More than in anything else was I interested in the adventures and melancholy fate of La Salle; and I could not help wondering that American writers have done so little to illustrate the life of the brave chevalier—surely the most picturesque passage in their early history—the story and the scene equally inviting.
“The scene! Ah! lovely indeed!”
With such an exclamation did I hail it, when, for the first time, I sat at my window and gazed out upon a Louisiana landscape.
The windows, as in all Creole houses, reached down to the floor; and seated in my lounge-chair, with the sashes wide open, with the beautiful French curtains thrown back, I commanded an extended view of the country.
A gorgeous picture it presented. The pencil of the painter could scarcely exaggerate its vivid colouring.
My window faces westward, and the great river rolls its yellow flood before my face, its ripples glittering like gold. On its farther shore I can see cultivated fields, where wave the tall graceful culms of the sugar-cane, easily distinguished from the tobacco-plant, of darker hue. Upon the bank of the river, and nearly opposite, stands a noble mansion, something in the style of an Italian villa, with green Venetians and verandah. It is embowered in groves of orange and lemon-trees, whose frondage of yellowish green glistens gaily in the distance. No mountains meet the view—there is not a mountain in all Louisiana; but the tall dark wall of cypress, rising against the western rim of the sky, produces an effect very similar to a mountain background.
On my own side of the river the view is more gardenesque, as it consists principally of the enclosed pleasure-ground of the plantation Besançon. Here I study objects more in detail, and am able to note the species of trees that form the shrubbery. I observe the Magnolia, with large white wax-like flowers, somewhat resembling the giant nympha of Guiana. Some of these have already disappeared, and in their stead are seen the coral-red seed-cones, scarce less ornamental than the flowers themselves.
Side by side with this western-forest queen, almost rivalling her in beauty and fragrance, and almost rivalling her in fame, is a lovely exotic, a native of Orient climes—though here long naturalised. Its large doubly-pinnate leaves of dark and lighter green,—for both shades are observed on the same tree; its lavender-coloured flowers hanging in axillary clusters from the extremities of the shoots; its yellow cherry-like fruits—some of which are already formed,—all point out its species. It is one of the meliaceae, or honey-trees,—the “Indian-lilac,” or “Pride of China” (Melia azedarach). The nomenclature bestowed upon this fine tree by different nations indicates the estimation in which it is held. “Tree of Pre-eminence,” lays the poetic Persian, of whose land it is a native; “Tree of Paradise” (Arbor de Paraiso), echoes the Spaniard, of whose land it is an exotic. Such are its titles.
Many other trees, both natives and exotics, meet my gaze. Among the former I behold the “catalpa,” with its silvery bark and trumpet-shaped blossoms; the “Osage orange,” with its dark shining leaves; and the red mulberry, with thick shady foliage, and long crimson calkin-like fruits. Of exotics I note the orange, the lime, the West Indian guava (Psidium pyriferum), and the guava of Florida, with its boxwood leaves; the tamarisk, with its spreading minute foliage, and splendid panicles of pale rose-coloured flowers; the pomegranate, symbol of democracy—“the queen who carries her crown upon her bosom”—and the legendary but flowerless fig-tree, here not supported against the wall, but rising as a standard to the height of thirty feet.
Scarcely exotic are the yuccas, with their spherical heads of sharp radiating blades; scarcely exotic the cactacea, of varied forms—for species of both are indigenous to the soil, and both are found among the flora of a not far-distant region.