long whip, and we plunge into the darkness. The two great lamps of the coach cast a bright light for twenty feet ahead, and we can see little patches of the landscape, beyond which is the infinite darkness relieved only here and there by the yellow of camp-fires, or by the fitful gleams of the fire-flies. At last we strike across the prairie. The mesquite-trees, which we pass every moment, look white and ghostly in the lamplight, and flit by us like a legion of restless spirits. Then, too, as the horses trot steadily forward, there is the illusion that we are approaching a great city, so like are the innumerable fire-flies to the gaslights of a metropolis. Now we are in a stable-yard, in the midst of a clump of mesquite and oak-trees; the tired horses are unhitched, fresh ones replace them, and away we go again over the prairies. Presently the architecture changes; the little houses, dimly seen at the roadside, from time to time, are low, flat-roofed, and built of white stone; there are long stone walls, over which foliage scrambles in most picturesque fashion, while, sprinkled in here and there, are the shabby Mexican cottages, with thatched roofs and mud floors. There is a hint of moonlight as we approach the hills, and we can see the cattle in relief against the sky, hundreds of them lying comfortably asleep, or starting up as they hear the rattle of the coach, and brandishing their horns or flourishing their tails. Faster, faster flit the mesquite ghosts; faster fly away the oaks and the chaparral; and faster the little streams which we speed across. Now we

Page 146

mount upon a high table-land, from which we can see, faintly defined in the distance, a range of hills, and can catch a glimpse of the beautiful valley at their feet. The hours pass rapidly by; the night breeze is inspiring, and the driver is singing little songs; we dash into a white town; pass a huge "corral," inside

Illustration

"We pass groups of stone houses."

which stand blue army wagons drawn up in line; pass groups of stone houses, then into a long street, thickly lined with dwellings, set down in the midst of delicious gardens; scent the perfume drifting from the flower-beds; climb a little hill, whirl into a Spanish-looking square, and descend, cramped in limb and sore in bone, at the portal of the Menger House, in the good old city of San Antonio, the pearl of Texas,

Page 147

XIV.

AMONG THE OLD SPANISH MISSIONS.

        THE great State of Texas is usually spoken of by its inhabitants as divided into eight sections--namely, Northern, Eastern, Middle, Western, Extreme South-western, and North-western Texas, the Mineral Region, and the "Pan Handle." This latter section, which embraces more than 20,000 square miles, is at present inhabited almost entirely by Indians. The mineral region proper, believed to be exceedingly rich in iron and copper ores, comprises 50,000

Illustration

"The vast pile of ruins known as the San José Mission." [Page 154.]

square miles. The vast section between the San Antonio river and the Rio Grande--as well as the stretch of seven hundred miles of territory between San Antonio and El Paso, on the Mexican frontier, is given up to grazing herds of cattle, horses, and sheep, to the hardy stock-raiser, and to the predatory Indian and Mexican. Across the plains runs the famous "old San Antonio road," which, for 150 years, has been the most romantic route upon the western continent. The highway between Texas and Mexico, what expeditions of war, of plunder, of savage revenge, have traversed it! What heroic soldiers of liberty have lost their lives upon it! What mean and brutal massacres have been perpetrated along its dusty stretches! What ghostly processions of friar and arquebusier, of sandaled Mexican soldier and tawny Comanche; of broad-hatted, buckskin-breeched volunteer
Page 148

for Texan liberty; of gaunt emigrant, or fugitive from justice, with pistols at his belt and a Winchester at his saddle; of Confederate gray and Union blue, seem to dance before one's eyes as he rides over it! The romance of the road and of its tributaries is by no means finished; there is every opportunity for the adventurous to throw themselves into the midst of danger even within forty miles of "San Antōn," as the Texans lovingly call the old town; and sometimes in the shape of mounted Indians, the danger comes galloping into the very suburbs of San Antonio itself.

        San Antonio is the only town in the United States which has a thoroughly European aspect, and, in its older quarters, is even more like some remote and obscure town in Spain than like any of the bustling villages of France or Germany, with which the "grand tour" traveler is familiar. Once arrived in it, and safely ensconced among the trees and flowerets on Flores street, or on any of the lovely avenues which lead from it into the delicious surrounding country, --there seems a barrier let down to shut out the outer world; the United States is as a strange land.

        In San Antonio, too, as in Nantucket, you may hear people speak of "going to the States," "the news from the States," etc., with utmost gravity and good faith. The interests of the section are not so identified with those of the country to which it belongs as to lead to the same intense curiosity about American affairs that one finds manifested in Chicago, St. Louis, and even in Galveston. People talk more about the cattle-trade, the Mexican thievery question, the invasion of Mexico by the French, the prospect of the opening up of silver mines, than of the rise and fall of the political mercury; and the general government comes in for consideration and criticism only when the frontier defenses or the Mexican boundaries are discussed. "What general was that down yer with Gin'ral Sherman?" said a man to me at an out-of-the-way town in Western Texas. "Reckon that was one o'your Northern gin'rals." As he had no interest in following Cabinet changes, he had never heard of Secretary Belknap.

        Although everything which is brought to San Antonio from the outer world toils over many miles of stage or wagon transit, the people are well provided with literature; but that does not bring them closer to the United States. Nothing but a railroad ever will; and against the idea of the railroad soon to reach them the majority of the elder population rebels. Steaming and snorting engines to defile the pure air, and disturb the grand serenity of the vast plains! No, indeed; not if the Mexicans could have their way, the older Mexicans, the apparently immortal old men and women who are preserved in Chili pepper, and who, as their American neighbors say, have been taught that they will have but short shrift when the railways do come. "It will bring you all sorts of epidemics, and all kinds of noxious diseases," they have been told by those interested to prevent the road's building. And this the venerable moneyed Mexicans actually consider a valid reason for opposition, since San Antonio now has the reputation of being the healthiest town on the American continent.

        The local proverb says, "If you wish to die here, you must go somewhere else;" and, although the logic is a little mixed, it certainly has a fond de vérité.

Page 149

For many years consumptives have been straying into San Antonio, apparently upon their very last legs, only to find renewed life and vigor in the superb climate of Western Texas; and so certain are consumptives and other invalids to be cured in the city and the surrounding region, that retreats and quiet residences for people to enshrine themselves in during recovery are going up in all quarters. A few of the golden mornings--a few of the restful evenings, when the odorous shadows come so gently that one cannot detect their approach --and one learns the charm of this delightful corner of the world.

        San Antonio is the cradle of Texan liberty. Its streets and the highways leading to it have been drenched with the blood of brave soldiers. Steal out with me into the fields this rosy morning, friends, and here, at the head of the San Antonio river, on this joyous upland, at the foot of the Guadalupe mountains whence flow a thousand sweet springs, and overlooking the old town, hear a bit about its history and the early struggles of the Texans.

        France was a great gainer for a short time by the fortunate accident which in 1684 threw De La Salle's fleet into the bay of San Fernando, on the Gulf of Mexico, during his voyage from La Rochelle to take possession of the mouths of the Mississippi in the name of the king of France. De La Salle virtually opened Texas. After he had discovered his error in reckoning, and that he was on new ground, he established a fort between Velasco and Matagorda; but it was soon after destroyed, and De La Salle's premature death, at the hands of his quarrelsome and cowardly associates, greatly retarded the progress of French discovery. But the expedition, and those which followed it, caused great alarm, and as much indignation as alarm, at the Court of Spain. A century and a-half was yet to elapse ere her feebleness should compel Spain to abandon a conquest whose advantages she had so abused; ere she should see herself driven to give up the immense territory which she had held so long.

        Meanwhile De La Salle's expedition caused new activity in Spain; and in 1691, a governor "of the States of Coahuila and Texas" was appointed, and with a handful of soldiers and friars went out to establish missions and military posts. Colonies were planted on the Red river, on the Neches, and along the banks of the Guadalupe; but in a few years they died out. Presently other efforts were made--the Spaniards meantime keeping up a sharp warfare with the Indians, the mission of San Juan Bautista, on the right bank of the Rio Grande, three miles from the river, being created a presidio or garrison, and the "old San Antonio road" between Texas and Mexico running directly by it.

        Meantime the French were vigorously pushing expeditions forward from the settlements along the Louisiana coast; and so very much in earnest seemed the movements of Crozat, the merchant prince, to whom Louis XIV. had ceded Louisiana, that the Viceroy of Mexico began anew measures for establishing missions and garrisons throughout Texas. And so it happened that in 1715, after a mission had been established among the Adaes Indians, and another, the "Dolores," west of the Sabine river, the fort and mission of San Antonio de Valero was located on the right bank of the San Pedro river, about three-fourths of a mile from the site of the present Catholic Cathedral in San Antonio of to-day.

Page 150

        From this year (1715) may be said to date the decisive occupancy of Texas by Spain, as opposed to France; she drove out the French wherever found, opposed their advances, and finally succeeded in definitely planting fortified missions at the principal important points. San Antonio was then known as a garrison, and was usually spoken of as the Presidio of Bexar. Indeed, to this day the elder Mexicans living in the surrounding country speak of going al presidio (to the garrison) whenever they contemplate a visit to San Antonio. Texas was then known as the "New Phillippines;" and San Antonio, with its five missions, was one of the four garrisons by which it was protected.

        The Marquis of Casa Fuerte had long believed that this post would be a good site for a town, and, having asked the Spanish Government to send emigrants there, "thirteen families and two bachelors" (say the ancient town records) arrived from the Canary Islands, and settled on the east side of the San Antonio river, founding a town which they called San Fernando. To them came sturdy Tlascalans from Mexico, and the colonists built a stout little hamlet around the great square which to-day is known as the "Plaza of the Constitution," or the main square in San Antonio. The town was called San Fernando, in honor of Ferdinand, the then king of Spain. It was rough work to be a colonist in those days, and the Spaniards, friars, soldiers and all, were very glad to get into the great square at night, close the entrance with green hides, set their sentinels on the roofs of the flat houses, and, trembling lest the sound of the war-whoop of the terrible Apaches and Comanches should startle their slumbers, catch a little repose. These Apaches and Comanches overran in those days the country between San Antonio and Santa Fé, and would swoop down upon the infant settlement from their stronghold in the pass of Bandera. They swarmed in the Guadalupe mountains, where even now they come in the full of the moon, searching for horses, as their ancestors did.

        In due time, there was a town on either side of the San Antonio river, each with its mission and attendant garrison. Around the mission of the "Alamo" had clustered a little garrison and village. This mission church, whose history is so romantic, was first founded in 1703, in the Rio Grande valley, by Franciscans from Queretaro, under the invocation of San Francisco de Solano; but, water being scarce, was moved back and forth until 1718, when,


                         "Borne, like Loretto's chapel, thro' the air,"
it migrated to the west bank of the San Pedro river, and remained in that vicinity until, in 1744, it was removed to the high plateau on the east side of the San Antonio, and the foundations of the Church of the Alamo were laid on the very ground where, ninety years after, Travis and his braves fell as only heroes fall.

        The mission was known, until 1783, as San Antonio de Valero, in honor of the Marquis of Valero, the then Viceroy of "New Spain." The town below the river-retained its name of San Antonio de Bexar.

        The missions built up around San Antonio were named respectively La Purissima Concepcion de Acuna, San Juan, Campitran, San Francisco de Assissis, and San José. The Franciscans, completely estranged from all the ordinary cares

Page 151

and passions of the world by the vows of their order, gave themselves heartily to their work, and vigorously employed the soldiers allotted them by the Government in catching Indians, whom they undertook to civilize. The missions were fortified convent-churches, built in massive and enduring form, and surrounded by high walls, so thick and strong that they could resist all Indian attacks. Within these walls the converted Indians and the missionaries and soldiers gathered whenever a sentinel gave the alarm; and the brawny friars joined with the men-at-arms in fiercely defending the stations where the cross had been planted. The Indians who were induced to settle in the vicinity of the Franciscans, and submit to the religious and industrial training which the friars had prepared for them, were rarely guilty of treachery, and submitted to all the whippings which Mother Church thought good for them. Barefooted, and clad in coarse woolen robes, with the penitential scourge about their waists, the priests wandered among the Indians at the missions, learned their language, and enforced chastity, temperance and obedience. Inside the square which the mission buildings formed were the dwellings allotted both the soldiers and the Indians--the savages chafing under this restraint, although they could not doubt the motives of the good fathers in restraining them. But they toiled well in the fields, went meekly to catechism, and were locked up at night, lest they should be led into temptation. Whenever the converts rebelled, there were soldiers enough at hand to subdue them; and the commander of the church garrison was a kind of absolute potentate, who made any and every disposition he pleased of a convert's life and property.

        In 1729, the right reverend fathers forming the college of Santa Cruz of Queretaro, were authorized to found three missions on the river San Marcos; and, in 1730, a superior order from the Marquis of Casa Fuerte authorized the foundation of these missions upon the river San Antonio, under certain conditions as to their distance from the San Antonio garrison. The result was that before 1780, four superb mission edifices had been reared, at short distances from each other, and not far from the beautiful San Antonio river.

        

Illustration

The old Concepcion Mission near San Antonio--Texas.

        On the 5th of March, 1731, the foundations of La Purissima Concepcion de Acuna were laid, and, after many vicissitudes and escapes from imminent destruction, it was completed in 1752. For twenty-one years Indians and friars had toiled upon one of the noblest churches ever erected by Catholics in America. To-day it is a ruin, deserted

Page 152

save by an humble German family, who exhibit the time-honored walls to visitors, and till the lands in the vicinity. The San josé mission, in all respects the finest, was completed in 1771; that of San Juan in 1746; and the "Espada" in 1780.

        As the communities clustered about these missions grew, so grew San Antonio; as they suffered, so it suffered in protecting them. The same Indians who cantered up to the town-gates did not fail to offer some menace to the missions before returning to their mountain fastnesses. In 1758, they went farther, for they assaulted the mission which had been established at San Saba. Pastors and their flocks, as well as the guardian soldiery, were sacrificed. Swarms of the savages surrounded the mission, and the wonderfully rich silver mines which had been developed near it, and not a Spaniard was left alive to bear the news of the dreadful massacre to his trembling comrades at the other missions. Some day the San Saba mines will be re-opened; but their exact location has been long lost to the knowledge of Europeans or Mexicans, and no Indian will point the way to them.

        It was sunset, on a beautiful April evening, when I first climbed to the roof of the Concepcion mission. As the day had been heated and dusty in town, I was glad, toward evening, to steal away down the lovely road; past the dense groves and perfumed thickets, along the route which wound among trees and flowers, and fertile fields watered by long canals; past quiet cool yards, in whose shaded seclusion I could catch glimpses of charming cottages and farm-houses, where rosy Germans or lean Americans sat literally under their own "vine and fig-tree."

        The carriage rolled suddenly through a ford in the deep, swift stream, came out upon a stretch of open field, and at a distance I saw, peering above some graceful trees, the twin towers of Concepcion--saw them with a thrill of joy at their beauty and grandeur, just as hundreds of weary travelers across the great plains had doubtless seen them a century ago. In those days they were a welcome sight, for they guaranteed comparative security in a land where nothing was absolutely certain, save death. Approaching, I could see that the towers arose from a massive church of grayish stone, once highly ornate and rich in sculpture and carving, but now much dilapidated. The portal was decayed; the carvings and decorations were obscure; a Spanish inscription told of the founding of the mission. A group of awe-struck girls lingered about the door-way as an old man rehearsed some legend of the place.

        The edifice bore here and there hints of the Moorish spirit, the tendency to the arch and vault which one sees so much in Spanish architecture. The great dome, sprung lightly over the main hall of the church, was a marvel of precision and beauty. In front, jutting out at the right hand, a long wall now fallen into decay showed the nature of the mission's original defenses. This wall was of enormous thickness, and the half-ruined dwellings in its sides are still visible.

        As I wandered about the venerable structure, the gray walls were bathed in the golden light of the fervid Southern sunset; numberless doves hovered in and out of the grand towers; lizards crawled at the walls' base; countless thousands

Page 153

of grasshoppers flashing in the air, nestled on the mission's sides; the stone cross between the twin towers stood up black against the sky. Curious parapets along the roof, contrived at once for ornament and shelter, showed loop-holes for muskets. There were mysterious entrances in the rear, and the stone threw a dark shadow upon the short, sparse, sun-dried grass. I tried to call up the mission fort as it was a century ago, surrounded with smiling fields, cultivated by patient Indians; with soldiers at their posts, diligently guarding the approaches; with the old friars in their coarse robes, building and teaching, and praying and scourging themselves and the Indians. I pictured to myself a cavalcade arriving at sunset from a weary journey; men-at-arms, and gayly-costumed cavaliers entering the gateway; the clatter of swords and the click of musket-locks; the echoes of the evening hymn from the resounding vault of the cathedral;--but the Present, in the shape of a rail-fence and four excitable dogs anxiously peering at me from behind it, would obtrude itself, so I gave meditation the good-by, and asked of the family the way to the roof.

        The barefooted German maiden, naïve and bashful, seemed strangely out of place in the shadows of the mission. I wandered through the kitchen, an old nook in the wall, and venturing behind the heels of half a dozen mules stabled in a niche of the sanctuary, mounted a crazy ladder leading to the belfry window.

        Getting in at the huge opening, I startled the doves, who flew angrily away, and then clinging to the wall on one side, I climbed still another flight of stone steps, and emerged on the roof. A giant piece of masonry, my masters of today! You can certainly do but little better than did the poor friars and Indians a century ago. Being built of the soft stone of the country, the ruin has crumbled in many places; but it looks as if it might still last for a century. For miles around, the country is naked, save for its straggling growth of mesquite, of cactus, of chaparral; the forest has never reasserted itself since the fathers cultivated the fields; and one can very readily trace the ancient limits.

        The grant of the mission of Concepcion was about the first by the Spanish Government in Texas of which there is any record. In March of 1731 the captain commanding at San Antonio went to the newly allotted mission grounds, kindly greeted the Indians who had decided to settle there, and caused the chief of the tribe to go about over the ceded lands, to pull up weeds, turn over stones, and go through all the traditional ceremonials of possession. The same formalities were observed in founding all the missions near San Antonio; the transfer of the lands being made to the Indians, because the Franciscans, on account of their vows, could hold no worldly estate.

        We Americans of the present should lean rather kindly toward these old Franciscans, for they were largely instrumental in the work of freeing Texas from the yoke of Spanish and Mexican tyranny. As priests, they were too human and sympathetic to enjoy or sympathize with the brutal policy of Spain; and as sensible men, they had Democratic leanings, doubtless enhanced by the Spartan plainness in which they lived.

        The various internal troubles undergone by Spain early in this century had only served to make her more arrogant toward her colonies, and a large party in

Page 154

them was anxious to revolt. At this time there were few Americans in the territory. Now and then the agents of Wilkinson and Burr ran through it, endeavoring to perfect designs for their new South-western Empire; but, besides these ambitious schemers, only desperadoes from the United States entered Texas.

        In 1813, however, Augustus W. Magee, a lieutenant in the American army, undertook, in conjunction with a Mexican revolutionist, to conquer Texas to the Rio Grande, with a view to annexing it to America or Mexico, as circumstances should dictate. He resigned his commission and plunged headlong into the invasion, bringing to it many men and much courage, and fighting a good fight at Nacogdoches; but, finally contemplating a retreat, and unable to carry his men with him in his plans, he is generally believed to have ended his life by his own hands.

        A short time thereafter, the invading Americans and the revolting Mexicans arrived before San Antonio, and attacked the city at once. General Salcedo, the Spaniard commanding, valiantly defended it; but the Americans and Mexicans won, and as the Indians from the missions had joined in, but few prisoners were taken, more than 1,000 Spaniards being killed and wounded. Salcedo and a number of noted Spanish officials were brutally murdered.

        A few days later, the Americans and Mexicans were attacked by other Spanish forces, whom they repulsed with great slaughter. But a third Spanish force was sent to San Antonio, and 4,000 men gave battle to 850 Americans and twice as many Mexicans, composing the "Republican Army of the North," near the Medina river. The Spaniards were victorious, and all of the Americans but ninety-three were massacred. A large number of the Americans were shot on the San Antonio road, their cruel captors seating them by tens on timbers placed over newly-dug graves, and thus despatching them. This terrible massacre was known as the "battle of the Medina." Then the brave old town of San Antonio suffered the vengeance of the Spanish authorities. Seven hundred of its best citizens were imprisoned, and 500 of the wives and daughters of the patriots were thrown into filthy dungeons.

        From that time forth the history of San Antonio was one of blood and battle, of siege and slaughter. The Americans, who, in a reckless manner, had given their blood for Texan freedom, were henceforth to act from the simpler motive of self-defense.

        The vast pile of ruins known as the San José Mission stands in the midst of the plain about four miles westward from San Antonio. Mute, mighty and passing beautiful, it is rapidly decaying.

        The Catholic church in Texas, to whom the missions and the mission lands now belong, is too poor to attempt the restoration of this superb edifice which one of the most famous of Parisian architects, in a recent tour through this country, pronounced the finest piece of architecture in the United States. San José has more claims to consideration than have the other missions, as the king of Spain sent an architect of rare ability to superintend its erection. This architect, Huizar, finally settled in Texas, where his descendants still live.

Page 155

        It is impossible to paint in words the grand effect of this imposing yellowish-gray structure, with its belfry, its long ranges of walls with vaulted archways, its rich and quaintly carved windows, its winding stairways, its shaded aisles, rearing itself from the parched lands. As our party entered the rear archways an old, sun-dried Mexican approached, and in a weak voice invited us to enter the church.

        

Illustration

An old Window in the San José Mission.

        The old man and his bronzed wife had placed their household goods in the interior of the edifice; and in the outer porch dried beef was hung over the images of the saints. An umbrella and candlestick graced the christening font. Lighting a corn-shuck cigarette, the old man lay down on one of the beds with a moan, for he was a confirmed invalid. We climbed to the tower, but speedily came down again, as the great dome fell in last year, and the roof is no longer considered safe.

        Returning to the shade, the Mexican woman, clad in a single coarse garment, her hair falling not ungracefully about a face which, although she must have been fifty, seemed still young, served us with water in a gourd, and then seated herself on the ground with the hens affectionately picking about her. Was she born at the mission? we asked. No, señor; but in San Fernando. And where had she spent her youth? In Piedras Negras, señor. And did she not fear the roof of the old mission might some day fall and crush her? Who knows, señor, she answered, ambiguously; giving that vague shake of the head by which both Spaniards and Mexicans so accurately express profound unconcern. In the shade of some of the great walls were little stone cabins, in which lived other Mexican families. Bronzed children were running about in the sun, and bronzed fathers were working lazily in the field. In the distance, in any direction--chaparral,--mesquite,--cactus,--short, burned grass, and the same prospect all the way to the Rio Grande.

        

Illustration

"An umbrella and candlestick graced the christening font."

        A sun-swept, sun-burnished land; a land of mirages, and long, wearying distances without water; a land of mysterious clumps of foliage, inviting to ambush; where soldiers are always chasing marauding savages whom they rarely catch, and where the Mexican and the Indian together hunt the cattle of the "Gringo;" where little towns cluster trustingly around rough fortresses; where the lonely "ranch" is defended by the brave settler with his "Winchester;"

Page 156

where millions of cattle and thousands of horses and sheep roam fancy free from year to year, their owners only now and then riding in among them to secure the increase;--that is the beyond.

        The San Juan mission, a little beyond the San Antonio river, some three or four miles farther down, like the Espada, which stands upon the bend in the river still below, is but a ruin. In its day it was very large, and many families lived within its bounds. Now there is little to be seen, except a small chapel and the ruins of the huge walls. A few families live among the débris, and there is even a "San Juan Mission Store."

        The scene about the humble abodes of the Mexicans, residing in or near these missions, is very uniform. There is a rude water-cart near the door; a few pigs run about the premises, and a hairless Mexican dog watches them; two or three men, squatted on their haunches, sit blinking in the sun. No one ever seems to do any work; though the Mexicans about San Antonio have a good reputation as laborers.

        

Illustration

"The comfortable country-house so long occupied by Victor Considerant."

        It was at the Concepcion mission that the patriot army of Texas assembled in 1835, after the capture of Goliad; and it was along the river bottom and in the timber by the river, that a battle was fought in which the Mexicans received severe treatment.

        On the river road from San Antonio to Concepcion stands the comfortable country-house so long occupied by Victor Considerant, the French free-thinker and socialist. Considerant, after his ineffectual attempt to found a community of the Fourier type in Texas, lived tranquilly with his family near the old mission for many years, going to San Antonio now and then for society, and occupying his leisure with literary work. A strange man, strongly fixed in his beliefs and prejudices, he was not thoroughly understood, though universally respected by the Texans who met him.

Page 157

XV.

THE PEARL OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

        SAN Antonio is watered by two beautiful streams, the San Antonio and the San Pedro, the former running directly through the town's centre. Its bluish current flows in a narrow but

Illustration

The San Antonio River--"Its bluish current flows in a narrow but picturesque channel."

picturesque channel between bold and rugged banks in some places, and sloping borders in others, and is everywhere overhung with delicate groupings of foliage. It passes under bridges, by arbors and bath-houses; by flights of stone steps leading up into cool, cozy houses, as the stairways lead from Venetian canals; past little lawns, where the San Antonian loafs at his ease at midday; and on through sweet fields, full of a wealth of blossoms. Nowhere, however, is it so supremely beautiful as at its source, on the high plateau at the foot of the Guadalupe range, where it breaks out from a fine spring, and shapes itself at once into a beautiful stream. Around the natural park of several hundred acres which lies along the base of the mountains, Mr. Brackenridge, the banker, who purchased the estate, has thrown a protecting wall enclosing a park which an

Illustration

The Source of the San Antonio River.

English duke might covet. The stream is a delicious poem written in water on the loveliest of riverbeds, from which mosses, ferns, dreamiest green and faintest crimson, rich opalescent and strong golden hues, peep out. Every few rods there is a waterscape in miniature--an apotheosis of color. Noble pecans, grand oaks, lofty ashes, shade the stream, which flows down toward a quarry a little above the town, where it again forms a picture such as only
Page 158

the Marne at St. Maur, or the Seine at Marly can rival. To the people of San Antonio it is a perpetual delight, a constant treasure, of which they speak almost reverently. The San Pedro is commonly known as a creek, but has many a beautiful nook along its banks; and in one of them, called "San Pedro Springs,"

Illustration

San Pedro Springs--"The Germans have established their beer gardens."

the Germans have established their beer gardens. There, in the long Sunday afternoons, hundreds of families are gathered, drinking beer, listening to music and singing, playing with the fawns, or gazing into the beer garden and the den of the Mexican panther. There, too, the Turnverein takes its exercise; and in a long hall, dozens of children waltz, under the direction of a gray-haired old professor, while two spectacled masters of the violin make music. This is the Sunday rendezvous of great numbers of the citizens of San Antonio, Germans and Americans, and is as merry, as free from vulgarity or quarreling, as any beer garden in Dresden. The German element has been of incalculable value to Western Texas, and especially to San Antonio. It has aided much in building

Illustration

"Every few rods there is a waterscape in miniature." [Page 157.]

Page 159

up the material interests of the whole section; has very largely increased the trade of the city; has brought with it conservatism and good sense in manners, so that even a frontier town, eighty miles from any railroad, and not more than

Illustration

"The river passes under bridges, by arbors and bath-houses." [Page 157.]

thirty miles from Indians, has all the grace and decorum of older societies. The German was a good element, too, when the trying issues of the last war came; and was unwavering in its loyalty. The Germans suffered much, and many were driven out, losing property and money; hundreds were slaughtered in trying to escape to Mexico, or into the North-west; there were shameful massacres; but they were not to be frightened, and they held to their opinions, although often obliged to conceal them.

        Texas is a changed place indeed to the people who were afraid to express their views before the war. As a gentleman in San Antonio said to me, "It was like living in an asylum where every one was crazy on one especial subject; you never knew when dangerous paroxysms were about to begin." The Texas of twelve years ago, when it was dangerous for a man to

Illustration

The Ursuline Convent--San Antonio. [Page 161.]

be seen reading the New York Tribune, and critically perilous for him to be civil to a slave, has passed away, and the Texans themselves are glad that they have awakened from their dream of patriarchal aristocracy, which placed such a check upon the development of the State. The Germans have settled several thriving
Page 160

places west of San Antonio, the most noted of which is Fredericksburg. German and Jewish names are over the doors of certainly more than half the business houses in San Antonio; and German or Hebrew talent conducts many vast establishments which have trade with the surrounding country, or with Mexico.

        San Antonio has so long been a depot for military supplies for all the forts on the south-western frontier, and for the Mexican States this side of the Sierra Madre, that some of the merchants are not in favor of the advent of railroads, fearing that with them trade will move beyond the venerable city, and forgetting that even in that event there will be ample compensating advantages. The sooner Western Texas has railroads, the sooner will the Indian and Mexican difficulties be settled; the sooner will all the available rich lands be taken up.

Illustration

St. Mary's Church--San Antonio. [Page 161.]

Even now the business done by means of the slow wagon trains, which can at best only make twenty miles per day, is enormous, amounting to many millions yearly. What will it be when railroads penetrate to the now untamed frontiers? Many of the appliances of civilization are fast reaching Western Texas for the first time. San Antonio now has four prosperous banks,--she had none before the was,--gas-lights, two daily papers, and a weekly for the Germans; how can she avoid railroads?

        Three lines are at present pointed directly at the antique city; the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio railroad, nearly completed; the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific railroad, which at present extends from Indianola to Victoria, and has been graded to Cuero, thirty miles beyond Victoria; and the International railroad, which contemplates touching both Austin and San Antonio, thus opening a through line to Longview, in Northern Texas, and south-westward to Mazatlan on the Pacific, with a branch to the city of Mexico. There is not much probability that the last line will be finished to San Antonio, at least for many years.

        The plazas, or public squares of San Antonio, merit special attention. The four principal ones are the Alamo, the Constitution, the Military, and Travis. The latter is a handsome grass-grown, common surrounded by pretty residences, some of them fronting upon charming lawns and gardens; a stone church is to

Page 161

be erected there by the Episcopalians. The Ursuline Convent and St. Mary's Church are among the noticeable Catholic edifices of the town.

        The old church of San Fernando is now removed from the "Plaza of the Constitution," or rather is enshrined within a new and imposing edifice, built of

Illustration

A Mexican Hovel. Page 162]

the white stone of the section. The Constitution plaza is the original garrison square of San Fernando, and streets lead out from it into the open country, the Military plaza, and the main part of the town. The Military plaza is surrounded by storehouses and shops, and is always filled with wagon teams and their picturesque and ragged drivers. From thence it is only a few steps to one of the Mexican quarters of the town, sometimes called "Laredito." There the life of the eighteenth century still prevails, without taint of modernism. Wandering along the unpaved street in the evening, one finds the doors of all the Mexican cottages open, and has only to enter and demand supper to be instantly served; for the Mexican has learned to turn American curiosity about his cookery to account. Entering

Illustration

The Military Plaza--San Antonio.

Page 162

one of these hovels, you will find a long, rough table with wooden benches about it; a single candlestick dimly sending its light into the dark recesses of the unceiled roof; a hard earth-floor, in which the fowls are busily bestowing themselves for sleep; a few dishes arranged on the table, and glasses and coffee-cups beside them. The fat, tawny Mexican materfamilias will place before you various savory compounds, swimming in fiery pepper, which biteth like a serpent; and the tortilla, a smoking hot cake, thin as a shaving, and about as eatable, is the substitute for bread. This meal, with bitterest of coffee to wash it down, and dulcet Spanish talked by your neighbors at table for dessert, will be an event in your gastronomic experience. You will see many Americans scattered along at the tables in the little houses in Laredito; even where I went there was a large party of the curious, ciceroned by one of the oldest and most respected of San Antonio's citizens, "Don Juan" Twohig, the wealthy

Illustration

"The Mexicans slowly saw and carve the great stones."

Irish banker, who was sixty-five years old that very day, but rolled tortillas as heartily as when a sturdy youth, and was as gay as when, a gallant revolutionist, he beguiled the hours of captivity in the Castle of Perote, where the cruel Mexicans had sent him.

        The residences on Flores street are all completely embowered in shrubbery, and many of them are intrinsically fine. There are few wooden structures in the city. The solid architecture of previous centuries prevails. Putting up a house is a work of time; the Mexicans slowly saw and carve the great stones; but the work is solid when completed, and fire-proof. Most of the houses and blocks in Commerce and other principal streets are two stories high--sometimes three--and there are some fine shops--one or two of them being veritable museums of traffic.

        It is from these shops that the assortments are made up which toil across the plains to the garrisons and to Mexico; and a wagon-train, loaded with a "varied

Page 163

assortment," contains almost everything known in trade. Through the narrow streets every day clatter the mule-teams, their tattered and dirty-clothed negro drivers shouting frantically at them as they drag civilized appliances toward Mexico. These wagoners lead a wild life of almost constant danger and adventure, but they are fascinated with it, and can rarely be induced to give it up.

        The Mexicans monopolize a corner of the town, which has won the sobriquet of "Chihuahua." It is a picturesque collection of hovels, built of logs, stones,

Illustration

"The elder women wash clothes by the brookside."

and dried mud, and thatched with brush or straw. Little gardens are laid out in front of the houses, some of which are no larger than a sentry-box, and naked children play in the primitive streets. Young girls, bold-eyed and beautiful, gayly dressed, and with shawls thrown lightly over their superb heads, saunter idly about, gossiping, or staring saucily at strangers; the elder women wash clothes by the brookside. The men seem to be perpetually waiting for some one to come and feed them. They wander about in the most purposeless fashion, and one is tempted to think them on the look-out for a chance to rob or murder; yet they are, on the contrary, quite inoffensive. "Chihuahua" and "Laredito" are nooks that one would never suspect could exist on American soil. But the Mexican is hard-headed, and terribly prejudiced; he cannot be made to see that his slow, primitive ways, his filth and lack of comfort, are not better than the frugal decency and careful home management of the Germans and Americans who surround him.

        The Alamo is the shrine to which every pilgrim to this strange corner of America must do utmost reverence. It is venerable as mission church and fortress, and was so baptized in blood that it is world-famous. The terse inscription on the Alamo monument, in the porch of the capitol at Austin, "Thermopylæ had her messenger of death; the Alamo had none!" indicates the reverence in which the ruins are held by Texans. There is now but little left of the original edifice. The portion still standing is used as a Government storehouse; and the place where Travis and his immortals fell, which should be the site of a fine monument, is a station for the mule and ox-teams waiting to receive stores.

Page 164

        It was a noteworthy struggle which led to the massacre at the Alamo, and thence to Texan independence. Moses and Stephen F. Austin, father and son, struggled through a dreary period of colonization from 1821 until 1836. The father died before he had succeeded in availing himself, to any extent, of the hesitating permission he had received from the Spaniards to introduce Americans into Texas; but his son took that permission as his patrimony, and went at the work with a will.

        Stephen Austin was obliged to brave a thousand dangers in founding his first colony on the banks of the Brazos; but the colony grew, and acquired a steadiness and prosperity, even while the adjacent Mexican States were undergoing twenty revolutions. The time, however, came, and speedily, when the Government of Mexico perceived that the two races were radically antagonistic, and that American activity would soon conquer the whole territory, unless force were opposed to it. So, with the usual blindness of despotism, Guerrero, the weak and despicable tyrant, began hostilities against the Americans, and detachments of soldiers crept in upon the colonists, occupying various posts, under one pretext or another, until the colonists saw through the ruse, and openly defied the crafty invaders.

        Guerrero continued provocative measures; freeing slaves throughout Mexico, and thus violating a treaty made with the American colonists; and at last the Mexican Congress forbade any more Americans to enter Texas.

        Then came the thunder-storm! The colonists sent commissioners to complain to the Mexican Government of their ill-treatment. These commissioners were imprisoned and abused, and the colonists flew to arms--took the citadel of Anahuac--took other fortresses and held them--released their commissioners--repudiated Mexico--met in convention at San Felipe, in 1832, and drew up a constitution under which they desired to live. Stephen Austin agreed to present

Illustration

Mexican types in San Antonio.

Page 165

it to the parent government in the city of Mexico, but when he reached that place he was thrown into prison. This and other odious tyrannies of Santa Anna, the new ruler and liberator of Mexico, opened the way to the Alamo, to San Jacinto, and to independence. It was a bloody path, but bravely trod! There were giants in those days, men who gave their lives cheerfully, men who held death in contempt. Such men were Austin, Houston, Travis, Fannin, and Milam.

        

Illustration

"The remnant of the old fort of the Alamo."

        The final struggle between Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico, and the Texan-American army began in 1834. It was a clever pretext which brought about the real war. The Mexican governor of Coahuila, the province allied to Texas, had, in order to meet his expenses, proposed the sale of lands in Texas.

        Numerous speculators presented themselves; but they were all Americans, and when this became known, the Mexican Government refused to ratify the governor's action. The governor insisted; troops were sent into Coahuila to expel the rebel Legislature which had voted the land measure, and the Texan-Americans found themselves, as well as their neighbors, in danger of invasion. They could wait no longer; they raised the standard of revolt on the plains of San Jacinto, August 16, 1835; and as soon as the news of the rebellion came to Mexican ears, General Cos, by Santa Anna's orders, sat down before San Antonio, the rebellious capital, to starve it into submission. There was fighting everywhere--at Goliad, at Gonzales, in all the towns, and around them.

        General Cos took San Antonio; was besieged in it; had to give it up to brave Ben Milam and the "three hundred men who were ready to die;" and, a little time after, the people of Texas, assembled in convention at Washington, on the Brazos river, enthusiastically voted the declaration of the absolute independence of Texas. So Santa Anna, with three army corps, began the third siege of San Antonio.

        As you see the remnant of the old fort of the Alamo now, its battered walls looming up without picturesque effect against the brilliant sky, and the clouds of dust which the muleteers and their teams stir up, half hiding it--perhaps it does not seem to you like a grand historic memorial. Indeed it is not so grand as in its old days, when, as a church, standing proudly under the shade of the noble cottonwood trees, it was the cynosure of every eye. It has fallen much into decay, and the Government, which would use Washington's tomb for a storehouse,

Page 166

rather than build a proper one, if Mount Vernon were a military depot, has cumbered it with boxes and barrels.

        But you must picture the old fort as it was on Sunday, the 6th of March, 1836, when Texas was a young and war-ridden republic. Santa Anna, with an overwhelming force of infantry, had hemmed in and forced to retreat into the fort a little band of one hundred and forty or fifty men, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Travis. In those days the fort extended over two or three acres.

        A thousand men would hardly have been sufficient to man the defenses. It was a capacious structure, with chapel, long stone barracks, barrier walls, and intrenchments, fortified with cannon. The barracks were loop-holed, and the doors were barricaded with semicircular parapets, made of double curtains of hides filled with earth. The walls were so tremendously thick and strong that batteries playing upon them night and day produced but little effect.

        It was a troublous time for the new republic; the United States had given sympathy, but no aid; the Mexican troops were ten times as numerous as were the patriot armies; terrible struggles against the enemy had been made at Goliad, and at other places, but in vain; all hope of succor was cut off from the soldiers in the Alamo, although Houston's little army was doing its best to rally. Fannin was desperately awaiting the attack upon Goliad. The Alamo and its defenders were left alone, to the mercy of the "Napoleon of the West."

        But Lieutenant-Colonel Travis and the little garrison had made up their minds. There was but one idea of duty in the souls of these men. Bowie and Crockett and Bonham, and those noble volunteers who had succeeded in making their way into the fort from the town of Gonzales--one hundred and eighty-eight souls in all, say some chroniclers;--resolved to defend the Alamo to the uttermost. Like Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylæ, they pledged themselves to victory or death. Then and there did they consecrate Texas to liberty. The Alamo was stormed by thousands of ferocious Spaniards and Mexicans. The Texans fought like demons, killing hundreds of their assailants, but were finally overpowered, and were all put to death. Two women, their two children, and a negro boy, were the only survivors of this dreadful massacre; and but one, a Mexican woman, is alive to-day. The "Napoleon of the West" gave his name to infamy, and sealed the doom of his own cause by this infamous massacre and the still bloodier one which followed it at Goliad. The heroism of the Alamo was the inspiration of the men who fell upon Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto, destroyed it, and made Texas free. Not even the bones of Travis and his men were preserved. The mutilated bodies were burned a few hours after they fell; and the fierce north winds which now and then sweep over San Antonio, have long ago scattered the ashes which the Texans a year after the massacre had gathered up and reverently buried.

Page 167

XVI.

THE PLAINS--THE CATTLE TRADE.

        THERE are many almost distinctively Mexican types to be seen in the San Antonio streets. Prominent among them are the horsemen from the plains, with their blankets well girt about them, and their swarthy features shaded by broadest of sombreros. Youths mounted on overloaded little mules shout lustily in Spanish. The drivers of the ox-teams swear and swear again as they crack their long whips, and groups of rough, semi-Indian looking men sun themselves at unprotected corners. The candy and fruit merchants lazily wave their fly-brushes, and sit staring open-eyed all day, although the intense sunlight reflected from the hard, white roads is painfully annoying to the stranger. The old beggars, half-blind and wholly ragged, huddle together, howling for alms, and invoking ten thousand saints, or, muttering to themselves, stray aimlessly up and down the avenues.

        A residence of a few weeks in San Antonio affords one a good look into the cattle trade of Western Texas, one of the most remarkable industries of the southwest. One might with justice call it an indolent industry--for it accomplishes

Illustration

"The horsemen from the plains."

Page 168

great results in a lazy, disorderly way, and makes men millionaires before they have had time to arouse themselves for real work.

        Cattle-trading is a grand pastime with hundreds of Texans. They like the grandiloquent sound of a "purchase of 60,000 head." There is something at

Illustration

"The candy and fruit merchants lazily wave their fly-brushes." [Page 167.]

once princely and patriarchal about it. They enjoy the adventurous life on the great grazing plains, the freedom of the ranch, the possibility of an Indian incursion, the swift coursing on horseback over the great stretches, the romance of the road. Nearly all the immense region from the Colorado to the Rio Grande is given up to stockraising. The mesquite grass carpets the plains from end to end, and the horses, cattle and sheep luxuriate in it; while the giant pecan throws down stores of oily nuts every year for the wandering hogs to revel over.

        The mountainous regions around San Antonio offer superb facilities for sheep husbandry; and the valleys along the streams are fertile enough for the most exacting farmer. There are millions of cattle now scattered over the plains between San Antonio and the Rio Grande, and the number is steadily increasing. It is not uncommon for a single individual to own 200,000 head.

        

Illustration

A Mexican Beggar.

        The cattle owners of Western Texas have been much before the public for the last few years, on account of their numerous complaints of thievery on the frontier. While I was in San Antonio a Government commission arrived from a long and tedious journey through the Rio Grande valley and the country between San Antonio and the Mexican boundary, where they had been taking testimony with regard to the Mexican outrages.

        Opinion seems somewhat divided as to the extent and nature of the damage done the cattle-raising interest by the Mexicans, some Texans even asserting that the Texan claims are grossly exaggerated, and that there has been much stealing on both sides of the Rio Grande. But the commission itself has taken testimony with great care, and, whatever may be the exact nature of the claims against Mexico, they are enough to justify a prompt aggressive policy in case the hybrid neighbor republic does not see fit to take notice of the demands of her more powerful sister. The troubles on the Mexican-Texan frontier have resulted largely from

Page 169

an attack made on the Kickapoo Indians. It appears that these Indians, during our late civil war, left their reservation with the intention of going to Mexico, and while passing through Texas in May of 1864, were mistaken for a hostile force by a Confederate corps of observation, and were attacked. When the mistake was corrected, the Indians were allowed to proceed on their way; but they found the attack a pretext for an offensive policy, and soon after reaching Mexico began a series of distressing frontier depredations. There were only nine hundred and thirty-five of these Kickapoo Indians, originally; and it is now supposed that at least half of them are dead; but those who remain are terrible fellows. The Kickapoo is a kind of perverted Indian; he is unlike the original tribes of Texas, who, like their neighbors in Mexico, were mild-mannered until aroused by ideas of wrong. He was born with the genius of murder and rapine firmly implanted in his breast, and being somewhat civilized, of course he is much worse than if he were a pure savage. He had not been long in Mexico before he began to dominate the native Mexican Indians; and the Comanches joining with them, they soon had things their own way in their new home.

        These Bedouins of the West have been a terror to the stock-farmer since 1864. They have acted like fiends; seeming to be far more malignant and savage than their ancestors. Indeed, as the Indian race decreases in Texas, from disease, internal dissensions, and intangible causes, the "type of the decadence" is the most repulsive which the blood has ever produced. It is as if the savage spirit made its last protest against annihilation tenfold more bitter and deadly than its first.

        The Kickapoos, in conjunction with Comanches, Apaches, and Mexicans, have carried off immense herds, and committed numberless murders. They have been almost ubiquitous, overrunning that vast section between the Rio Grande and San Antonio rivers, and the road between the towns of San Antonio and Eagle Pass,--a region embracing 30,000 square miles. They were wont to dash into the ranches and stampede all the stock they could frighten, driving it before them to the Rio Grande, and, although well armed pursuers might be close behind them as they crossed the fords, they would usually escape with their prey, knowing that in Mexico reclamation would be an impossibility.

        They came, and still come from time to time, within a few miles of San Antonio, to gather up horses; and if they cannot succeed in escaping with the horses they invariably kill them. At the full of the moon the Indians will usually enter the vicinity of the ranches, on foot, carrying their lassos. They hide carefully until they have discovered where the stock is, and then the gathering up is a speedy matter. An attempt at pursuit is folly, as the pursuer can only travel in the day-time, when he can see the trail, and the only hope of peace seems to be the extermination of the Indians.*

        * I believe the Kickapoos in question have been removed from Mexico to some reservation, but there are still Indians enough left in Texas to keep stock-stealing up to its old standard.


 The citizens gather at San Antonio, and discuss measures of vengeance; but it is useless.

        The Rio Grande valley has always been the paradise of stock-farming. Before the Spaniards had left the Texan country, the whole section between the

Page 170

Rio Grande and the Nueces was covered with stock. The Indians were in those days employed in herding cattle; imagine one of them engaged in such a gentle, pastoral occupation to-day! As soon as the influence of the missionaries began to wane, the Indians ceased herding, and returned to their old habits of murder and rapine.

        The United States Commissioners to Texas are of opinion that not only have the Indians been aided and abetted by Mexicans in their stealing from the rancheros of Western Texas, but that Mexicans themselves are directly engaged in the stealing. So great has been the loss from these causes since the war, that the number of cattle now grazing west of San Antonio is between two-thirds and three-fourths less than in 1866.

        But the stock-raisers, despite the many dangers and vexations which beset them, are a healthy, happy set. Their manners have a tinge of Spanish gravity and courtesy; they are sun-browned, stalwart men, unused to the atmosphere of cities, and in love with the freedom of the plains.

        

Illustration

"The citizens gather at San Antonio, and discuss measures of vengeance." [Page 169.]

        Their herds of thousands range at will over the unfenced lands, and only once yearly do the stout rancheros drive them up to be examined, branded, and separated. Ownership is determined by peculiar brands and ear-marks, records of which are kept in the offices of the county clerks, and published in the newspapers. There is a stock-raisers' association which has decided on rules for mutual protection and aid.

        In 1872 there were 450,000 cattle driven overland from Western Texas to Kansas, through the Indian Territory, by Bluff Creek and Caldwell, up the famous "Chisholm trail." In 1871 as many as 700,000 were driven across. The general value of "Kansas beeves" is $12 to $13 gold; but after deducting all expenses, the average profit on the "drive" is not much more than a fair rate of interest on the money invested. The cattle interest is rather heavily taxed for transportation, and suffers in consequence.

Page 171

        But few cattle are transported by sea, the outlet for the trade by way of Indianola having never been very successful. The Morgan steamships carry perhaps 40,000 beeves yearly that way. The two great shipping points in 1872-73 were Wichita, on a branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé railroad, at the junction of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers, and Ellsworth, on the Kansas Pacific railroad. The whole country, at the time of transit, is covered with vast herds, which begin to arrive in Kansas early in May and await buyers there. A stampede is something which baffles description; you must witness it. It is a tempest of horns and tails, a thunder of hoofs, a lightning of wild eyes; I can describe it no better.

        Merely to see a man on foot is sometimes sufficient to set Texan cattle into a frenzy of fear, and a speedy stampede; for the great majority of them have never been approached save by men on horseback. The gathering up of stock is no light task, as a herd of 75,000 cattle will range over an area fifty miles wide by 100 miles long. Large stock-raisers are always increasing their stock by buying herds adjacent to their ranges. Many persons make fortunes by simply gathering up and branding the cattle which the rightful owners have neglected to brand; cattle found unbranded, and a year old, being known as "Mavericks."

        

Illustration

A Texan Cattle-Drover.

        The origin of this name is very funny. Colonel Maverick, an old and wealthy citizen of San Antonio, once placed a small herd of cattle on an island in Matagorda Bay, and having too many other things to think of, soon forgot all about them. After a lapse of several years, some fishermen sent the Colonel word that his cattle had increased alarmingly, and that there was not grass enough on the island to maintain them. So he sent men to bring them off. There is probably nothing more sublimely awful in the whole history of cattle-raising than the story of those beasts, from the time they were driven from the island until they had scattered to the four corners of Western Texas. Among these Matagordian cattle which had run wild for years were 800 noble, but ferocious bulls; and wherever they went they found a clear field. It was as if a menagerie of lions had broken loose in a village. Mr. Maverick never succeeded in keeping any of the herd together; they all ran madly whenever a man came in sight; and for many a day thereafter, whenever unbranded and unusually wild cattle were seen about the ranges, they were called "Mavericks." The bulls were long the terror of the land.

        The estimated profits of cattle-raising are enormous. Some authenticated instances are worthy especial mention. One man in the vicinity of San Antonio

Page 172

began in 1856 with 150 head of cattle; he now has 60,000, and is considered worth $350,000. Another, who began by taking stock to attend to for one-third of the increase, is worth about the same sum. One ranch, that of Mr. Kennedy, some distance west of Corpus Christi, has an inclosure of 150,000 acres, the fencing for which alone cost $100,000. Many a stock-raiser brands 15,000 head of calves yearly. The profits of horse-raising, making due allowance for losses by Indian raids and American and Mexican horse-thieves, are even greater. The owner of a large horse-ranch near Castroville*

        * Castroville is one of the most thriving towns in Western Texas. It was founded by Henry Castro, a Frenchman of great culture and executive ability.


 told me that he had repeatedly endeavored to get up an issue with the Indians, who often attacked his ranch--hoping to get them indicted and then requisitioned in Mexico; but their tribal arrangements prevent that. The chief alone is responsible for the bad deeds of all his warriors, and any quantity of indictments would never bring him to justice. An attempt to operate under the treaty made by Corwin, in 1862--by which the Government authorized district judges to demand the extradition of criminals,--was equally unsuccessful. The Mexican officers on the frontier recognize no law, no authority except their own.

        The head-quarters of such troops of the regular army as are in the Department of Texas, is at San Antonio. A chain of defensive forts extends from Fort Sill in the Indian Territory--in that section occupied by the Kiowas, Arapahoes and Comanches,--south-west and south to the Rio Grande, and along the Mexican frontier. Forts Richardson, Griffin, Concho, McKavett, Clark, Duncan, McIntosh, Ringgold, and Brown, are the most important posts, and each is well garrisoned with several companies of infantry and cavalry. It is at Fort Clark that the gallant Colonel McKenzie has long been stationed. The close proximity

Illustration

Military Head-quarters--San Antonio.

of the fort to the river has somewhat troubled the raiding Indians; but they generally manage to pass between the forts without being observed. Cavalry scouts are constantly engaged along the whole defensive line; but the men and horses are but poor matches for the Indians and their ponies. There is no telegraphic communication from fort to fort; therefore the officers at the various posts are never capable of concerted action. The line of forts extending from Concho to Fort Sill is intended to protect against incursions from the "Staked Plains" district, where the Indians still wander at their own
Page 173

sweet will over the grass-carpeted plains, which are seemingly boundless as the ocean. The grandeur, the rugged beauty of these mighty table-lands will for many years yet be enjoyed only by the Indian; he makes a good fight there.

        South-west from Fort Concho runs a defensive line, dotted with Forts Stockton, Davis, Hultman, and Bliss, the latter opposite El Paso, at the extreme western limit of Texas, and nearly seven hundred miles from San Antonio, at the entrance of the mountain passes of Chihuahua. Service in this department is no child's play; it is a rough and tumultuous school; and to see the general activity, one wonders that more is not actually accomplished.

        

Illustration

Negro Soldiers of the San Antonio Garrison.

        Railroads alone can solve the question. As it is, the thirty-five hundred men in the department, whether officered by General Auger, the present department commander, or General Grant, cannot catch and punish the evil-minded Indians. The soldiers are rarely attacked; the alert and logical savage seeks a peaceful prey rather than a fight with men as well armed as himself. Never advertising his coming, as the soldiers too often do, he rarely meets them. He is all eyes and ears; the tiniest cloud of dust on the horizon announces to him the approach of some one; he notes the faintest tremor among the grasses, and knows what it signifies; he detects a little imprint on the turf, and can decide at once whether or not it is that of a soldier's foot, or a white man's horse.

        When he mounts a hill, he looks about to see if there is anything stirring on the plain; and if there be, he hides until he knows what it is. It is easy to see that recruits and unpracticed frontiersmen cannot fight such people as these. Very few soldiers are harmed; it is mainly the innocent settlers, who have no

Page 174

idea of protecting themselves, who suffer. Since 1866 over 300 unoffending Texans have been killed by murderous Indians and Mexicans.

        Great care is necessary in traversing the plains, even with an escort of soldiers. A gentleman, returning from Fort Clark, once strayed ahead of the main party and was found, with arrows sticking in him and minus his scalp, dead. The Indians even hovered around the Government commissioners, on their journey from Eagle Pass to Laredo. For efficiency's sake, the Texans should be allowed in some way to take the matter of subduing the Indians and protecting their frontier against the Mexicans into their own hands.

        Wonderful land of limitless prairie, of beautiful rivers and strange foliage--land where there is room to breathe full breaths--land beyond which there seem no boundary lines--the railroad will yet subdue you! Then there will be no more mystery in your plains--your chaparral thickets--your groves of post oak and pecan--your cypress-bordered streams--your grand ranges--your sunburnished stretches. Stage routes will be forgotten; the now rapidly decaying native Indian tribes will stray into some unexplored nook, never to sally forth again. The Rio Grande will no longer be a boundary, and the Sierra Madre's rocky gaps will echo back the sharp accents of the American tongue. All this in a few years, unless the tokens fail!

Page 175

XVII.

DENISON--TEXAN CHARACTERISTICS.

        STANDING in the main street of Denison, Texas, the new town near the southern border of the Indian Territory, six hundred and twenty-one miles south-west of St. Louis, it was hard to realize that only four months before my visit its site was almost a wilderness, not a building of any kind having yet been erected there. For all around us was Babel--a wild rush of business, a glory in affairs, an unbounded delight in mere labor, by which I was at once oppressed and appalled.

        

Illustration

Scene in a Gambling House--"Playing Keno"--Denison, Texas.

        The slightest indication of progress was pointed out as a gigantic foreshadowing of the future preëminence of Denison. "There are from 2,500 to 3,000 people here now," said one gentleman to us; "how's that for four months? That'll make some of the incredulous

Page 176

folks take their frame houses off from the rollers!"--an expression intended to open up a startling prospect for the future of Denison. But, indeed, all these enthusiastic pioneers of a new civilization were justified in their seemingly wild prophecies of greatness. Northern Texas, under the beneficent influences of railroad pioneering, is assuming a prominence which had never been imagined for it until within the last five years.

        As soon as the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway had crossed the Red river, a stream of immigration, which the most sanguine had not hoped for, set in. The North-west seemed to move en masse. The tracts of fertile, black-wax land, which literally needed but to be tickled with the plough to smile a

Illustration

"Men drunk and sober danced to rude music." [Page 177.]

harvest, were rapidly taken up, and Denison sprang into existence as the chief town of the newly developed region. It was organized four months before my visit, and since that time the Denison Town Company had sold $90,000 worth of building lots. The town stands in a county absolutely free from debt, and is at the outlet of one of the most fertile farming regions of the world. Two railroads, coming to it from opposite points, and not costing it a cent, laid the foundation for its remarkable advance, an advance more like magic than like the normal growth of a pioneer settlement.

        All the lumber for the houses and business establishments was brought hundreds of miles, there being none suitable in the vicinity; and the car-loads

Page 177

of material were changed into rough but commodious structures in a twinkling. It was exceedingly remarkable, also, that in a community one-half of which was undoubtedly made up of professional ruffians, "terminus" gamblers, and the offscourings of society, and where there was not yet a regularly organized government, there was not more of terrorism.

        Every third building in the place was a drinking saloon with gambling appurtenances, filled after nightfall with a depraved, adventurous crowd, whose profanity was appalling, whose aspect was hideous. Men drunk and sober danced to rude music in the poorly-lighted saloons, and did not lack female partners. In vulgar bestiality of language, in the pure delight of parading profanity and indecency, the ruffian there had no equal. The gambling houses were nightly frequented by hundreds. Robberies were, of course, of frequent occurrence in the gambling hells, and perhaps are so still; but in the primitive hotels, where the luckless passengers from the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway awaited a transfer by stage to Sherman, and where they were packed three or four together in beds in a thinly-boarded room through whose cracks rain might fall and dust blow, they were as safe from robbery or outrage as in any first-class house. Rough men abounded, and would, without doubt, have knocked any one upon the head who should find himself alone, unarmed, and late at night, in their clutches. But the carrying of concealed weapons is so expressly forbidden by the laws of Texas, that cases of shooting rarely occurred, and there was no more danger to the life or limb of the traveler than may be met with on Broadway. I was too late to see the Denison where rascals had held supreme sway. Their régime vanished when the railroad crossed the Red river.

        The business men of Denison are a stern, self-reliant, confident company. They have a thorough belief in Northern Texas; intend to tame its wildness, and make it one of the gardens of the world. The Kansas and Missouri and Illinois and Western New York character crops out everywhere in Denison, and is the chief reliance of the town.

        The aboriginal Texan looks on, and admires the energy displayed, but he takes good care not to mix in the fray too much himself. There is something sublimely impudent, charmingly provoking, in the manner in which he disappears from work and the street when a cold "Norther" c