Eight days in New-Orleans in February, 1847

by Albert James Pickett

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNITED STATES BRANCH MINT.—THE WATER WORKS.—MARKETS, ETC.

The stranger should never leave the Crescent City without seeing the Mint, where money is made as if by magic. It is situated in the old Jackson square, between Barrack and Esplanade streets. It is a fine edifice, having a projecting centre building with two exterior wings. The walls are strong and thick, plastered in good imitation of granite; the length, 282 by 108 deep. This mint was commenced in 1835, and the whole cost of building, fencing, machinery, and furniture, was $300,000. The yard is handsomely enclosed with iron railing on a granite basement. You enter at a fine gate, and passing through the first court over a block wood pavement, you ascend a flight of granite steps, and enter in a large passage where sets a pleasant old gentleman, who requires you to register your name and residence. This being done, he leads the visitor among the furnaces where the smelting is performed; then in a large room where the metal is formed into bars of various sizes by running it through powerful iron rollers. These bars are then cut out into coins from the size of half a dime to a doubloon, by means of a machine something like a punch, but which moves with great regularity, and power, and despatch. The polite old gentleman then leads you down below, and in a remote wing stands a man solitary and alone by the side of the most splendid and beautiful machinery which ever was made, who puts the cut pieces of coin by twenties into a tube which fits them exactly, and the machinery stamps them one by one, with an eagle on one side, and the Goddess of Liberty on the other. The untiring machinery goes up and down, and stamps according to different sizes, from eighty to one hundred and fifty to the minute! and they are received into a beautiful silver vase below. Before the coin is brought into this finishing room, it is not counted, but weighed; and after it is here impressed, it is then weighed again. In 1838, the mint coined only the amount $40,243; 1839, $263,650; 1840, $915,600; 1841, $642,200; 1842, $1,275,750; 1843, $4,568,000; 1844, $4,208,500; 1845, $1,473,000. The falling off during the last year mentioned, has been owing to the state of our foreign exchanges being against the interests of the mint.

The chief work has consisted in the new coinage of old Spanish dollars, French, German, and English coins. The unwrought gold is chiefly from Alabama, and is greatly on the increase. Nothing is charged for the coinage of pure metal. The expenses are borne by the Government, and are annually about fifty-two thousand dollars.

A large portion of the city of Orleans is watered from the large reservoir in the upper part of the second municipality. An iron pipe eighteen inches in diameter, is placed in the river twelve feet below the surface, and through this, great columns of water are continually ascending by sixty horse power force-pumps, situated in brick buildings on Tchoupitoulas and Richard streets. The water is carried under ground for two hundred yards further, and forced up the reservoir alluded to, which has been made in the manner of an artificial mound, from the sediment of the river. The reservoir is built on the top of the mound, and is about three hundred feet square, walled with brick and cemented, with four apartments in it, each having about five feet live water in them. Every month or two, the water is drawn off from two of them, and the deposit formed six inches deep is scraped off, and the water let in again. A pavilion in the middle of the reservoir affords a pleasant seat, and affords you a commanding view of the immediate neighborhood. The pumps force up 2,280 gallons per minute. The cost of the works is about $1,490,000; expenses, $17,000; revenue, $75000. The water is distributed through cast iron pipes from sixteen to six inches in diameter, and is sold at the rate of three dollars per head. The daily consumption is near one million three hundred thousand gallons.

The city of New Orleans is more abundantly blessed, according to its extent, with good markets than any city on the continent. They may be found in all directions, affording a great abundance of the best that the whole Mississippi valley and the far western plains of Texas can produce.

The great attraction to visitors is the celebrated French Market. The French, English, Spanish, Dutch, Swiss and Italian languages are employed here in trading, buying, and selling, and a kind of mongrel mixture and jumble of each and all is spoken by the lower class in the market. It lies on the Levee, admirably situated, and extends a long ways. All is hurry, jostling and confusion; the very drums of your ears ache with the eternal jargon—with the cursing, swearing, whooping, hollowing, cavilling, laughing, crying, cheating and stealing, which are all in full blast. The screams of parrots, the music of birds, the barking of dogs, the cries of oystermen, the screams of children, the Dutch girl's organ, the French negro humming a piece of the last opera—all are going it, increasing the novelty of this novel place. The people engaged in building the tower of Babel, whose language was confounded and confused for their presumptuous undertaking, never made a worse jargon or inflicted a greater blow upon harmonious sounds, than is to be found here. While looking around at the various commodities exposed for sale, I saw scores of opossums, coons, crawfish, eels, minks, and frogs, brought there to satiate the fancy appetite of the French. But what was my astonishment on seeing a basket of five fat puppies about six weeks old, which the owner informed me were for French gentlemen to eat! In charity for the Frenchman's taste, I have sometimes thought the vender of these little barkers was palming a quiz upon me. I hope so.

This is an unrivalled market. Every fish that swims in the Gulf, every bird that flies in the air, or swims upon the wave, every quadruped that scours the plains or skulks in dens, which are usually eaten by men, can be had in great abundance. All kinds of grain and roots raised in the up country, all the luxuries of the tropics, are here. The elk of the Osage river, the buffalo of the Yellowstone, venison of Louisiana, and the bear of Mississippi, fill the list, and contribute in pandering to the appetites of luxurious citizens.