PICTURES OF SOUTHERN LIFE. (continued 3)

The entrance to Ponchartrain lake is infamous for the abundance of its mosquitos, and it was with no small satisfaction that we experienced a small tornado, a thunderstorm, and a breeze of wind which saved us from their fury. It is a dismal canal through a swamp. At daylight, the vessel lay alongside a wharf surrounded by small boats and bathing stations. A railway shed receives us on shore, and a train is soon ready to start for the city, which is six miles distant. For a few hundred yards the line passes between wooden houses, used as restaurants, or “restaurats,” as they are called hereaway, kept by people with French names and using the French tongue; then the rail plunges through a swamp, dense as an Indian jungle, and with the overflowings of the Mississippi creeping in feeble, shallow currents over the black mud. Presently the spires of churches are seen rising above the underwood and rushes. Then we come out on a wide marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle, up to the belly in mud, are floundering to get at the rich herbage on the unbroken surface. Next comes a wide-spread suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined with small one-storied houses. The inhabitants are pale, lean, and sickly; and there is about the men a certain look, almost peculiar to the fishy-fleshy populations of Levantine towns, which I cannot describe, but which exists all along the Mediterranean seaboard, and crops out here again. The drive through badly-paved streets enables us to see that there is an air of French civilization about New Orleans. The streets are wisely adapted to the situation; they are not so wide as to permit the sun to have it all his own way from rising to setting. The shops are “magasins;” cafés abound. The colored population looks well dressed, and is going to mass or market in the early morning. The pavements are crowded with men in uniform, in which the taste of France is generally followed. The carriage stops at last, and rest comes gratefully after the stormy night, the mosquitos, “the noise of the captains” (at the bar), and the shouting.

May 22.—The prevalence of the war spirit here is in every thing somewhat exaggerated by the fervor of Gallic origin, and the violence of popular opinion and the tyranny of the mass are as potent as in any place in the South. The great house of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed its business here in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is, of the “citizens,” who were “excited” by seeing that the firm had subscribed to the New York fund, on its sudden resurrection after Fort Sumter had fallen. Some other houses are about to pursue the same course; all large business transactions are over for the season, and the migratory population which comes here to trade, has taken wing much earlier than usual. But the streets are full of “Turcos,” and “Zouaves,” and “Chasseurs;” the tailors are busy night and day on uniforms; the walls are covered with placards for recruits; the seamstresses are sewing flags; the ladies are carding lint and stitching cartridge-bags. The newspapers are crowded with advertisements relating to the formation of new companies of volunteers and the election of officers. There are Pickwick Rifles, Lafayette, Beauregard, Irish, German, Scotch, Italian, Spanish, Crescent, McMahon—innumerable—rifle volunteers of all names and nationalities, and the Meagher Rifles, indignant with “that valiant son of Mars” because he has drawn his sword for the North, have rebaptized themselves, and are going to seek glory under a more auspicious nomenclature. About New Orleans, I shall have more to say when I see more of it. At present it looks very like an outlying suburb of Chalons when the grand camp is at its highest military development, although the thermometer is rising gradually, and obliges one to know occasionally that it can be 95° in the shade already. In the course of my journeyings southward, I have failed to find much evidence that there is any apprehension on the part of the planters of a servile insurrection, or that the slaves are taking much interest in the coming contest, or know what it is about. But I have my suspicions that all is not right; paragraphs meet the eye, and odd sentences strike the ear, and little facts here and there come to the knowledge, which arouse curiosity and doubt. There is one stereotyped sentence which I am tired of: “Our negroes, sir, are the happiest, the most contented, and the best off of any people in the world.”

The violence and reiterancy of this formula cause one to inquire whether any thing which demands such insistance is really in the condition predicated; and for myself I always say: “It may be so, but as yet I do not see the proof of it. The negroes do not look to be what you say they are.” For the present that is enough as to one’s own opinions. Externally, the paragraphs which attract attention, and the acts of the authorities, are inconsistent with the notion that the negroes are all very good, very happy, or at all contented, not to speak of their being in the superlative condition of enjoyment; and as I only see them as yet in the most superficial way, and under the most favorable circumstances, it may be that when the cotton-picking season is at its height, and it lasts for several months, when the labor is continuous from sunrise to sunset, there is less reason to accept the assertions as so largely and generally true of the vast majority of the slaves. “There is an excellent gentleman over there,” said a friend to me, “who gives his overseers a premium of ten dollars on the birth of every child on his plantation.” “Why so?” “Oh, in order that the overseers may not work the women in the family-way overmuch.” There is little use in this part of the world in making use of inferences. But where overseers do not get the premium, it may be supposed they do work the pregnant women too much. Here are two paragraphs which do not look very well as they stand.

Those negroes who were taken with a sudden leaving on Sunday night last, will save the country the expenses of their burial if they keep dark from these parts. They and other of the “breden” will not be permitted to express themselves quite so freely in regard to their braggadocio designs upon virtue, in the absence of volunteers.—Wilmington (Clintock County, Ohio) Watchman (Republican).

Served Him Right. One day last week, some colored individual, living near South Plymouth, made a threat that, in case a civil war should occur, “he would be one to ravish the wife of every democrat, and to help murder their offspring, and wash his hands in their blood.” For this diabolical assertion he was hauled up before a committee of white citizens, who adjudged him forty stripes on his naked back. He was accordingly stripped, and the lashes were laid on with such a good will that blood flowed at the end of the castigation.—Washington (Fayette County, Ohio) Register (Neutral).

It is reported that the patrols are strengthened, and I could not help hearing a charming young lady say to another, the other evening, that “she would not be afraid to go back to the plantation, though Mrs. Brown Jones said she was afraid her negroes were after mischief.”

There is a great scarcity of powder, which is one of the reasons, perhaps, why it has not yet been expended as largely as might be expected from the tone and temper on both sides. There is no sulphur in the States; nitre and charcoal abound. The sea is open to the North. There is no great overplus of money on either side. In Missouri, the interest on the state debt, due in July, will be used to procure arms for the state volunteers to carry on the war. The South is preparing for the struggle by sowing a most unusual quantity of grain; and in many fields corn and maize have been planted instead of cotton. “Stay laws,” by which all inconveniences arising from the usual dull, old-fashioned relations between debtor and creditor are avoided (at least by the debtor), have been adopted in most of the seceding states. How is it that the state legislatures seem to be in the hands of the debtors and not of the creditors?

There are some who cling to the idea that there will be no war after all, but no one believes that the South will ever go back of its own free will, and the only reason that can be given by those who hope rather than think in that way is to be found in the faith that the North will accept some mediation, and will let the South go in peace. But could there—can there be peace? The frontier question—the adjustment of various claims—the demands for indemnity, or for privileges or exemptions, in the present state of feeling, can have but one result. The task of mediation is sure to be as thankless as abortive. Assuredly the proffered service of England would, on one side at least, be received with something like insult. Nothing but adversity can teach these people its own most useful lessons. Material prosperity has puffed up the citizens to an unwholesome state. The toils and sacrifices of the old world have been taken by them as their birthright, and they have accepted the fruits of all that the science, genius, suffering, and trials of mankind in time past have wrought out, perfected, and won as their own peculiar inheritance, while they have ignorantly rejected the advice and scorned the lessons with which these were accompanied.

May 23.—The Congress at Montgomery, having sat with closed doors almost since it met, has now adjourned till July the 20th, when it will reassemble at Richmond, in Virginia, which is thus designated, for the time, capital of the Confederate States of America. Richmond, the principal city of the Old Dominion, is about one hundred miles in a straight line south by west of Washington. The rival capitals will thus be in very close proximity by rail and by steam, by land and by water. The movement is significant. It will tend to hasten a collision between the forces which are collected on the opposite sides of the Potomac. Hitherto, Mr. Jefferson Davis has not evinced all the sagacity and energy, in a military sense, which he is said to possess. It was bad strategy to menace Washington before he could act. His secretary of war, Mr. Walker, many weeks ago, in a public speech, announced the intention of marching upon the capital. If it was meant to do so, the blow should have been struck silently. If it was not intended to seize upon Washington, the threat had a very disastrous effect on the South, as it excited the North to immediate action, and caused General Scott to concentrate his troops on points which present many advantages in the face of any operations which may be considered necessary along the lines either of defence or attack. The movement against the Norfolk navy-yard strengthened Fortress Monroe, and the Potomac and Chesapeake were secured to the United States. The fortified ports held by the Virginians and the Confederate States troops, are not of much value as long as the streams are commanded by the enemy’s steamers; and General Scott has shown that he has not outlived either his reputation or his vigor by the steps, at once wise and rapid, he has taken to curb the malcontents in Maryland, and to open his communications through the city of Baltimore. Although immense levies of men may be got together, on both sides, for purposes of local defence or for state operations, it seems to me that it will be very difficult to move these masses in regular armies. The men are not disposed for regular, lengthened service, and there is an utter want of field trains, equipment, and commissariat, which cannot be made good in a day, a week, or a month.

The bill passed by the Montgomery Congress, entitled “An act to raise an additional military force to serve during the war,” is, in fact, a measure to put into the hands of the government the control of irregular bodies of men, and to bind them to regular military service. With all their zeal, the people of the South will not enlist. They detest the recruiting sergeant, and Mr. Davis knows enough of war to feel hesitation in trusting himself in the field to volunteers. The bill authorizes Mr. Davis to accept volunteers who may offer their services, without regard to the place of enlistment, “to serve during the war, unless sooner discharged.” They may be accepted in companies, but Mr. Davis is to organize them into squadrons, battalions, or regiments, and the appointment of field and staff officers is reserved especially to him. The company officers are to be elected by the men of the company, but here again Mr. Davis reserves to himself the right of veto, and will only commission those officers whose election he approves.

The absence of cavalry and the deficiency of artillery may prevent either side obtaining any decisive results in one engagement; but, no doubt, there will be great loss whenever these large masses of men are fairly opposed to each other in the field. Of the character of the Northern regiments I can say nothing more from actual observation; nor have I yet seen, in any place, such a considerable number of the troops of the Confederate States, moving together, as would justify me in expressing any opinion with regard to their capacity for organized movements, such as regular troops in Europe are expected to perform. An intelligent and trustworthy observer, taking one of the New York state militia regiments as a fair specimen of the battalions which will fight for the United States, gives an account of them which leads me to the conclusion that such regiments are much superior, when furnished by the country districts, to those raised in the towns and cities. It appears, in this case at least, that the members of the regular militia companies in general send substitutes to the ranks. Ten of these companies form the regiment, and, in nearly every instance, they have been doubled in strength by volunteers. Their drill is exceedingly incomplete, and in forming the companies there is a tendency for the different nationalities to keep themselves together. In the regiment in question the rank and file often consists of quarrymen, mechanics, and canal boatmen, mountaineers from the Catskill, bark peelers, and timber cutters—ungainly, square-built, powerful fellows, with a Dutch tenacity of purpose crossed with an English indifference to danger. There is no drunkenness and no desertion among them. The officers are almost as ignorant of military training as their men. The colonel, for instance, is the son of a rich man in his district, well educated, and a man of travel. Another officer is a shipmaster. A third is an artist; others are merchants and lawyers, and they are all busy studying “Hardee’s Tactics,” the best book for infantry drill in the United States. The men have come out to fight for what they consider the cause of the country, and are said to have no particular hatred of the South, or of its inhabitants, though they think they are “a darned deal too high and mighty, and require to be wiped down considerably.” They have no notion as to the length of time for which their services will be required, and I am assured that not one of them has asked what his pay is to be.

Reverting to Montgomery, one may say without offence that its claims to be the capital of a republic which asserts that it is the richest, and believes that it will be the strongest in the world, are not by any means evident to a stranger. Its central position, which has reference rather to a map than to the hard face of matter, procured for it a distinction to which it had no other claim. The accommodations which suited the modest wants of a state legislature vanished or were transmuted into barbarous inconveniences by the pressure of a central government, with its offices, its departments, and the vast crowd of applicants which flocked thither to pick up such crumbs of comfort as could be spared from the executive table. Never shall I forget the dismay of myself, and of the friends who were travelling with me, on our arrival at the Exchange Hotel, under circumstances with some of which you are already acquainted. With us were men of high position, members of Congress, senators, ex-governors, and General Beauregard himself. But to no one was greater accommodation extended than could be furnished by a room held, under a sort of ryot-warree tenure, in common with a community of strangers. My room was shown to me. It contained four large four-post beds, a ricketty table, and some chairs of infirm purpose and fundamental unsoundness. The floor was carpetless, covered with litter of paper and ends of cigars, and stained with tobacco juice. The broken glass of the window afforded no ungrateful means of ventilation. One gentleman sat in his shirt sleeves at the table reading the account of the marshalling of the Highlanders at Edinburgh in the Abbottsford edition of Sir Walter Scott; another, who had been wearied, apparently, by writing numerous applications to the government for some military post, of which rough copies lay scattered around, came in, after refreshing himself at the bar, and occupied one of the beds, which by the bye, were ominously provided with two pillows apiece. Supper there was none for us in the house, but a search in an outlying street enabled us to discover a restaurant, where roasted squirrels and baked opossums figured as luxuries in the bill of fare. On our return we found that due preparation had been made in the apartment by the addition of three mattresses on the floor. The beds were occupied by unknown statesmen and warriors, and we all slumbered and snored in friendly concert till morning. Gentlemen in the South complain that strangers judge of them by their hotels, but it is a very natural standard for strangers to adopt, and in respect to Montgomery it is almost the only one that a gentleman can conveniently use, for if the inhabitants of this city and its vicinity are not maligned, there is an absence of the hospitable spirit which the South lays claim to as one of its animating principles, and a little bird whispered to me that from Mr. Jefferson Davis down to the least distinguished member of his government there was reason to observe that the usual attentions and civilities offered by residents to illustrious stragglers had been “conspicuous for their absence.” The fact is, that the small planters who constitute the majority of the land-owners are not in a position to act the Amphytrion, and that the inhabitants of the district can scarcely aspire to be considered what we would call gentry in England, but are a frugal, simple, hog-and-hominy living people, fond of hard work and, occasionally, of hard drinking.

NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.

It is impossible to resist the conviction that the Southern Confederacy can only be conquered by means as irresistible as those by which Poland was subjugated. The South will fall, if at all, as a nation prostrate at the feet of a victorious enemy. There is no doubt of the unanimity of the people. If words mean any thing, they are animated by only one sentiment, and they will resist the North as long as they can command a man or a dollar. There is nothing of a sectional character in this disposition of the South. In every state there is only one voice audible. Hereafter, indeed, state jealousies may work their own way. Whatever may be the result, unless the men are the merest braggarts—and they do not look like it—they will fight to the last before they give in, and their confidence in their resources is only equalled by their determination to test them to the utmost. There is a noisy vociferation about their declarations of implicit trust and reliance on their slaves which makes one think “they do protest too much,” and it remains to be seen whether the slaves really will remain faithful to their masters should the abolition army ever come among them as an armed propaganda. One thing is obvious here. A large number of men who might be usefully employed in the ranks are idling about the streets. The military enthusiasm is in proportion to the property interest of the various classes of the people, and the very boast that so many rich men are serving in the ranks is a significant proof, either of the want of a substratum, or of the absence of great devotion to the cause, of any such layer of white people as may underlie the great slave-holding, mercantile, and planting oligarchy. The whole state of Louisiana contains about 50,000 men liable to serve when called on. Of that number only 15,000 are enrolled and under arms in any shape whatever, and if one is to judge of the state of affairs by the advertisements which appear from the adjutant-general’s office, there was some difficulty in procuring the 3,000 men—merely 3,000 volunteers—“to serve during the war,” who are required by the Confederate government. There is “plenty of prave ’ords,” and if fierce writing and talking could do the work, the armies on both sides would have been killed and eaten long ago. It is found out that “lives of the citizens” at Pensacola are too valuable to be destroyed in attacking Pickens. A storm that shall drive away the ships, a plague, yellow fever, mosquitos, rattlesnakes, small-pox—any of these agencies, is looked to with confidence to do the work of shot, shell, and bayonet. Our American “brethren in arms” have yet to learn that great law in military cookery, that “if they want to make omelets they must break eggs.” The “moral suasion” of the lasso, of head-shaving, ducking, kicking, and such processes, are, I suspect, used not unfrequently to stimulate volunteers; and the extent to which the acts of the recruiting officer are somewhat aided by the arm of the law, and the force of the policeman and the magistrate, may be seen from paragraphs in the morning papers now and then, to the effect that certain gentlemen of Milesian extraction, who might have been engaged in pugilistic pursuits, were discharged from custody unpunished on condition that they enlisted for the war. With the peculiar views entertained of freedom of opinion and action by large classes of people on this continent, such a mode of obtaining volunteers is very natural, but resort to it evinces a want of zeal on the part of some of the 50,000 who are on the rolls; and, from all I can hear—and I have asked numerous persons likely to be acquainted with the subject—there are not more than those 15,000 men of whom I have spoken in all the state under arms, or in training, of whom a considerable proportion will be needed for garrison and coast defence duties. It may be that the Northern states and Northern sentiments are as violent as those of the South but I see some evidences to the contrary. For instance, in New York ladies and gentlemen from the South are permitted to live at their favorite hotel without molestation, and one hotel keeper at Saratoga Springs advertises openly for the custom of his Southern patrons. In no city of the South which I have visited would a party of Northern people be permitted to remain for an hour if the “citizens” were aware of their presence. It is laughable to hear men speaking of the “unanimity” of the South. Just look at the peculiar means by which unanimity is enforced and secured! This is an extract from a New Orleans paper:

CHARGES OF ABOLITIONISM.—Mayor Monroe has disposed of some of the cases brought before him on charges of this kind by sending the accused to the workhouse.

A Mexican named Bernard Cruz, born in Tampico, and living here with an Irish wife, was brought before the Mayor this morning charged with uttering Abolition sentiments. After a full investigation, it was found from the utterance of his incendiary language, that Cruz’s education was not yet perfect in Southern classics, and his Honor therefore directed that he be sent for six months to the Humane Institution for the Amelioration of the Condition of Northern Barbarians and Abolition Fanatics, presided over by Professor Henry Mitchell, keeper of the workhouse, who will put him through a course of study on Southern ethics and institutions.

The testimony before him Saturday, however, in the case of a man named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses testified positively that he heard him make his children shout for Lincoln; another, that the accused said, “I am an abolitionist,” &c. The witnesses, the neighbors of the accused, gave their evidence reluctantly, saying that they had warned him of the folly and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.

John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for uttering incendiary language while traveling in the baggage car of a train of the New Orleans, Ohio, and Great Western Railroad, intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get $10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to answer the charge on the 8th of June.

Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and acting very much like he was one, by harboring a runaway slave, was sent to prison in default of bail, to await examination before the recorder.

Such is “freedom of speech” in Louisiana! But in Texas the machinery for the production of “unanimity” is less complicated, and there are no insulting legal formalities connected with the working of the simple appliances which a primitive agricultural people have devised for their own purposes. Hear the Texan correspondent of one of the journals of this city on the subject. He says:

It is to us astonishing, that such unmitigated lies as those Northern papers disseminate of anarchy and disorder here in Texas, dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c., population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough that in no part of the South are Abolitionists, or other disturbers of the public peace, so very unsafe as in Texas. The lasso is so very convenient!

Here is an excellent method of preventing dissension described by a stroke of the pen; and, as such, an ingenious people are not likely to lose sight of the uses of a revolution in developing peculiar principles to their own advantage, repudiation of debts to the North has been proclaimed and acted on. One gentleman has found it convenient to inform Major Anderson that he does not intend to meet certain bills which he had given the major for some slaves. Another declares he won’t pay any one at all, as he has discovered it is immoral and contrary to the law of nations to do so. A third feels himself bound to obey the commands of the governor of his state, who has ordered that debts due to the North shall not be liquidated. As a naïve specimen of the way in which the whole case is treated, take this article and the correspondence of “one of the most prominent mercantile houses in New Orleans:”

SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.

The Cincinnati Gazette copies the following paragraph from The New York Evening Post:

“BAD FAITH.—The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless, stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends. They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant who in this way has lost $100,000”—and adds:

“The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by Southern merchants, who have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who have aided and trusted them to the last moment, are the greatest losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections with the West. As the repudiators—such as Goodrich & Co., of New Orleans—will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest men.

“There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality. The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future. The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.”

We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich & Co.:

NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.

Cincinnati Gazette.—We were handed, through a friend of ours, your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets, better suited to the mouths of the Wilson regiment of New York than from a once respectable sheet, but which now has sunk so low in the depths of niggerdom that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.

We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property, stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay such men in times of war. You may term it rascally, but we beg leave to call it patriotism.

“Giving the sinews of war to your enemies has ever been considered treason.”—Kent.

Now for “repudiating.” We have never, nor do we ever expect to repudiate any debt owing by our firm. But this much we will say, never will we pay a debt due by us to a man, or any company of men, who is a known Black Republican, and marching in battle array to invade our homes and firesides, until every such person shall be driven back and their polluted footsteps shall, now on our once happy soil, be entirely obliterated.

We have been in business in this city for twenty years, have passed through every crisis with our names untarnished or credit impaired, and would at present sacrifice all we have made, were it necessary, to sustain our credit in the Confederacy, but care nothing for the opinions of such as are open and avowed enemies. We are sufficiently known in this city not to require the indorsement of The Cincinnati Gazette, or any such sheet, for a character.

The day is coming, and not far distant, when there will be an awful reckoning, and we are willing and determined to stand by our Confederate flag, sink or swim, and would like to meet some of The Gazette’s editors vis-à-vis on the field of blood, and see who would be the first to flinch.

Our senior partner has already contributed one darkey this year to your population, and she is anxious to return, but we have a few more left which you can have, provided you will come and take them yourselves.

We have said more than we intended, and hope you will give this a place in your paper.

GOODRICH & CO.

There is some little soreness felt here about the use of the word “repudiation,” and it will do the hearts of some people good, and will carry comfort to the ghost of the Rev. Sydney Smith, if it can hear the tidings, to know I have been assured, over and over again, by eminent mercantile people and statesmen, that there is a “general desire” on the part of the repudiating states to pay their bonds, and that no doubt, at some future period, not very clearly ascertainable or plainly indicated, that general desire will cause some active steps to be taken to satisfy its intensity, of a character very unexpected, and very gratifying to those interested. The tariff of the Southern Confederation has just been promulgated, and I send herewith a copy of the rates. Simultaneously, however, with this document, the United States steam-frigates Brooklyn and Niagara have made their appearance off the Pass à l’Outre, and the Mississippi is closed, and with it the port of New Orleans. The steam-tugs refuse to tow out vessels for fear of capture, and British ships are in jeopardy.

May 25.—A visit to the camp at Tangipao, about fifty miles from New Orleans, gave an occasion for obtaining a clearer view of the internal military condition of those forces of which one reads much and sees so little than any other way. Major-General Lewis of the State Militia, and staff, and General Labuzan, a Creole officer, attended by Major Ranney, President of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railway, and by many officers in uniform, started with that purpose at half-past four this evening in a railway carriage, carefully and comfortably fitted for their reception. The militia of Louisiana has not been called out for many years, and its officers have no military experience and the men have no drill or discipline.

Emerging from the swampy suburbs, we soon pass between white clover pastures, which we are told invariably salivate the herds of small but plump cattle browsing upon them. Soon cornfields “in tassel,” alternate with long narrow rows of growing sugar-cane, which, though scarcely a fourth of the height of the maize, will soon overshadow it; and the cane-stalks grow up so densely together that nothing larger than a rattlesnake can pass between them.

From Kennersville, an ancient sugar plantation cut up into “town lots,” our first halt, ten miles out, we shoot through a cypress swamp, the primitive forest of this region, and note a greater affluence of Spanish moss than in the woods of Georgia or Carolina. There it hung, like a hermit’s beard, from the pensile branch. Here, to one who should venture to thread the snake and alligator haunted mazes of the jungle, its matted profusion must resemble clusters of stalactites pendent from the roof of some vast cavern; for the gloom of an endless night appears to pervade the deeper recesses, at the entrance of which stand, like outlying skeleton pickets, the unfelled and leafless patriarchs of the clearing, that for a breadth of perhaps fifty yards on either side seems to have furnished the road with its sleepers.

The gray swamp yields to an open savanna, beyond which, upon the left, a straggling line of sparse trees skirts the left bank of the Mississippi, and soon after the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain appears within gunshot of our right, only separated from the road by a hundred yards or more of rush-covered prairie, which seems but a feeble barrier against the caprices of so extensive a sheet of water, subject to the influences of wind and tide. In fact, ruined shanties and out-houses, fields laid waste, and prostrate fences, remain evidences of the ravages of the “wash” which a year ago inundated and rendered the railroad impassable save for boats. The down train’s first notice of the disaster was the presence of a two-story frame building, which the waves had transported to the road, and its passengers, detained a couple of days in what now strikes us as a most grateful combination of timber-skirted meadow and lake scenery, were rendered insensible to its beauties by the torments of hungry mosquitos. Had its engineers given the road but eighteen inches more elevation its patrons would have been spared this suffering, and its stockholders might have rejoiced in a dividend. Many of the settlers have abandoned their improvements. Others, chiefly what are here called Dutchmen, have resumed their tillage with unabated zeal, and large fields of cabbages, one of them embracing not less than sixty acres, testify to their energy.

Again, through miles of cypress swamps the train passes on to what is called the “trembling prairie,” where the sleepers are laid upon a tressel-work of heavier logs, so that the rails are raised by “cribs” of timber nearly a yard above the morass. Three species of rail, one of them as large as a curlew, and the summer-duck, seem the chief occupants of the marsh, but white cranes and brown bitterns take the alarm, and falcons and long-tailed “blackbirds” sail in the distance.

Toward sunset a halt took place upon the long bridge that divides Lake Maurepas, a picturesque sheet of water which blends with the horizon on our left, from Pass Manchac, an arm of Lake Pontchartrain, which disappears in the forest on our right. Half-a-dozen wherries and a small fishing-smack are moored in front of a ricketty cabin, crowded by the jungle to the margin of the cove. It is the first token of a settlement that has occurred for miles, and when we have sufficiently admired the scene, rendered picturesque in the sunset by the dense copse, the water and the bright colors of the boats at rest upon it, a commotion at the head of the train arises from the unexpected arrival upon the “switch” of a long string of cars filled with half a regiment of volunteers, who had been enlisted for twelve months’ service, and now refused to be mustered in for the war, as required by the recent enactment of the Montgomery Congress. The new-comers are at length safely lodged on the “turn-off,” and our train continues its journey. As we pass the row of cars, most of them freight wagons, we are hailed with shouts and yells in every key by the disbanded volunteers, who seem a youngish, poorly-clad, and undersized lot, though noisy as a street mob.

After Manchac, the road begins to creep up toward terra firma, and before nightfall there was a change from cypresses and swamp laurels to pines and beeches, and we inhale the purer atmosphere of dry land, with an occasional whiff of resinous fragrance, that dispels the fever-tainted suggestions of the swamp below. There we only breathed to live. Here we seem to live to breathe. The rise of the road is a grade of but a foot to the mile, and yet at the camp an elevation of not more than eighty feet in as many miles suffices to establish all the climatic difference between the malarious marshes and a much higher mountain region.

But during our journey the hampers have not been neglected. The younger members of the party astonish the night-owls with patriotic songs, chiefly French, and the French chiefly with the “Marseillaise,” which, however inappropriate as the slogan of the Confederate states, they persist in quavering, forgetful, perhaps, that not three-quarters of a century ago Toussaint l’Ouverture caught the words and air of his masters, and awoke the lugubrious notes of the insurrection.

Toward nine P. M., the special car rests in the woods, and is flanked on one side by the tents and watch-fires of a small encampment, chiefly of navvy and cotton-handling Milesian volunteers, called “the Tigers,” from their prehensile powers and predatory habits. A guard is stationed around the car; a couple of Ethiopians who have attended us from town are left to answer the query, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, and we make our way to the hotel, which looms up in the moonlight in a two-storied dignity. Here, alas! there have been no preparations made to sleep or feed us. The scapegoat “nobody” announced our coming. Some of the guests are club men, used to the small hours, who engage a room, a table, half a dozen chairs, and a brace of bottles to serve as candlesticks. They have brought stearine and pasteboards with them, and are soon deep in the finesses of “Euchre.” We quietly stroll back to the car, our only hope of shelter. At the entrance we are challenged by a sentry, apparently ignorant that he has a percussion cap on his brown rifle, which he levels at us cocked. From this unpleasant vision of an armed and reckless Tiger rampant we are relieved by one of the dusky squires, who assures the sentinel that we are “all right,” and proceeds to turn over a seat and arrange what might be called a sedan-chair bed, in which we prepare to make a night of it. Our party is soon joined by others in quest of repose, and in half an hour breathings, some of them so deep as to seem subterranean, indicate that all have attained their object—like Manfred’s—forgetfulness.

An early breakfast of rashers and eggs was prepared at the table d’hôte, which we were told would be replenished half-hourly until noon, when a respite of an hour was allowed to the “help,” in which to make ready a dinner, to be served in the same progression.

Through a shady dingle a winding path led to the camp, and, after trudging a pleasant half-mile, a bridge of boards, resting on a couple of trees laid across a pool, was passed, and, above a slight embankment, tents and soldiers are revealed upon a “clearing” of some thirty acres in the midst of a pine forest. Turning to the left, we reach a double row of tents, only distinguished from the rest by their “fly roofs” and boarded floors, and, in the centre, halt opposite to one which a poster of capitals on a planed deal marks as “Head-quarters.” Major-General Tracy commands the camp. The white tents crouching close to the shade of the pines, the parade alive with groups and colors as various as those of Joseph’s coat, arms stacked here and there, and occasionally the march of a double file in green, or in mazarine blue, up an alley from the interior of the wood, to be dismissed in the open, resembles a militia muster, or a holiday experiment at soldiering, rather than the dark shadow of forthcoming battle. The cordon of sentinels suffer no volunteer to leave the precincts of the camp, even to bathe, without a pass or the word. There are neither wagons nor ambulances, and the men are rolling in barrels of bacon and bread and shouldering bags of pulse—good picnic practice and campaigning gymnastics in fair weather.

The arms of these volunteers are the old United States smooth-bore musket, altered from flint to percussion, with bayonet—a heavy and obsolete copy of Brown Bess in bright barrels. All are in creditable order. Most of them have never been used, even to fire a parade volley, for powder is scarce in the Confederated States, and must not be wasted. Except in their material, the shoes of the troops are as varied as their clothing. None have as yet been served out, and each still wears the boots, the brogans, the patent leathers, or the Oxford ties in which he enlisted. The tents have mostly no other floor than the earth, and that rarely swept; while blankets, boxes, and utensils are stowed in corners with a disregard of symmetry that would drive a martinet mad. Camp-stools are rare and tables invisible, save here and there in an officer’s tent. Still the men look well, and, we are told, would doubtless present a more cheerful appearance, but for some little demoralization occasioned by discontent at the repeated changes in the organic structure of the regiments, arising from misapprehensions between the state and federal authorities, as well as from some favoritism toward certain officers, elected by political wire-pulling in the governing councils. The system of electing officers by ballot has made the camp as thoroughly a political arena as the poll-districts in New Orleans before an election, and thus many heroes, seemingly ambitious of epaulettes, are in reality only “laying pipes” for the attainment of civil power or distinction after the war.

The volunteers we met at Manchac the previous evening had been enlisted by the state to serve for twelve months, and had refused to extend their engagement for the war—a condition now made precedent at Montgomery to their being mustered into the army of the Confederate States. Another company, a majority of whom persist in the same refusal, were disbanded while we were patrolling the camp, and an officer told one of the party he had suffered a loss of 600 volunteers by this disintegrating process within the last twenty-four hours. Some of these country companies were skilled in the use of the rifle, and most of them had made pecuniary sacrifices in the way of time, journeys, and equipments. Our informant deplored this reduction of volunteers, as tending to engender disaffection in the parishes to which they will return, and comfort, when known, to the Abolitionists of the North. He added that the war will not perhaps last a twelvemonth, and if unhappily prolonged beyond that period, the probabilities are in favor of the short-term recruits willingly consenting to a re-enlistment.

The encampment of the “Perrit Guards” was worthy of a visit. Here was a company of professional gamblers, 112 strong, recruited for the war in a moment of banter by one of the patriarchs of the fraternity, who, upon hearing at the St. Charles Hotel one evening that the vanity or the patriotism of a citizen, not famed for liberality, had endowed with $1,000 a company which was to bear his name, exclaimed that “he would give $1,500 to any one who should be fool enough to form a company and call it after him.” In less than an hour after the utterance of this caprice, Mr. Perrit was waited upon by fifty-six “professionals,” who had enrolled their names as the “Perrit Guards,” and unhesitatingly produced from his wallet the sum so sportively pledged. The Guards are uniformed in mazarine-blue flannel with red facings, and the captain, a youngish-looking fellow, with a hawk’s eye, who had seen service with Scott in Mexico and Walker in Nicaragua, informed us that there is not a pair of shoes in the company that cost less than $6, and that no money has been spared to perfect their other appointments. A sack of ice and half a dozen silver goblets enforced his invitation “to take a drink at his quarters,” and we were served by an African in uniform, who afterward offered us cigars received by the last Havana steamer. Looking at the sable attendant, one of the party observed that if these “experts of fortune win the present fight, it will be a case of couleur gagne.”

It would be difficult to find in the same number of men taken at hazard greater diversities of age, stature, and physiognomy; but in keenness of eye and imperturbability of demeanor they exhibit a family likeness, and there is not an unintelligent face in the company. The gamblers, or, as they are termed, the “sports,” of the United States have an air of higher breeding and education than the dice-throwers and card-turners of Ascot or Newmarket—nay, they may be considered the Anglo-Saxon equals, minus the title, of those âmes damnées of the continental nobility who are styled Greeks by their Parisian victims. They are the Pariahs of American civilization, who are, nevertheless, in daily and familiar intercourse with their patrons, and not restricted, as in England, to a betting-ring toleration by the higher orders. The Guards are the model company of Camp Moore, and I should have felt disposed to admire the spirit of gallantry with which they have volunteered in this war as a purification by fire of their maculated lives were it not hinted that the “Oglethorpe Guards” and more than one other company of volunteers are youths of large private fortunes, and that in the Secession as in the Mexican War, these patriots will doubtless pursue their old calling with as much profit as they may their new one with valor.

From the lower camp we wind through tents, which diminish in neatness and cleanliness as we advance deeper, to the upper division, which is styled “Camp Tracy,” a newer formation, whose brooms have been employed with corresponding success. The adjutant’s report for the day sums up 1,073 rank and file, and but two on the sick list. On a platform, a desk, beneath the shade of the grove, holds a Bible and Prayer-book, that await the arrival, at ten o’clock, of the Methodist preacher, who is to perform Divine service. The green uniforms of the “Hibernian Guards,” and the gray and light-blue dress of other companies, appertain to a better appointed sort of men than the lower division.

There may be 2,000 men in Camp Moore—not more, and yet every authority gives us a different figure. The lowest estimate acknowledged for the two camps is 3,500 men, and The Picayune and other New Orleans papers still speak in glowing terms of the 5,000 heroes assembled in Tangipao. Although the muster there presents a tolerable show of ball-stoppers, it would require months of discipline to enable them to pass for soldiers, even at the North; and besides that General Tracy has never had other experience than in militia duty, there is not, I think, a single West-Point officer in his whole command. The only hope of shaping such raw material to the purposes of war would naturally be by the admixture of a proper allowance of military experience, and until those possessing it shall be awarded to Camp Moore we must sigh over the delusion which pictures its denizens to the good people of New Orleans as “fellows ready for the fray.”

While the hampers are being ransacked, an express locomotive arrives from town with dispatches for General Tracy, who exclaims, when reading them, “Always too late!” from which expression it is inferred that orders have been received to accept the just disbanded volunteers. The locomotive was hitched to the car and drew it back to the city. Our car was built in Massachusetts, the engine in Philadelphia, and the magnifier of its lamp in Cincinnati. What will the South do for such articles in future?

May 26.—In the evening, as I was sitting in the house of a gentleman in the city, it was related, as a topic of conversation, that a very respectable citizen named Bibb had had a difficulty with three gentlemen, who insisted on his reading out the news for them from his paper, as he went to market in the early morning. Mr. Bibb had a revolver, “casually,” in his pocket, and he shot one citizen dead on the spot and wounded the other two severely, if not mortally. “Great sympathy,” I am told, “is felt for Mr. Bibb.” There has been a skirmish somewhere on the Potomac, but Bibb has done more business “on his own hook” than any of the belligerents up to this date; and though I can scarcely say I sympathize with him, far be it from me to say that I do not respect him.

One curious result of the civil war in its effects on the South will, probably, extend itself as the conflict continues—I mean the refusal of the employers to pay their workmen, on the ground of inability. The natural consequence is much distress and misery. The English consul is harrassed by applications for assistance from mechanics and skilled laborers who are in a state bordering on destitution and starvation. They desire nothing better than to leave the country and return to their homes. All business, except tailoring for soldiers and cognate labors, is suspended. Money is not to be had. Bills on New York are worth little more than the paper, and the exchange against London is enormous—eighteen per cent. discount from the par value of the gold in bank, good drafts on England having been negotiated yesterday at ninety-two per cent. One house has been compelled to accept four per cent. on a draft on the North, where the rate was usually from one-fourth per cent. to one-half per cent. There is some fear that the police force will be completely broken up, and the imagination refuses to guess at the result. The city schools will probably be closed—altogether things do not look well at New Orleans. When all their present difficulties are over, a struggle between the mob and the oligarchy, or those who have no property and those who have, is inevitable; for one of the first acts of the legislature will probably be directed to establish some sort of qualification for the right of suffrage, relying on the force which will be at their disposal on the close of the war. As at New York, so at New Orleans. Universal suffrage is denounced as a curse, as corruption legalized, confiscation organized. As I sat in a well-furnished clubroom last night, listening to a most respectable, well-educated, intelligent gentleman descanting on the practices of “the Thugs”—an organized band who coolly and deliberately committed murder for the purpose of intimidating Irish and German voters, and were only put down by a vigilance committee, of which he was a member—I had almost to pinch myself to see that I was not the victim of a horrid nightmare.

Monday, May 27.—The Washington Artillery went off to-day to the wars—quo fas et gloria ducunt; but I saw a good many of them in the streets after the body had departed—spirits who were disembodied. Their uniform is very becoming, not unlike that of our own foot artillery, and they have one battery of guns in good order. I looked in vain for any account of Mr. Bibb’s little affair yesterday in the papers. Perhaps, as he is so very respectable, there will not be any reference to it at all. Indeed, in some conversation on the subject last night, it was admitted that when men were very rich they might find judges and jurymen as tender as Danae, and policemen as permeable as the walls of her dungeon. The whole question now is, “What will be done with the blockade?” The Confederate authorities are acting with a high hand. An American vessel, the Ariel, which had cleared out of port with British subjects on board, has been overtaken, captured, and her crew have been put in prison. The ground is that she is owned in main by Black Republicans. The British subjects have received protection from the consul. Prizes have been made within a league of shore, and in one instance, when the captain protested, his ship was taken out to sea, and was then recaptured formally. I went round to several merchants to-day; they were all gloomy and fierce. In fact, the blockade of Mobile is announced, and that of New Orleans has commenced, and men-of-war have been reported off the Pas-à-l’outre. The South is beginning to feel that it is being bottled up, all fermenting and frothing, and is somewhat surprised and angry at the natural results of its own acts, or, at least, of the proceedings which have brought about a state of war. Mr. Slidell did not seem at all contented with the telegrams from the North, and confessed that “if they had been received by way of Montgomery he should be alarmed.” The names of persons liable for military service have been taken down in several districts, and British subjects have been included. Several applications have been made to Mr. Mure, the consul, to interfere in behalf of men who, having enlisted, are now under orders to march, and who must leave their families destitute if they go away; but he has, of course, no power to exercise any influence in such cases. The English journals to the 4th of May have arrived here to-day. It is curious to see how quaint in their absurdity the telegrams become when they have reached the age of three weeks. I am in the hapless position of knowing, without being able to remedy, the evils from this source, for there is no means of sending through to New York political information of any sort by telegraph. The electric fluid may be the means of blasting and blighting many reputations, as there can be no doubt the revelations which the government at Washington will be able to obtain through the files of the dispatches it has seized at the various offices, will compromise some whose views have recently undergone remarkable changes. It is a hint which may not be lost on governments in Europe when it is desirable to know friends and foes hereafter, and despotic rulers will not be slow to take a hint from “the land of liberty.”

Orders have been issued by the governor to the tow-boats to take out the English vessels by the south-west passage, and it is probable they will all get through without any interruption on the part of the blockading force. It may be imagined that the owners and consignees of cargoes from England, China, and India, which are on their way here, are not at all easy in their minds. Two of the Washington artillery died in the train on their way to that undefinable region called “the seat of war.”

May 28.—The Southern states have already received the assistance of several thousands of savages, or red men, and “the warriors” are actually engaged in pursuing the United States troops in Texas, in conjunction with the state volunteers. A few days ago a deputation of the chiefs of the Five Nations, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, Comanches, and others, passed through New Orleans on their way to Montgomery, where they hoped to enter into terms with the government for the transfer of their pension list and other responsibilities from Washington, and to make such arrangements for their property and their rights as would justify them in committing their fortunes to the issue of war. These tribes can turn out twenty thousand warriors, scalping-knives, tomahawks, and all. The chiefs and principal men are all slave-holders.

May 29.—A new “affair” occurred this afternoon. The servants of the house in which I am staying were alarmed by violent screams in a house in the adjoining street, and by the discharge of firearms—an occurrence which, like the cry of “murder” in the streets of Havana, clears the streets of all wayfarers, if they be wise, and do not wish to stop stray bullets. The cause is thus stated in the journals:

SAD FAMILY AFFAIR.—Last evening, at the residence of Mr. A. P. Withers, in Nayades street, near Thalia, Mr. Withers shot and dangerously wounded his stepson, Mr. A. F. W. Mather. As the police tell it, the nature of the affair was this: The two men were in the parlor, and talking about the Washington artillery, which left on Monday for Virginia. Mather denounced the artillerists in strong language, and his stepfather denied what he said. Violent language followed, and, as Withers says, Mather drew a pistol and shot at him once, not hitting him. He snatched up a Sharp’s revolver that was lying near and fired four times at his stepson. The latter fell at the third fire, and as he was falling Withers fired a fourth time, the bullet wounding the hand of Mrs. Withers, wife of one and mother of the other, she having rushed in to interfere, and she being the only witness of the affair. Withers immediately went out into the street and voluntarily surrendered himself to Officer Casson, the first officer he met. He was locked up. Three of his shots hit Mather, two of them in the breast. Last night Mather was not expected to live.

Another difficulty is connected with the free colored people who may be found in prize ships. Read and judge of the conclusion:

What shall be done with them? On the 28th inst., Captain G. W. Gregor, of the privateer Calhoun, brought to the station of this district about ten negro sailors, claiming to be free, found on board the brigs Panama, John Adams, and Mermaid.

The recorder sent word to the marshal of the confederate states that said negroes were at his disposition. The marshal refused to receive them or have any thing to do with them, whereupon the recorder gave the following decision:

Though I have no authority to act in the case, I think it is my duty as a magistrate and good citizen to take upon myself, in this critical moment, the responsibility of keeping the prisoners in custody, firmly believing it would not only be bad policy, but a dangerous one, to let them loose upon the community.

The following dispatch was sent by the recorder to the Hon. J. P. Benjamin:

NEW ORLEANS, May 29.

To J. P. Benjamin, Richmond—Sir: Ten free negroes taken by a privateer from on board three vessels returning to Boston, from a whaling voyage, have been delivered to me. The marshal refuses to take charge of them. What shall I do with them?

Respectfully, A. BLACHE, Recorder, Second District.

The monthly statement I inclose of the condition of the New Orleans banks on the 25th inst., must be regarded as a more satisfactory exhibit to their depositors and shareholders, though of no greater benefit to the commercial community in this its hour of need than the tempting show of a pastrycook’s window to the famished street poor. These institutions show assets estimated at $54,000,000, of which $20,000,000 are in specie and sterling exchange, to meet $25,000,000 of liabilities, or more than two for one. But, with this apparent amplitude of resources, the New Orleans banks are at a dead-lock, affording no discounts and buying no exchange—the latter usually their greatest source of profit in a mart which ships so largely of cotton, sugar, and flour, and the commercial movement of which for not over nine months of the year is the second in magnitude among the cities of the old Union.

As an instance of the caution of their proceedings, I have only to state that a gentleman of wealth and the highest respectability, who needed a day or two since some money for the expenses of an unexpected journey, was compelled, in order to borrow of these banks the sum of $1,500, to hypothecate, as security for his bill at sixty days, $10,000 of bonds of the Confederate states, and for which a month ago he paid par in coin—a circumstance which reflects more credit upon the prudence of the banks than upon the security pledged for this loan.

NATCHEZ, MISS., June 14, 1861.

On the morning of the 3d of June I left New Orleans, in one of the steamers proceeding up the Mississippi, along that fertile but uninteresting region of reclaimed swamp lands, called “the coast,” which extends along both banks for one hundred and twenty miles above the city. It is so called from the name given to it, “La Côte,” by the early French settlers. Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. At the present moment the surface of the river is several feet higher than the land at each side, and the steamer moves on a level with the upper stories, or even the roofs of the houses, reminding one of such scenery as could be witnessed in the old days of treckshuyt in Holland. The river is not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, and is quite as richly colored. But then it is one hundred and eighty feet deep, and for hundreds of miles it has not less that one hundred feet of water. Thus deeply has it scooped into the rich clay and marl in its course; but as it flows out to join the sea, it throws down the vast precipitates which render the bars so shifting and difficult, and bring the mighty river to such a poor exit. A few miles above the wharfs and large levees of the city, the country really appears to be a sea of light green, with shores of forest in the distance, about two miles away from the bank. This forest is the uncleared land, extending for a considerable way back, which each planter hopes to take into culture one day or other, and which he now uses to provide timber for his farm. Near the banks are houses of wood, with porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and sun-shades, generally painted white and green. There is a great uniformity of style, but the idea aimed at seems to be that of the old French chateau, with the addition of a colonnade around the ground story. These dwellings are generally in the midst of small gardens, rich in semi-tropical vegetation, with glorious magnolias, now in full bloom, rising in their midst, and groves of live-oak interspersed. The levee is as hard and dry as the bank of a canal. Here and there it is propped up by wooden revetements. Between it and the uniform line of palings, which guards the river face of the plantations, there is a carriage-road. In the enclosure, near each residence, there is a row of small wooden huts, whitewashed, in which live the negroes attached to the service of the family. Outside the negroes who labor in the fields are quartered, in similar constructions, which are like the small single huts, called “Maltese,” which were plentiful in the Crimea. They are rarely furnished with windows; a wooden slide or a grated space admits such light and air as they want. One of the most striking features of the landscape is, its utter want of life. There were a few horsemen exercising in a field, some gigs and buggies along the levee roads, and the little groups at the numerous watering-places, generally containing a few children in tom-fool costumes, as zouaves, chasseurs, or some sort of infantry; but the slaves who were there had come down to look after luggage or their masters. There were no merry, laughing, chattering gatherings of black faces and white teeth, such as we hear about. Indeed, the negroes are not allowed hereabouts to stir out of their respective plantations, or to go along the road without passes from their owners. The steamer J. L. Cotton, which was not the less popular, perhaps, because she had the words “low pressure” conspicuous on her paddle-boxes, carried a fair load of passengers, most of whom were members of creole families living on the coast. The proper meaning of the word “creole” is very different from that which we attach to it. It signifies a person of Spanish or French descent, born in Louisiana or in the southern or tropical countries. The great majority of the planters here are French creoles, and it is said they are kinder and better masters than Americans or Scotch, the latter being considered the most severe. Intelligent on most subjects, they are resolute in the belief that England must take their cotton or perish. Even the keenest of their financiers, Mr. Forstall, an Irish creole, who is representative of the house of Baring, seems inclined to this faith, though he is prepared with many ingenious propositions, which would rejoice Mr. Gladstone’s inmost heart, to raise money for the Southern Confederacy and make them rich exceedingly. One thing has rather puzzled him. M. Baroche, who is in New Orleans, either as a looker-on or as an accredited employe of his father or of the French government, suggested to him that it would not be possible for all the disposable mercantile marine of England and France together to carry the cotton crop, which hitherto gave employment to a great number of American vessels, now tabooed by the South, and the calculations seem to bear out the truth of the remark. Be that as it may, Mr. Forstall is quite prepared to show that the South can raise a prodigious revenue by a small direct taxation, for which the machinery already exists in every parish of the state, and that the North must be prodigiously damaged in the struggle, if not ruined outright. One great source of strength in the South is, its readiness—at least, its professed alacrity—to yield any thing that is asked. There is unbounded confidence in Mr. Jefferson Davis. Whereever I go, the same question is asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of our President? Does he not strike you as being a very able man?” In finance he is trusted as much as in war. When he sent orders to the New Orleans banks, some time ago, to suspend specie payment, he exercised a power which could not be justified by any reading of the Southern constitution. All men applauded. The President of the United States is far from receiving any such support or confidence, and it need not be said any act of his, of the same nature as that of Mr. Davis, would have created an immense outcry against him. But the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy, and its unanimity is not greater than its confidence. One is rather tired of endless questions, “Who can conquer such men?” But the question should be, “Can the North conquer us?” Of the fustian about dying in their tracks and fighting till every man, woman and child is exterminated, there is a great deal too much, but they really believe that the fate which Poland could not avert, to which France, as well as the nations she overran, bowed the head, can never reach them. With their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they are at the wars, and England and France to take the latter and pay them for it, they believe they can meet the American world in arms. A glorious future opens before them. Illimitable fields, tilled by multitudinous negroes, open on their vision, and prostrate at the base of the mountain of cotton, from which they rule the kings of the earth, the empires of Europe shall lie, with all their gold, their manufactures, and their industry, crying out, “Pray give us more cotton! All we ask is more!”

But here is the boat stopping opposite Mr. Roman’s—ex-governor of the state of Louisiana, and ex-commissioner of the Confederate government at Montgomery to the government of the United States at Washington. Not very long ago he could boast of a very handsome garden—the French creoles love gardens—Americans and English do not much affect them; when the Mississippi was low one fine day, levee and all slid down the bank into the maw of the river, and were carried off. This is what is called the “caving in” of a bank; when the levee is broken through at high water it is said that a “crevasse” has taken place. The governor, as he is called—once a captain always a captain—has still a handsome garden, however, though his house has been brought unpleasantly near the river. His mansion and the out-offices stand in the shade of magnolias, green oaks, and other Southern trees. To the last Governor Roman was a Unionist, but when his state went he followed her, and now he is a Secessionist for life and for death, not extravagant in his hopes, but calm and resolute, and fully persuaded that in the end the South must win. As he does not raise any cotton, the consequences for him will be extremely serious should sugar be greatly depreciated; but the consumption of that article in America is very large, and, though the markets in the North and West are cut off, it is hoped, as no imported sugar can find its way into the states, that the South will consume all its own produce at a fair rate. The governor is a very good type of the race, which is giving way a little before the encroachments of the Anglo-Saxons, and he possesses all the ease, candid manner, and suavity of the old French gentleman—of that school in which there are now few masters or scholars. He invited me to visit the negro quarters. “Go where you like, do what you please, ask any questions. There is nothing we desire to conceal.” As we passed the house, two or three young women flitted past in snow-white dresses with pink sashes, and no doubtful crinolines, but their head-dresses were not en règle—handkerchiefs of a gay color. They were slaves going off to a dance at the sugar-house; but they were indoor servants, and therefore better off, in the way of clothes than their fellow slaves who labor in the field. On approaching a high paling at the rear of the house the scraping of fiddles was audible. It was Sunday, and Mr. Roman informed me that he gave his negroes leave to have a dance on that day. The planters who are not Catholics rarely give any such indulgence to their slaves, though they do not always make them work on that day, and sometimes let them enjoy themselves on the Saturday afternoon. Entering a wicket gate, a quadrangular enclosure, lined with negro huts, lay before us. The bare ground was covered with litter of various kinds, amid which pigs and poultry were pasturing. Dogs, puppies, and curs of low degree scampered about on all sides; and deep in a pond, swinking in the sun, stood some thirty or forty mules, enjoying their day of rest. The huts of the negroes belonging to the personal service of the house were separated from the negroes engaged in field labor by a close wooden paling; but there was no difference in the shape and size of their dwellings, which consisted generally of one large room, divided by a partition occasionally into two bedrooms. Outside the whitewash gave them a cleanly appearance; inside they were dingy and squalid—no glass in the windows, swarms of flies, some clothes hanging on nails in the boards, dressers with broken crockery, a bedstead of rough carpentry; a fireplace in which, hot as was the day, a log lay in embers; a couple of tin cooking utensils; in the obscure, the occupant, male or female, awkward and shy before strangers, and silent till spoken to. Of course there were no books, for the slaves do not read. They all seemed respectful to their master. We saw very old men and very old women, who were the canker-worms of the estate, and were dozing away into eternity mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd of little children were listening to the music, and a few grown-up persons of color—some of them from the adjoining plantations. The children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean. It might be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant negro, or of the child up to six or seven years of age, is generally a fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not less happy than freeborn children, although much more valuable—for once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance toward nine or ten years of age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the market is low and money is scarce. The women were not very well-favored, except one yellow girl, whose child was quite white, with fair hair and light eyes; and the men were disguised in such strangely cut clothes, their hats and shoes and coats were so wonderfully made, that one could not tell what they were like. On all faces there was a gravity which must be the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort, for those who ought to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world. It struck me more and more, as I examined the expression of the faces of the slaves all over the South, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if not universal, characteristic of the race. Let a physiognomist go and see. Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated, for they had good clothing of its kind, good food, and a master who wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of it. Still, they all looked exceedingly sad, and even the old woman who boasted that she had held her old master in her arms when he was an infant, did not look cheerful, as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her ancient charge. The precincts of the huts were not clean, and the enclosure was full of weeds, in which poultry—the perquisites of the slaves—were in full possession. The negroes rear domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters. The money they spend in purchasing tobacco, molasses, clothes and flour—whisky, their great delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty hands were quartered in this part of the estate. The silence which reigned in the huts as soon as the fiddlers had gone off to the sugar-house was profound. Before leaving the quarter I was taken to the hospital, which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms contained several flock beds on rough stands, and five patients, three of whom were women. They sat listlessly on the beds, looking out into space; no books to amuse them, no conversation—nothing but their own dull thoughts, if they had any. They were suffering from pneumonia and swellings of the glands of the neck; one man had fever. Their medical attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a practitioner, who is engaged by the term for his services. Negroes have now only a nominal value in the market—that is, the price of a good field hand is as high as ever, but there is no one to buy him at present, and no money to pay for him, and the trade of the slave-dealers is very bad. The menageries of the “Virginia negroes constantly on sale. Money advanced on all descriptions of property,” etc., must be full—their pockets empty. This question of price is introduced incidentally in reference to the treatment of negroes. It has often been said to me that no one will ill-use a creature worth £300 or £400, but that is not a universal rule. Much depends on temper, and many a hunting-field could show that if value be a guarantee for good usage, the slave is more fortunate than his fellow chattel, the horse. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton and corn, be the great end of man’s mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are, assuredly, two great agencies in this latter world. The older got on well enough without them.

The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, a large brick building with a factory-looking chimney, where the juice of the cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refiner. In a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish jig to the music of the negro musicians—a double shuffle and a thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards—a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien, worthy of the minuet in Don Giovanni. At this time of year there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crushing and boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but “involuntary servitude” could go through the toil and suffering required to produce sugar for us. This is not the place for an account of the processes and machinery used in the manufacture, which is a scientific operation, greatly improved by recent discoveries and apparatus.

In the afternoon the governor’s son came in from the company which he commands. He has been camping out with them to accustom them to the duties of actual war, and he told me that all his men were most zealous and exceedingly proficient. They are all of the best families around—planters, large and small, their sons and relatives, and a few of the creole population, who are engaged as hoopers and stavemakers. One of the latter had just stained his hands with blood. He had reason to believe a culpable intimacy existed between his wife and his foreman. A circumstance occurred which appeared to confirm his worst suspicions. He took out his firelock, and, meeting the man, he shot him dead without uttering a word, and then delivered himself up to the authorities. It is probable his punishment will be exceedingly light, as divorce suits and actions for damages are not in favor in this part of the world. Although the people are Roman Catholics, it is by no means unusual to permit relations within the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the church to intermarry, and the elastic nature of the rules which are laid down by the priesthood in that respect would greatly astonish the orthodox in Ireland or Bavaria. The whole of the planters and their dependents along “the coast” are in arms. There is but one sentiment, as far as I can see, among them, and that is, “We will never submit to the North.” In the evening, several officers of M. Alfred Roman’s company and neighbors came in, and out under the shade of the trees, in the twilight, illuminated by the flashing fireflies, politics were discussed—all on one side, of course, with general conversation of a more agreeable character. The customary language of the creoles is French, and several newspapers in French are published in the districts around us; but they speak English fluently.

Next morning, early, the governor was in the saddle and took me round to see his plantation. We rode through alleys formed by the tall stalks of the maize, out to the wide, unbroken fields—hedgeless, unwalled, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind. Along the margin in the distance there is an unbroken boundary of forest extending all along the swamp lands, and two miles in depth. From the river to the forest there is about a mile and a half or more of land of the very highest quality—unfathomable, and producing from one to one and a half hogshead an acre. Away in the midst of the crops were white-looking masses, reminding me of sepoys and sowars as seen in Indian fields in the morning sun on many a march. As we rode toward them we overtook a cart with a large cask, a number of tin vessels, a bucket of molasses, a pail of milk, and a tub full of hominy or boiled Indian corn. The cask contained water for the use of the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their breakfast, in addition to which they generally have each a dried fish. The food looked ample and wholesome, such as any laboring man would be well content with every day. There were three gangs at work in the fields. One of men, with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds and clearing away the grass, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hands on the plantation. The overseer, a sharp-looking Creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintends their labors, and, after a few directions and a salutation to the governor, rode off to another part of the farm. The negroes when spoken to saluted us, and came forward to shake hands—a civility which must not be refused. With the exception of crying to their mules, however, they kept silence when at work. Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn—easy work enough. The third gang was of thirty-six or thirty-seven women, who were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate, their shoes ponderous and ill-made, so as to wear away the feet of their thick stockings. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to prevailed among these gangs also—not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If “Alcibiades” or “Pompey,” were called out he came with outstretched hand to ask “how do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping chapeaux de paille at their visitors. Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for any thing else, and “suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home to give the infants the breast at appointed periods in the day. I returned home multa mecum revolens. After breakfast, in spite of a very fine sun, which was not unworthy of a January noon in Cawnpore, we drove forth to visit some planter friends of M. Roman, a few miles down the river. The levee road is dusty, but the gardens, white railings and neat houses of the planters looked fresh and clean enough. There is a great difference in the appearance of the slaves’ quarters. Some are neat, others are dilapidated and mean. As a general rule, it might be said that the goodness of the cottages was in proportion to the frontage of each plantation toward the river, which is a fair index to the size of the estate wherever the river bank is straight. The lines of the estates are drawn perpendicularly to the banks, so that the convexity or concavity of the bends determines the frontage of the plantation.

The absence of human beings in the fields and on the roads was remarkable. The gangs at work were hidden in the deep corn, and not a soul met us on the road for many miles except one planter in his gig. At one place we visited a very handsome garden, laid out with hothouses and conservatories, ponds full of magnificent Victoria Regia in flower, orange-trees, and many tropical plants, native and foreign, date and other palms. The proprietor owns an extensive sugar refinery. We visited his factory and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for the all but naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boiler, vat and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much at present, for sugar has been falling rapidly in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profit, which, on an average, may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses, for the planter. All the planters hereabouts have sown an unusual quantity of Indian corn, so as to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare. At night, after our return, a large bonfire was lighted on the bank to attract the steamer to call for my luggage, which she was to leave at a point on the opposite shore, fourteen miles higher up, and I perceived that there are regular patrols and watchmen at night who look after levees and the negroes; a number of dogs are also loosed, but I am assured by a gentleman who has written me a long letter on the subject from Montgomery, that these dogs do not tear the negroes; they are taught merely to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a retriever well broken uses a wild duck. Next day I left the hospitable house of Governor Roman, full of regard for his personal character and of his wishes for his happiness and prosperity, but assuredly in no degree satisfied that even with his care and kindness the “domestic institution” can be rendered tolerable or defensible, if it be once conceded that the negro is a human being with a soul—or with the feelings of a man. On those points there are ingenious hypotheses and subtle argumentations in print “down South” which do much to comfort the consciences of the anthropropietors. The negro skull wont hold as many ounces of shot as the white man’s. Can there be a more potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own a creature who carries a smaller charge of snipe-dust in his head? He is plantigrade, and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibiaed Caucasian. He has a rete mucosum and a colored pigment. Surely, he cannot have a soul of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus—in sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that nature was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides, the Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in the rice-swamps, sugar-canes, and maize-fields of the Southern Confederation. It’s flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour sanctions slavery because he does not say a word against it, and it’s very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar been known, he might have been a planter! Besides, the negro is civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the African races except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans, Mobile or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such vehemence and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the “Jawdam?” If these high physical, metaphysical, moral and religious reasonings do not satisfy you, and you venture to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise you not come within reach of a mass meeting of our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the neighborhood.

As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending a service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people are supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr. Shandy’s homuncule was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good—or where it would be most desirable—very bad Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable, accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow weighing down his young life that softened him to almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone by—of Paris and poetry, of England and London hotels, of the great Carême, and of Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics—de omni scibili. The storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents—the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by—not a boat on its broad surface. The road passed by plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen, belonging to small planters, with only some ten or twelve slaves all told. The houses were poor and ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning’s place, and drove to the overseer’s—a large heavy-eyed old man, who asked us into his house from out of the rain till the boat was ready—and the river did not look inviting—full of drift trees, swirls and mighty eddies. In the plain room in which we sat there was a volume of Spurgeon’s Sermons and of Baxter’s works. “This rain will do good to the corn,” said the overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin’ to do leetly, as they ’eve clearied out the fields pretty well.” We drove down to a poor shed on the levee called the ferry-house, attended by one stout young slave who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole a little longer. “What are those?” quoth I, “Dem’s oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman’s brisk reply. “I’m very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat’s the trute, Massa.” “There, go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we entered the shed for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman sitting” smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed, and morose—young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chickens about the size of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four years of age, not over-dressed—indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a point upon it”—crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the use of a small piece of silver presented to her—having no precise ideas on coinage or toffy—her parent took the obolus in charge with unmistakable decision; but still she would not stir a step to aid our Charon, who now insisted on the “key ov de oarhouse.” The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. Charon pushed his skiff into the water—there was a good deal of rain it—in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep. I got in, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was caulked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world. “Why! deuce take you” (I said, at least that, in my wrath), “don’t you see the boat is leaky?” “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in, tho’.” Another skiff proved to be staunch. I bade good-bye to my friend, and sat down in my boat, which was soon forced up along the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view, from my lonely position, was curious, but not at all picturesque. The landscape had disappeared at once. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was constituted by a broad river—just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank, and directly in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage gateway and wickets of wood, painted white in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road far as the eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering flowers, rose, jessamine and creepers clinging to the pillars supporting the verandah. The proprietor, who had espied my approach, issued forth with a section of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house was larger and better than the residences even of the richest planters, though it was in need of some little repair, and had been built perhaps fifty years ago, in the old Irish fashion, and who built well, ate well, drank well, and, finally, paid very well. The view from the belvedere was one of the most striking of its kind in the world. If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be cultivated for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and Orange-grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful business.