Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

As I intended to make no stay at Mobile, I did not use any of the letters of introduction I had with me, thinking I should in a short time see more of the men and manners of the place, if I accompanied a travelling acquaintance I had made, in his calls upon the firms with whom he had to transact business. I was four times during the morning invited, not to liquor, that expression I never once heard in America, but to take a drink. There is much heartiness of feeling here, and everybody carries out, to the full extent, the American practice of shaking hands with everybody, which is a rational way of expressing goodwill without saying anything. I walked about a mile out into the environs to see the houses of the merchants and well-to-do inhabitants. I passed three hospitals, one for yellow-fever cases that can pay, one for yellow-fever cases that cannot pay, and one for general cases. The streets of the town were full of pedestrians and of traffic. In this respect it bore a very favourable comparison with Charleston, where nothing was going on. The population amounts to about 34,000. The Spaniards who originally settled the place have been utterly obliterated. On inquiry I found that none had remained in the city, being quite unable in any department of business to support the competition of the Anglo-Saxon, but that among the mean whites, at some little distance from Mobile, a few Spanish names were to be found. These remnants of the original settlers the Alabamans call Dagos, a corruption of the common Spanish name of Diego.

A Day on the Gulf of Mexico.

The great cotton ships cannot come to up to Mobile. There is, however, a magnificent bay, in the form of a great lake with a narrow inlet from the sea, in which they ride at anchor, waiting for their cargoes, at a distance of between thirty and forty miles from the city. I counted thirty-seven of these ships. They were almost all English. Some said there was not a single American among them. A few years ago far the greater part of them would have been American; but since they have taxed heavily everything received into the country, or manufactured in it, they have ceased to be able to build or to sail ships as cheaply as we can.

I shall never forget the day I passed on the Gulf of Mexico in going from Mobile to New Orleans. The air was fresh and had just the slightest movement in it. The sky was unclouded, and the sun delightfully warm. We have pleasant enough days at home occasionally, but this belonged to quite another order of things. And as the darkness came on, the night was as fine and bright, after its kind, as the day had been. Many sat talking on the deck till long after the sun was down. Some, I suppose, felt that this would be their only day on the Gulf of Mexico.

The communication between Mobile and New Orleans is not carried on by the mouth of the Mississippi, but by the Lake of Ponchatrain. This is a large piece of very shallow water, seldom more than seven feet deep, which communicates with the sea. A railway is carried out into the lake on piles for a distance of five miles. At the terminus of this long pier the steamers deposit and receive their passengers.

On entering the city, at the other terminus of this railway, at half-past six o’clock in the morning, the first sight that attracted attention was the French Sunday Market. This is what everyone who visits New Orleans is expected to see. It is a general market, and the largest of the week. I do not remember ever to have seen a larger or a busier one. What attracted my attention most, on passing through it, was the great quantity and variety of wild fowl exhibited for sale. The Marché des Fleurs was very good. In short there was an abundant supply of everything. The shops in the neighbourhood were all open; and in the American part of the city also, I saw several open on the morning of this day.

New Orleans still retains very much of the air of a French city. Many of the streets are narrow, and paved (which I saw nowhere else in America) with large blocks of granite. This is brought from New England. Something however of the kind was necessary here, on account of the wet alluvial soil on which the city stands; it would be truer to say on which it floats. The houses are generally lofty, and their external character is rather French than English. The French language is spoken by a large part of the population. In the street cars, one is almost sure to hear it, coming often from the mouths of coloured people.

Episcopal Church at New Orleans.

While at New Orleans I heard Dr. Beckwith, the Bishop elect of Georgia. His church is about a mile and a half from the St. Charles’s Hotel, in one of the best suburbs of the city. In going I asked a gentleman, who was seated next to me in the street car, the way. He replied that he was one of the doctor’s congregation, and would be my guide. This led to some conversation; he said ‘that of late years, in New Orleans and elsewhere in the States, the Episcopal Church had begun to exert itself, and was now doing wonders in bringing people into its communion.’ I told him that only a few days before I had seen it stated in an editorial of a New York paper, ‘that the Episcopal Church was now quite the church of the best society in the United States; and that if one wished to get into good society, it was wise to join this communion.’ He replied ‘that statements of this kind read well in newspapers, and that of course there were some people who could be influenced by such considerations; but that in his opinion the most effective reasons for attracting people to the Episcopal Church was the character of the Church itself, and of those who did belong and had belonged to it. It was an historical church, with a grand theological literature of its own, and that, indeed, almost the whole literature of England appeared to belong to the Episcopal Church; and it had, which he thought the most potent reason of all, a definite creed and a dignified ritual.’

Dr. Beckwith’s congregation consisted of about a thousand very well-dressed people. As is usual everywhere in Episcopal churches in America, there was an offertory; and I saw, as its pecuniary result, four large velvet dishes piled full of greenbacks, placed in the hands of the three officiating clergymen. Nobody gives less than a quarter of a dollar note. The Bishop elect preached. He is a very good-looking, able, and eloquent man. He ridiculed the idea of a ‘psalm-singing’ eternity, and affirmed that the possession of knowledge would be an immeasurably nobler means of happiness. But if we concede this, there will still remain the question whether the exercise of the feelings of the heart would not confer on the majority of the human race far more happiness than the exercise of the powers of the intellect.