Part 1

Produced by Curtis Weyant, Barbara Kosker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THE

SOUTH-WEST.

BY A YANKEE.

Where on my way I went; ------------A pilgrim from the North-- Now more and more attracted, as I drew Nearer and nearer.

ROGERS' ITALY.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

NEW-YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, CLIFF-ST. 1835.

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.]

TO THE

HON. JOHN A. QUITMAN,

EX-CHANCELLOR OF MISSISSIPPI,

THESE VOLUMES

ARE

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

BY

THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION.

The succeeding pages grew out of a private correspondence, which the author, at the solicitation of his friends, has been led to throw into the present form, modifying in a great measure the epistolary vein, and excluding, so far as possible, such portions of the original papers as were of too personal a nature to be intruded upon the majesty of the public;--while he has embodied, so far as was compatible with the new arrangement, every thing likely to interest the general reader.

The author has not written exclusively as a traveller or journalist. His aim has been to present the result of his experience and observations during a residence of several years in the South-West. This extensive and important section of the United States is but little known. Perhaps there is no region between the Mississippi river and the Atlantic shores, of which so little accurate information is before the public; a flying tourist only, having occasionally added a note to his diary, as he skirted its forest-lined borders.

New-York, Sept. 1835.

CONTENTS.

I.

A state of bliss--Cabin passenger--Honey-hunting--Sea-life--Its effects--Green horns--Reading--Tempicide--Monotony--Wish for excitement--Superlative misery--Log--Combustible materials--Cook and bucket--Contrary winds--All ready, good Sirs--Impatient passengers--Signal for sailing--Leave-takings--Sheet home--Under weigh. Page 13

II.

A tar's headway on land--A gentleman's at sea--An agreeable trio --Musical sounds--Helmsman--Supper Steward--A truism--Helmsman's cry--Effect--Cases for bipeds--Lullaby--Sleep. 20

III.

Shakspeare--Suicide or a 'foul' deed--A conscientious table-- Fishing smacks--A pretty boy--Old Skipper, Skipper junior, and little Skipper--A young Caliban--An alliterate Man--Fisherman-- Nurseries--Navy--The Way to train up a Child--Gulf Stream-- Humboldt--Crossing the Gulf--Ice ships--Yellow fields--Flying fish--A game at bowls--Bermuda--A post of observation--Men, dwellings, and women of Bermuda--St. George--English society-- Washing decks--Mornings at sea--Evenings at sea--A Moonlight scene--The ocean on fire--Its phosphorescence--Hypotheses 25

IV.

Land--Abaco--Fleet--Hole in the Wall--A wrecker's hut--Bahama vampyres--Light houses--Conspiracy--Wall of Abaco--Natural Bridge--Cause--Night scene--Speak a packet ship--A floating city--Wrecker's lugger--Signal of distress--A Yankee lumber brig--Portuguese Man of War. 42

V.

A calm--A breeze on the water--The land of flowers--Juan Ponce de Leon--The fountain of perpetual youth--An irremediable loss to single gentlemen--Gulf Stream--New-Providence--Cuba--Pan of Matanzas--Blue hills of Cuba--An armed cruiser--Cape St. Antonio --Pirates--Enter the Mexican Gulf--Mobile--A southern winter--A farewell to the North and a welcome to the South--The close of the voyage--Balize--Fleet--West Indiaman--Portuguese polacre--Land ho! --The land--Its formation--Pilot or "little brief authority"-- Light house--Revenue cutter--Newspapers--"The meeting of the waters"--A singular appearance--A morning off the Balize--The tow-boat 55

VI.

The Mississippi--The Whale--Description of tow-boats--A package--A threatened storm--A beautiful brigantine--Physiognomy of ships-- Richly furnished cabin--An obliging Captain--Desert the ship-- Getting under weigh--A chain of captives--Towing--New-Orleans--A mystery to be unraveled. 64

VII.

Louisiana--Arrival at New-Orleans--Land--Pilot stations--Pilots --Anecdote--Fort--Forests--Levee--Crevasses--Alarms--Accident-- Espionage--A Louisianian palace--Grounds--Sugar-house--Quarters --An African governess--Sugar-Cane--St. Mary--"English Turn"-- Cavalcade--Battle-ground--Music Sounds of the distant city--Land in New-Orleans--An _amateur_ sailor. 73

VIII.

Bachelor's comforts--A valuable valet--Disembarked at the Levee --A fair Castilian--Canaille--The Crescent city--Reminiscence of school days--French cabarets--Cathedral--Exchange--Cornhill--A chain of light--A fracas--Gens d'Armes--An affair of honour-- Arrive at our hotel 87

IX.

Sensations on seeing a city for the first time--Capt. Kidd-- Boston--Fresh feelings--An appreciated luxury--A human medley --School for physiognomists--A morning scene in New-Orleans-- Canal street--Levee--French and English stores--Parisian and Louisianian pronunciation--Scenes in the market--Shipping--A disguised rover--Mississippi fleets--Ohio river arks--Slave laws. 96

X.

First impressions--A hero of the "Three Days"--Children's ball-- Life in New-Orleans--A French supper--Omnibuses--Chartres street at twilight--Calaboose--Guard house--The vicinage of a theatre-- French cafes--Scenes in the interior of a cafe--Dominos--Tobacco smokers--New-Orleans society. 108

XI.

Interior of a ball room--Creole ladies--Infantile dancers--French children--American children--A singular division--New-Orleans ladies--Northern and southern beauty--An agreeable custom--Leave the assembly room--An olio of languages--The Exchange--Confusion of tongues--Temples of Fortune. 117

XII.

The Goddess of fortune--Billiard rooms--A professor--Hells--A respectable banking company--"Black-legs"--Faro described-- Dealers--Bank--A novel mode of franking--Roulette table--A supper in Orcus--Pockets to let--Dimly lighted streets--Some things not so bad as they are represented. 127

XIII.

A sleepy porter--Cry of fire--Noise in the streets--A wild scene at midnight--A splendid illumination--Steamers wrapped in flames --A river on fire--Firemen--A lively scene--Floating cotton-- Boatmen--An ancient Portuguese Charon--A boat race--Pugilists--A hero 137

XIV.

Canal-street--Octagonal church--Government house--Future prospects of New-Orleans--Roman chapel--Mass for the dead-- Interior of the chapel--Mourners--Funeral--Cemeteries--Neglect of the dead--English and American grave yards--Regard of European nations for their dead--Roman Catholic cemetery in New-Orleans--Funeral procession--Tombs--Burying in water-- Protestant grave-yard. 145

XV.

An old friend--Variety in the styles of building--Love for flowers--The basin--Congo square--The African bon-ton of New-Orleans--City canals--Effects of the cholera--Barracks-- Guard-houses--The ancient convent of the Ursulines--The school for boys--A venerable edifice--Principal--Recitations--Mode of instruction--Primary department--Infantry tactics--Education in general in New-Orleans. 158

XVI.

Rail-road--A new avenue to commerce--Advantages of the rail-way --Ride to the lake--The forest--Village at the lake--Pier-- Fishers--Swimmers--Mail-boat--Cafes--Return--An unfortunate cow --New-Orleans streets. 171

XVII.

The legislature--Senators and representatives--Tenney--Gurley --Ripley--Good feeling among members--Translated speeches-- Ludicrous situations--Slave law--Bishop's hotel--Tower--View from its summit--Bachelor establishments--Peculiar state of society. 178

XVIII.

Saddle horses and accoutrements--Banks--Granite--Church-members --French mode of dressing--Quadroons--Gay scene and groups in the streets--Sabbath evening--Duelling ground--An extensive cotton press--A literary germ--A mysterious institution--Scenery in the suburbs--Convent--Catholic education. 186

XIX.

Battle-ground--Scenery on the road--A peaceful scene--American and British quarters--View of the field of battle--Breastworks --Oaks--Packenham--A Tennessee rifleman--Anecdote--A gallant British officer--Grape-shot--Young traders--A relic--Leave the ground--A last view of it from the Levee. 196

XX.

Scene in a bar room--Affaires d'honneur--A Sabbath morning--Host --Public square--Military parades--Scenes in the interior of a cathedral--Mass--A sanctified family--Crucifix--Different ways of doing the same thing--Altar--Paintings--The Virgin--Females devotees. 207

XXI.

Sabbath in New-Orleans--Theatre--Interior--A New-Orleans audience --Performance--Checks--Theatre d'Orleans--Interior--Boxes-- Audience--Play--Actors and actresses--Institutions--M. Poydras-- Liberality of the Orleanese--Extracts from Flint upon New-Orleans. 219

XXII.

A drive into the country--Pleasant road--Charming villa--Children at play--Governess--Diversities of society--Education in Louisiana--Visit to a sugar-house--Description of sugar-making, &c.--A plantation scene--A planter's grounds--Children--Trumpeter --Pointer--Return to the city. 229

XXIII.

Leave New-Orleans--The Mississippi--Scenery--Evening on the water --Scenes on the deck of a steamer--Passengers--Plantations-- Farm-houses--Catholic college--Convent of the Sacred Heart--Caged birds--Donaldsonville--The first highland--Baton Rouge--Its appearance--Barracks--Scenery--Squatters--Fort Adams--Way passengers--Steamer. 245

THE SOUTH WEST.

I.

A state of bliss--Cabin passenger--Honey-hunting--Sea-life --Its effects--Green horns--Reading--Tempicide--Monotony-- Wish for excitement--Superlative misery--Log--Combustible materials--Cook and bucket--Contrary winds--All ready, good Sirs--Impatient passengers--Signal for sailing--Under weigh.

To be a "Cabin passenger" fifteen or twenty days _out_, in a Yankee merchantman, is to be in a state as nearly resembling that of a half-assoilzied soul in purgatory, as flesh and blood can well be placed in. A meridian sun--a cloudless sky--a sea of glass, like a vast burning reflector, giving back a twin-heaven inverted--a dry, hot air, as though exhaled from a Babylonian furnace, and a deck, with each plank heated to the foot like a plate of hot steel--with the "Horse latitudes," for the scene, might, perhaps, heighten the resemblance.

Zimmerman, in his excellent essay upon Solitude, has described man, in a "state of solitary indolence and inactivity, as sinking by degrees, like stagnant water, into impurity and corruption." Had he intended to describe from experience, the state of man as "Cabin passenger" after the novelty of his new situation upon the heaving bosom of the "dark blue sea," had given place to the tiresome monotony of never-varying, daily repeated scenes, he could not have illustrated it by a more striking figure. This is a state of which you are happily ignorant. Herein, ignorance is the height of bliss, although, should a Yankee propensity for peregrinating stimulate you to become wiser by experience, I will not say that your folly will be more apparent than your wisdom. But if you continue to vegetate in the lovely valley of your nativity, one of "New-England's yeomanry," as you are wont, not a little proudly, to term yourself--burying for that distinctive honour your collegiate laurels beneath the broad-brim of the farmer--exchanging your "gown" for his frock--"Esq." for plain "squire," and the Mantuan's Georgics for those of the Maine Farmer's Almanac--I will cheerfully travel for you; though, as I shall have the benefit of the wear and tear, rubs and bruises--it will be like honey-hunting in our school-boy days, when one fought the bees while the other secured the sweet plunder.

This sea life, to one who is not a sailor, is a sad enough existence--if it may be termed such. The tomb-stone inscription "Hic jacet," becomes prematurely his own, with the consolatory adjunct _et non resurgam_. A condition intermediate between life and death, but more assimilated to the latter than the former, it is passed, almost invariably, in that proverbial inactivity, mental and corporeal, which is the well-known and unavoidable consequence of a long passage. It is a state in which existence is burthensome and almost insupportable, destroying that healthy tone of mind and body, so necessary to the preservation of the economy of the frame of man.--Nothing will so injure a good disposition, as a long voyage. Seeds of impatience and of indolence are there sown, which will be for a long period painfully manifest. The sweetest tempered woman I ever knew, after a passage of sixty days, was converted into a querulous Xantippe; and a gentleman of the most active habits, after a voyage of much longer duration, acquired such indolent ones, that his usefulness as a man of business was for a long time destroyed; and it was only by the strongest application of high, moral energy, emanating from a mind of no common order, that he was at length enabled wholly to be himself again. There is but one antidote for this disease, which should be nosologically classed as _Melancholia Oceana_, and that is employment. But on ship-board, this remedy, like many other good ones on shore, cannot always be found. A meddling, bustling passenger, whose sphere on land has been one of action, and who pants to move in his little circumscribed orbit at sea, is always a "lubberly green horn," or "clumsy marine," in every tar's way--in whose eye the "passenger" is only fit to thin hen-coops, bask in the sun, talk to the helmsman, or, now and then, desperately venture up through the "lubber's hole" to look for _land_ a hundred leagues in mid ocean, or, cry "sail ho!" as the snowy mane of a distant wave, or the silvery crest of a miniature cloud upon the horizon, flashes for an instant upon his unpractised vision.

A well-selected library, which is a great luxury at sea, and like most luxuries very rare, does wonders toward lessening this evil; but it is still far from constituting a _panacea_. I know not how it is, unless the patient begins in reality to suspect that he is taking _reading_ as a prescription against the foe, and converting his volumes into pill boxes--which by and by gets to be too painfully the truth--but the appetite soon becomes sated, the mind wearied, and the most fascinating and favourite authors "pall upon the sense" with a tiresome familiarity. Reading becomes hateful, for the very reason that it has become necessary. Amusements are exhausted, invented, changed, varied, and again exhausted. Every thing upon which the attention fixes itself, vainly wooing something novel, soon becomes insipid. Chess, back-gammon, letter-writing, journalizing, smoking, eating, drinking, and sleeping, may at first contribute not a little to the discomfiture of old Time, who walks the _sea_ shod with leaden sandals. The last three enumerated items, however, generally hold out to the last undisabled. But three Wellingtons could not have won Waterloo unsupported; nor, able and doughty as are these bold three--much as they prolong the combat--manfully as they fight, can they hold good their ground for ever; the obstinate, scythe-armed warrior, with his twenty-four body guards following him like his shadow, will still maintain the broadest portion of his diurnal territory, over which, manoeuvre as they may, these discomfited worthies cannot extend their front.

Few situations are less enviable, than that of the worn voyager, as day after day "drags its slow length along," presenting to his restless, listless eyes, as he stretches them wearily over the leaden waste around him--the same unbroken horizon, forming the periphery of a circle, of which his vessel seems to be the immovable and everlasting centre--the same blue, unmeaning skies above--the same blue sea beneath and around--the same gigantic tracery of ropes and spars, whose fortuitous combinations of strange geometrical figures he has demonstrated, till they are as familiar as the diagrams on a turtle's back to an alderman; and the same dull white sails, with whose patches he has become as familiar as with the excrescences and other innocent defects upon the visages of his fellow-sufferers.

On leaving port, I commenced a journal, or rather, as I am in a nautical atmosphere, a "log," the choicest chips of which shall be hewn off, basketed in fools-cap, and duly transmitted to you. Like other chips they may be useful to kindle the fire withal. "What may not warm the feelings may--the toes," is a truism of which you need not be reminded: and if you test it practically, it will not be the first time good has been elicited from evil. But the sameness of a sea-life will by no means afford me many combustible incidents. Somebody has said "the will is equal to the deed, if the deed cannot be." Now I have the will to pile a hecatomb, but if I can pile only a couple of straws, it will be, of course, the same thing in the abstract. Mine, perchance, may be the fate of that poor journalist who, in a voyage across the Atlantic, could obtain but one wretched item wherewith to fill his journal--which he should have published, by the way. What a rare sort of a book it would have been! So soon read too! In this age when type-blotted books are generative, it would immortalize the author. Tenderly handed down from one generation to another, it would survive the "fall of empires, and the crash of worlds." "At three and a quarter P. M., ship going two and a half knots per hour, the cook lost his bucket over-board--jolly boat lowered, and Jack and Peter rowed after it."

"Half-past three, P. M.--Cook has got his bucket again--and a broken head into the bargain."

To one who has never "played with Ocean's mane," nor, borne by his white-winged coursers, scoured his pathless fields, there may be, even in the common-place descriptions of sea-scenes, something, which wears the charm of novelty. If my hasty sketches can contribute to your entertainment "o' winter nights," or, to the gratification of your curiosity, they will possess an influence which I do not promise or predict for them.

Unfavourable winds had detained our ship several days, and all who had taken passage were on the "tiptoe of expectation" for the signal for sailing. Trunks, boxes, chests, cases, carpet-bags, and all the paraphernalia of travelling equipage, had long been packed, locked, and shipped--and our eyes had hourly watched the fickle gyrations of a horizontal gilt figure, which surmounted the spire of a neighbouring church, till they ached again. Had the image been Eolus himself, it could not have commanded more devoted worshippers.

A week elapsed--and patience, which hitherto had been admirably sustained, began to flag; murmurings proceeded from the lips of more than one of the impatient passengers, as by twos and threes, they would meet by a kind of sympathetic affinity at the corners of the streets, where an unobstructed view could be obtained of some church-vane, all of which, throughout our city of churches, had taken a most unaccommodating fancy to kick their golden-shod heels at the Northern Bear.

At precisely twenty minutes before three of the clock, on the afternoon of the first of November instant, the phlegmatic personage in the gilt robe, very obligingly, after he had worn our patience to shreds by his obstinacy, let his head and heels exchange places. At the same moment, ere he had ceased vibrating and settled himself steadily in his new position, the welcome signal was made, and in less than half an hour afterward, we were all, with bag and baggage, on board the ship, which rode at her anchor two hundred fathoms from the shore.

The top-sails, already loosed, were bellying and wildly collapsing with a loud noise, in the wind; but bounding to their posts at the command of their superior officer, the active seamen soon extended them upon the spars--immense fields of swelling canvass; and our vessel gracefully moved from her moorings, and glided through the water with the lightness of a swan.

As we moved rapidly down the noble harbour, which, half a century since, bore upon its bosom the hostile fleet of the proud island of the north, the swelling ocean was sending in its evening tribute to the continent, in vast scrolls, which rolled silently, but irresistibly onward, and majestically unfolded upon the beach--or, with a hoarse roar, resounded along the cliffs, and surged among the rocky throats of the promontory, impressing the mind with emotions of sublimity and awe.

II.

A tar's headway on land--A gentleman's at sea--An agreeable trio--Musical sounds--Helmsman--Supper--Steward--A truism-- Helmsman's cry--Effect--Cases for bipeds--Lullaby--Sleep.

The motion was just sufficiently lively to inspirit one--making the blood frolic through the veins, and the heart beat more proudly. The old tars, as they cruised about the decks, walked as steadily as on land. This proves nothing, you may say, if you have witnessed Jack's pendulating, uncertain--"right and left oblique" advance on a shore cruise.

Our tyros of the sea, in their venturesome projections of their persons from one given point in their eye to another, in the hope of accomplishing a straight line, after vacillating most appallingly, would finally succeed "haud passibus aequis" in reaching the position aimed for, fortunate if a lee-lurch did not accommodate them with a dry bed in the "lee scuppers."

Of all laughter-exciting locomotives which most create sensations of the ludicrously serious, commend me to an old land-crab teaching its young one to "go _ahead_"--a drunkard, reeling homeward through a broad street on a Saturday night--and a "gentleman passenger" three days at sea in his strange evolutions over the deck.

Stretched before me upon the weather hen-coop, enveloped in his cloak, lay one of our "goodlie companie." If his sensations were such as I imagined them to be, he must have felt that the simplest chicken under him wore the stoutest heart.

On the lee hen-coop reposed another passenger in sympathy with his fellow, to whose feelings I felt a disposition to do equal justice. Abaft the wheel, coiled up in the rigging, an agreeable substitute for a bed of down, lay half obscured within the shadow of the lofty stern, another overdone toper--a victim of Neptune, not of the "jolly god"--but whose sensations have been experienced by many of the latter's pupils, who have never tasted other salt water than their own tears.