Along the levees were many ocean liners loading with molasses, sugar and cotton, chiefly cotton, in which there is an enormous and constantly increasing trade. The biggest ships now come up right alongside the wooden wharves of the levees, and for several miles lie there bow to stern.
The theatres and business blocks, the customhouse, and city hall and other public buildings of New Orleans are none of them modern, but appear to have been built long years ago, yet, notwithstanding their marks of antiquity, the business part of the city is animate with stir and action. There is hope in men’s faces in New Orleans, and the younger men are finding in the city’s waxing commerce opportunity for achievement which their forefathers never knew. With the completion of the Panama Canal, New Orleans will become one of the greatest of commercial ports.
ALONG THE LEVEE—NEW ORLEANS
From New Orleans I shall go via the Southern Pacific Railway, crossing the Mississippi and traveling westward through Louisiana and Texas to San Antonio, Texas, and then I shall go south into Mexico.
III
Southwestward to the Border
(Written on the train and mailed at Laredo, Texas.)
November 16th.