THE writer recently made a visit to a section of the country that still retains much of its own distinctive individuality and charm, most delightful in these days, when the various widely-differing regions of our vast commonwealth seem to be trying to become as much alike as possible, and the very word provincial is a name of scorn. We left New Orleans in the early morning and much time was consumed in crossing the Mississippi on a ferry. Soon after reaching the other side, the sugar plantations began, and our way lay through mile after mile of brown furrowed fields stretching, as flat as the sea, to the distant river levee, the only high ground in sight. What a glorious scene it must be in the spring, when the young green cane begins to sprout, or in the fall, when it stands drawn up full height, waiting to be cut! It is an extremely wet country, full of countless ditches and trenches, and there is something about the flat land and straight, intersecting canals that reminds one of Holland. As the train swept through one plantation after another, we could see in the distance, gleaming white homesteads, set in little islands of green live-oaks, cut off by a fence from the spreading sea of bare fields. Each plantation had its sugar-house, lifting four or five tall smoke-stacks in air, and its laborers' quarters—quite a little village of cabins or cottages, and sometimes, we ran close enough to see old-time darkies in actual red bandannas, staring at the train.
There is a class of French "poor whites" in this region, called "Cajins"—a corruption of "Arcadians"—and they are indeed a forlorn remnant of those unfortunate exiles who wandered all the way from Nova Scotia to the bayous of Louisiana. The writer's memory reverted in a flash to the fields of Grandpré, which she had visited only last summer, and to the vision of the lonely well-sweep and straggling line of ancient French willows, which once bordered the vanished village street. Strange to say, there is a noticeable resemblance between the flat, inlet-threaded meadows of the Minas Basin and the winding bayous around us. Occasionally the plantations would give way to swamps, where palmettos, bamboos, and cypresses with their weirdly beautiful trailing moss, were growing out of a watery, glassy floor, and it was hard to realize that if drained, these marshes would be quite as good soil as the rest. We saw a solitary hunter, gun in hand, standing on a bit of tree trunk in the bog; how he could have gotten there without a boat or else wings, is a mystery.
The house at which we visited, realized in every way one's ideal of what an old plantation home should be. It is an immense square building with double galleries, tall white columns and green shutters; it faces the Mississippi, which, however, cannot be seen from the ground floor on account of the levee. The architecture is of engaging simplicity—four large rooms, each exactly twenty-five feet square, upstairs and down, with a hall eighteen feet wide between. At the rear is a long wing, perhaps a later addition, with the inevitable and delightful gallery around it. The house contains many treasures of beautiful antique workmanship and mementos of a by-gone time. Our hostess pointed with pride to an immense pair of glass candle shields, about two feet high, which had belonged to her grandmother. They stood on each side of the mantelpiece, over tall silver candlesticks, whose flame they could protect from all possible draughts. We slept in a high four-poster bed, with a canopy, lined with red pleated cloth, like the inside of a mushroom, which would have done credit to a lady of the ancient régime.
Though the sugar-making season was over on our host's plantation, he took us to one in the neighborhood that was still in operation. The equipment was of the most up-to-date kind—great iron claws to rake the cane from the cars to a sort of traveling trough, called a conveyor, which carries it up to the chopper: from whence it travels through several crushers until all the juice is squeezed out and the remaining pulp is as dry as tinder. This is carried off to be used as fuel or fertilizer. The cane juice goes from one boiling vat to another, being purified with lime and sulphur, and refined again and again, smelling more and more delicious at every stage of its progress. We watched the syrup being changed to sugar by a very interesting centrifugal process, and then shaken into barrels. Two barrels at a time were placed upon metal plates, and by means of an electric current, were made to dance gaily, shaking down the sugar as it fell until it was firmly packed. It was an absurd sight, and the writer was reminded at once of dancing furniture at a spiritualistic séance. We were surprised to learn that one-third of the ground has to be planted in corn to supply the stock; the crops are rotated so as to allow sugar-cane for two successive years, then corn the third, etc.
Our host and hostess and their family were true types of southern hospitality. The occasion of our visit was a wedding, and the old house was crowded to its utmost capacity, with new guests arriving on every train. Yet there was no stir of nervous excitement: everything moved with a tranquil gaiety, and we felt a delightful sense of informality as if we were a part of the household. Perhaps the strongest sense-impression which remains with the writer, is the memory of waking in the early morning and looking out, at the dawn-flushed sky beyond the white pillars of the verandah and the gray Spanish moss draping the live-oak trees. That tender, peaceful moment, full of color and soft brightness, seemed to seal upon the mind something of the poetry and the romance of the old South.
THE LORELEI: by a Student-Traveler
JUST where the river Rhine narrows and inclines, making a drop of five feet which causes the water to flow more swiftly, towers the Rock of the Lorelei, four hundred and fifty feet high and nearly perpendicular, at the base of which sunken rocks form a whirlpool in the rapidly flowing stream. At the top of the high rock in olden days, so the legend runs, a maiden sat and sang, and as she sang she combed her golden hair. And her song was so full of magic that boatmen on the river below, falling under the spell of her enchantment, as they listened to the song, forgot the dangers of the whirling waters and were dashed to pieces on the sunken rocks underneath.