The entrance to Mobile Bay is commanded by Forts Morgan and Gaines, which are thirty miles below the city, and on the east side of Tensas River are the ruins of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, all of which played an important part in the defence of the city when it was attacked by Admiral Farragut, in August, 1864. One of the most desperate battles that was fought during the war took place in the harbor, when Farragut ran the blockade with a squadron of ten powerful men-of-war headed by his flagship, the Hartford, and encountered the Confederate fleet inside. One of the Union ships ran onto a torpedo and was instantly blown into fragments, but the other vessels met with little opposition until at the moment when Farragut thought the battle won, he saw with surprise the dark body of a strange vessel flying the Confederate flag and bearing down upon him at great speed, evidently intent upon ramming and sinking his ship. The Hartford, by a piece of good luck and skilful handling, managed to avoid the intended blow, and then followed an engagement that has few parallels in fierceness. The strange gun-boat proved to be the Tennessee, one of the most powerful and destructive that the Confederate Government had sent into service. The Union iron-clads closed around their black and terrible antagonist and battered her with their heavy prows of steel until the unequal contest was ended by her surrender. Forts Gaines and Morgan were also captured, but Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely still defended the city, which resisted all efforts at its reduction until April 12, 1865, three days after the surrender of Lee.
Mobile has grown greatly since the war, and now has a population of nearly 35,000. It is situated on a sandy plain that rises into high and very graceful hills. Notwithstanding the barren shore as nature made it, the arts of man have supplied the deficiency of soil and made of the streets bowers of lovely shade, so charming that much of the city’s fame is due to the noble trees that arch all its streets. Bienville Park is one of the prettiest spots in southern lands, noted far and near alike for its massive live-oaks, magnificent magnolias, and handsome fountain, a place swathed in delicious airs and luxurious with the richest and most beautiful vegetation.
A PLANTATION HOME IN MISSISSIPPI.—This is one of the few old-time Southern mansions that survived the shock of war and still remain as landmarks of the golden age of the South country, when the wealthy planters owned armies of slaves and entertained with a hospitality even more than princely. As a rule these mansions have fallen into decay, even where they were not wholly or partially destroyed, for when the master and his sons left their bones to bleach upon some distant battle-field, the light of the home went out, and the weaker members of the household, reduced in many instances to pinching poverty, sadly but bravely took up the battle of life in less favored localities. But prosperity promises once more to smile upon the South, and the old mansions are being rebuilt, but the old faces are no more seen beneath their roofs.
Westward from Mobile the route was by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad along the Gulf border of Mississippi, through some of the loveliest intervales that vision ever wandered over. The air is warm without debilitating sultriness, for the Gulf of Mexico tempers the atmosphere with refreshing humidity, and a constant breeze shakes the perfume out of flowering shrub and tree. Many beautiful places are passed on the run of one hundred and forty miles from Mobile to New Orleans, some of which are more or less noted as winter resorts, such as Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Beauvoir, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis. Beauvoir has a place in history as being the residence of Jefferson Davis for several years after the war, and where he died. The way is beautified also by many palatial homes and well-cultivated plantations that attest the thrift and prosperity of farmers of the New South.
Between Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis the road crosses an inlet of St. Louis Bay on a steel trestle, and a few miles further west passes over Pearl River and enters Louisiana. The land is level, and cut up by innumerable bayous, and after crossing the narrow outlet of Lake Pontchartrain, called Pigolet’s, the road runs along a tongue of sea marsh for a few miles, then plunges into a dismal swamp, where the alligator’s bellow and the cormorant’s cry are the only sounds that disturb its stillness, save when a train goes growling by. “The sea marsh is dotted with many lakes, where green vegetable rafts of lotus leaves and lily pods turn slowly with the tide or float lazily about, blown by the breath of a salt breeze sweeping in from the Gulf. But in the ghostly gloom of the swamp, the forest trees are like an assemblage of monstrosities, great gnarled trunks and knotted arms of moss-draped oaks, clutching at the fan-shaped fronds of palmettos, while the mixture of crooked bodies and twisted leaf-stems of the latonia appear as if they were the bodies and outstretched arms of horned goblins appealing for release.”
New Orleans is a very old city, settled by the French in 1718. Like other settlements of these early times, it has passed through many evil vicissitudes and been in turn a possession of France, Spain, and the United States. A singular thing in connection with the city is the fact that it is built upon ground that is considerably lower than the surface of the Mississippi during high water, and that it has no more substantial foundation than an alluvium deposit which has been going on for centuries, constantly extending into the Gulf, the point of outlet of the Mississippi. To prevent overflowing, the city is protected by a dyke, or levee, which is fifteen feet wide and fourteen feet high. This earth-wall follows the river’s crescent winding a distance of ten miles, while another extends across the rear to protect the city from Lake Pontchartrain. To secure a firm foundation for some of the large buildings, cotton-bales have been used on which to build, as piling is of no service. But that this character of basis is no disadvantage is proven by the fact that New Orleans is noted for its mammoth edifices, public, church and commercial, which give no sign of insecurity. The place is essentially cosmopolitan, for in no other city is the population more mixed, nearly every street being occupied by a different nationality. Commercially it is next to New York as an export city, and easily holds the honor of the leading cotton port of the country, from which one-fourth of the world’s supply is floated. She is likewise a city of many charms and great historic interest. Within the city proper occurred a terrible scene following the rebellion of 1763, when France ceded the place to Spain, while at its southern outskirts is the battle-field on which Jackson won his glorious victory over the British under Packenham, January 8, 1815. The city passed through another storm of shot and shell in 1862, when Farragut compelled its capitulation after a terrible bombardment. But these scars have long since healed, and New Orleans, despite plagues and wars, has held her position as Queen City of the South and one of the great metropoli of America, with a population now of 250,000, which is rapidly increasing. While New Orleans is famous for the romance with which her history is invested, for her immense importance as an export city, and also for the beauty of her parks and magnificence of her private residences, the curiosity of strangers is no less attracted by her cemeteries, which are unlike those of any others in the world. In earlier times it was the custom there to bury the dead in shallow graves, but this practice was finally abandoned for the more sacred and sanitary one of enclosing the bodies in tombs above the ground, and then hermetically sealing up the mortuary cell. This became a necessity because of the nature of the soil, where water is reached at a depth of two feet below the surface. Some of these tombs are mausoleums made of stone or iron and of beautiful architectural designs, but the more common form of disposition of the dead is in a wall pierced by cells large enough to contain a coffin, one above the other, to a height of seven or eight feet. There are thirty-three such cemeteries in New Orleans, in one of which (Greenwood) is a monument to the Confederate dead; and in another, the National, at Chalmette, the Union dead are similarly honored.