The disastrous affair of 1812 had made New Orleans a name familiar to Britain, and given to it a celebrity more general amongst all sorts of men than its vast trade alone would have achieved for it in double the time.
From the day also of my landing on the continent I had never heard this city named without accompanying remarks being elicited descriptive of its rapid increase, its singular position, and motley population, together with the speculations founded on the promise of its future greatness derived from its present healthful condition; that is, its political and commercial sanity; since no term can be worse applied, as illustrative of the views entertained of it by the North, whether physically or morally considered; views however that, on both these points, I have decided are singularly overcharged, even by persons one would conceive possessed of the information likely to lead to a correct judgment. This I attribute partly to the habit we are in of taking reports of places for granted, and repeating them from father to son without much personal examination, or rather comparison, and partly to the changes constantly operating upon society here, with a rapidity at least equal to the growth of building or the increase of produce and population; changes which come like Duncan's couriers, "thick as hail," the last giving the flat lie to the truth just told; to be, in turn, proved false by a successor.
To a stranger, the point of observance most original and striking, and which will at once inform and interest him, is the view from the Levee, with a walk along this artificial embankment, which commencing a hundred miles above New Orleans, and thence waiting on the stream whose rule it circumscribes, here bends like a drawn bow about the city, forming a well-frequented quay of some seven miles.
For three miles of this, the Levee is bordered by tiers of merchant shipping from every portion of the trading world, and close against it, those of the greatest tonnage, having once chosen a berth, may load or unload without shifting a line; a facility derived from nature that no port in the world can rival.
Along the whole extent of this line situated below the Levee, but at a distance of some two hundred feet, runs a range of store-houses, cotton-presses, and shops, connected by tolerably well-flagged side-walks; and certainly in no other place is such accommodation more absolutely required, the middle space or street, so called, being, after rain, a slough, to which that of Despond, as described by Bunyan, was a bagatelle; and floundering through, or pounded in which, are lines of hundreds of light drays, each drawn by three or four fine mules, and laden with the great staple, cotton.[3]
At both extremities of the tiers of shipping, but chiefly at the south, lie numberless steamboats of all sizes; and yet again, flanking these, are fleets of those rude rafts and arks constructed by the dwellers on the hundred waters of the far West; and thence pushed forth, freighted with the produce of their farms, to find, after many days, a safe haven and a sure market here.
Let it not be forgotten that many of the primitive-looking transports lying at this point have performed a drift of three thousand miles. Their cargoes discharged, they are immediately disposed of to be broken up; their crews working their way back on board the steamers, to return in the following year with a vessel and a freight, both of which are at this time flourishing in full vegetation in field and in forest.
The interest with which I looked upon these far-travelled barks I dare hardly trust myself to declare or to describe; they told me of men and of their increase, who, only for the waters on which they live, would be as little known and quite as uncivilized as the Indian whose land they have redeemed from the wild beast or more savage hunter, to bid it teem with abundance, and to be a refuge and a home for millions to rejoice in.
The appearance of the Levee during this season is most animated. At the quarter occupied by the great Western steamboats, the lading and discharging cargoes seldom ceases during the busy months, when each hour appears to be grudged if not devoted to toil. At night, fires mark the spots where work is most brisk, and the warehouses along the line are frequently illuminated from the street to the upper story: crowds of labourers, sailors, bargemen, and draymen cheer, and order, and swear in every language in use amongst this mixed population; and, above all, at regular intervals, rises the wild chorus of the slaves labouring in gangs, who, if miserable, are certainly the merriest miserables in existence.
No scene is more likely to impress a stranger with a full knowledge of the vast deal of trade transacted here in a few months than this prolonged bustle at a time when the rest of the city sleeps; and, as he pursues his way amongst tens of thousands of bales of cotton that actually cover the Levee for miles, he will cease to doubt of the wealth which he learns is on all hands accumulating with a rapidity almost partaking of the marvellous.