Note 4. The members of the peerage and baronetage of Great Britain, the members of the untitled aristocracy—the staff officers of the army and navy—the members of the different clubs—are each of them sufficiently numerous to effect this object; and if any subscription was opened, it could not fail of being filled up.
Note 5. One of those works was Abbot’s ‘Young Christian’, or some other work by that author.
Note 6. Indeed, one cannot help being reminded of what Beaumarchais makes Figaro say upon the liberty of the press in another country. “On me dit que pendant ma retraite économique il s’est établi dans Madrid un système de liberté sur la vente des productions, qui s’étend même a celles de la presse; et, pourvu que je parle dans mes écrits, ni de l’autorité, ni du culte, ni de la politique, ni de la morale, ni des gens en place, ni des corps en crédit, ni de l’opéra, ni des autres spectacles, ni de personne qui tient a quelque chose, je puis tout imprimer librement; sous l’inspection de deux ou trois censeurs.”
Volume One—Chapter Eight.
The Mississippi.
I have headed this chapter with the name of the river which flows between the principal States in which the society I am about to depict is to be found; but, at the same time, there are other southern States, such as Alabama and Georgia, which must be included. I shall attempt to draw the line as clearly as I can, for although the territory comprehended is enormous, the population is not one-third of that of the United States, and it would be a great injustice if the description of the society I am about to enter into should be supposed to refer to that of the States in general. It is indeed most peculiar, and arising frow circumstances which will induce me to refer back, that the causes may be explained to the reader. Never, perhaps, in the records of nations was there an instance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected from the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi. The stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which have been committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander on its bank, or trust yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those who are received into its waters ever rise again, or can support themselves long on its surface without assistance from some friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatable of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and, as you descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man. Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks, covered with trees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots, often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest (upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the racoon, the opossum or the squirrel, climb) as traps to the adventurous navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not time to steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom. There are no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewer of the western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a river of desolation; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.
The early history of the Mississippi is one of piracy and buccaneering; its mouths were frequented by these marauders, as in the bayous and creeks they found protection and concealment for themselves and their ill-gotten wealth. Even until after the war of 1814 these sea-robbers still to a certain extent flourished, and the name of Lafitte, the last of their leaders, is deservedly renowned for courage and for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the mouth of the river.