Four Months in a Sneak-Box / A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

Memory brought also another picture I hoped it had been my good fortune to forget. It was a scene on the veranda of a country house. Five sisters, all pretty girls, whose grace arid vivacity I had often admired, were there, each in her rocking-chair, and each swinging to and fro, as though perpetual motion had been discovered. Why must an American woman have a rocking-chair? In no other country in the world, excepting among the creoles of South America, is this awkward piece of furniture so popular. Burn the cradles and taboo the graceless rocking-chair, and our children will have steadier heads and our women learn the attractive grace of quiet ease.

The following day I struggled against head winds and swashy seas, until their combined forces proved too much for me, and succumbing as amiably as possible under the circumstances, the little white boat was run ashore on the Picou Plantation, where the coast was fortunately low. The rain and wind held me prisoner there until midnight, when, with a rising moon to cheer me, I forced a passage through the blockade of driftwood, and being once more on the river, waved an adieu to my last camp on the Mississippi.

I was now only thirty-seven miles from New Orleans. Rowing rapidly down the broad river, now shrouded in gloom, with the fleecy scuds flying overhead in the stormy firmament, I fully realized that I was soon to leave the noble stream which had borne me so long and so safely upon its bosom. A thunder-shower rose in the west—its massive blackness lighted by the vivid flashes which played over its surface. The houses of the planters along the river's bank were enveloped in foliage, and the air was so redolent with the fragrance of flowers that I seemed to be floating through an Eden. The wind and the clouds disappeared together, and a glorious sunrise gave promise of a perfect day. With the light came life. Where all had been silent and restful, man and beast now made known their presence. The rising sun seemed to be the signal for taking hold where they had let go the night before. The crowing of cocks, the cries of plantation hands, the hungry neigh of horses, the hundred and one sounds of this work-a-day world, greeted my ears, while my eyes, taking a rapid survey of the surrounding steamers, coal-arks, and barges of every description, carried quickly to my brain the intelligence that I was near the Crescent City of the Gulf. Soon forests of masts rose upon the horizon, for there were vessels of all nations ranged along the levee of this once prosperous city.

Anxious to escape the officious kindness always encountered about the docks of southern cities, I peered about, hoping to find some quiet corner in which to moor my floating home. Near the foot of Louisiana Avenue I saw the fine boat-house of the "Southern Boat Club," and being pleasantly hailed by one of its members, hove to, and told him of my perplexity. With the ever ready hospitality of a southerner, he assured me that the boat-house was at my disposal; and calling a friend to assist, we easily hauled the duck-boat out of the water, up the inclined plane, into her new quarters.

The row upon the Mississippi from its junction with the Ohio down to New Orleans, including many stoppages, had occupied nineteen days, and had been accelerated by considerable night voyaging. The flow of the Mississippi was about one third faster than that of the Ohio. Lloyd's River Map gives the distance from the mouth of the Ohio to the centre of New Orleans as ten hundred and fifty-five miles, but the surveys of the United States Engineer Corps make this crooked route ten hundred and twenty miles only.

My floating home being now in good hands, its captain turned his back on the water, and took a turn on land, leaving the river bounded by its narrow horizon, but teeming with a strange, nomadic life, the various types of which afforded a field where much gleaning would end in but a scanty harvest of good. Already my ears caught, in fancy, the sound of the restless waves of the briny waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and my spirits rose at the prospect of the broader experiences about to be encountered.

CHAPTER VIII.

NEW ORLEANS

BIENVILLE AND THE CITY OF THE PAST.— FRENCH AND SPANISH RULE IN THE NEW WORLD.— LOUISIANA CEDED TO THE UNITED STATES.— CAPTAIN EADS AND HIS JETTIES.— TRANSPORTATION OF CEREALS TO EUROPE.— CHARLES MORGAN.- - CREOLE TYPES OF CITIZENS.— LEVEES AND CRAWFISH.— DRAINAGE OF THE CITY INTO LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN.

THIS was my fifth visit to New Orleans, and walking through its quaint streets I observed many changes of an undesirable nature, the inevitable consequences of political misrule. As the past of the city loomed up before me, the various scenes of bloodshed, crime, and misery enacted, shifted like pictures in a panorama before my mind's eye. I saw far back in the distance an indomitable man, faint and discouraged, after the terrible sufferings of a winter at a bleak fort in the wilderness, drag his weary limbs to the spot where New Orleans now stands, and defiantly unfurling the flag of France, determined to establish the capital of Louisiana on the treacherous banks of the Mississippi. Such was Bienville, the hardy son of a Canadian father.