NEW ORLEANS.
Locality of New Orleans.--The Mississippi.--The Old and the
New.--Ceded to Spain.--Creole Part in the American Revolution.--
Retransferred to France.--Purchased by the United States.--
Creole Discontent.--Battle of New Orleans.--Increase of
Population.--The Levee.--Shipping.--Public Buildings, Churches,
Hospitals, Hotels and Places of Amusement.--Streets.--Suburbs.--
Public Squares and Parks.--Places of Historic Interest.--
Cemeteries.--French Market.--Mardi-gras.--Climate and
Productions.--New Orleans during the Rebellion.--Chief Cotton
Mart of the World.--Exports.--Imports.--Future Prosperity of
the City.
As the traveler proceeds down the Mississippi, from its source to its
mouth, a unique phenomenon strikes his attention. The river seems to
grow higher as he descends. The bluffs, which on one side or the other
rise prominently along its banks in its upper waters, grow less bold,
and finally disappear as he progresses southward. And if it should be
the season of high water, he will find himself, as he nears New Orleans,
gliding down a river which is higher than its bordering land, and which
is restrained in its penchant for destruction, by massive dykes, or
levees, as they are termed in this section.
New Orleans, the commercial metropolis of Louisiana, known as the
"Crescent City," is situated on the eastern, or, more correctly
speaking, the northern bank of the Mississippi River, which here, after
running northward several miles, takes a turn to the eastward.
Originally built in the form of a crescent, around this bend in the
river, it has at the present time extended itself so far up stream that
its shore line is now more in the shape of a letter S. It is one hundred
and twelve miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, 1,200 miles south of
St. Louis, and 1,438 miles southwest of Washington. The city limits
embrace an area of nearly 150 square miles, but the city proper is a
little more than twelve miles long and three miles wide. It is built on
alluvial soil, the ground falling off toward Lake Pontchartrain, which
is five miles distant to the northward, so that portions of the city are
four feet lower than the high water level of the river. The city is
protected from inundation by a levee, twenty-six miles in length,
fifteen feet wide and fourteen feet high. The streets are drained into
canals, from which the water is raised by means of steam pumps, with a
daily capacity of 42,000,000 gallons, which elevates it sufficiently to
carry it off to Lake Pontchartrain.
The geological history of this section of the country is extremely
interesting. The whole region south of New Orleans is made land, having
been brought down from the Rocky Mountains and the western plains, by
that tireless builder, the Mississippi, which has heaped it up, grain by
grain, probably changing the entire course of its lower waters in doing
so, filling up old channels and wearing itself new ones, until it
finally extends its delta, like an outstretched hand, far out into the
waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The river has a history and a romance, all
its own, beginning with the time when French and Spanish, alike, were
searching for the "Hidden River"--that mysterious stream which,
according to Indian tradition, "flowed to the land from which the sweet
winds of the southwest brought them health and happiness, and where
there was neither snow nor ice," and which was known by so many
different names--and ending with the construction of the gigantic
jetties, which have given depth and permanence to the channels of its
delta.
The visitor finds the city very unlike northern towns with which he has
been familiar. To the Creole quarter especially there is a foreign look,
which is intensified by the frequent sound of foreign speech. It is as
if one had stepped into some old-world town, and left America, with its
newness and its harshness of speech, far behind. But it is not so far
away, either. It is only around the corner, or, at best, a few squares
off. New Orleans of the nineteenth century jostles New Orleans of the
eighteenth on every hand. It has seized upon the old streets, with their
quaint French and Spanish names, and carried them to an extent never
dreamed of by those who originally planned them. It has reared modern
structures beside those hoary with age, and set down the post common
school building and the heretical Protestant church beside the venerable
convent and the solemn cathedral.
The main streets describe a curve, running parallel to the river, and
present an unbroken line from the upper to the lower limits of the city,
a distance of about twelve miles. The cross streets run for the most
part at right angles from the Mississippi River, with greater regularity
than might be expected from the curved outline of the river banks. Many
of the streets are well paved, and some of them are shelled; but many
are unpaved, and, from the nature of the soil, exceedingly muddy in wet
weather, and intolerably dusty in dry. The city is surrounded by cypress
swamps, and its locality and environments render it very unhealthy,
especially during the summer season. Yet, notwithstanding its
insalubrity, it is constantly increasing in population and business
importance. Certain sanitary precautions, adopted in later years, have
somewhat improved its condition.
New Orleans has a history extending further back than that of most
southern towns. While others were making their first feeble struggles
for existence with their treacherous foes, the red-skins, New Orleans
was stirred by discontent and insurrection. In 1690, d'Iberville, in the
name of France, founded the province of Louisiana, and Old Biloxi, at
the mouth of the Lost River, as the Mississippi was still termed, was
made the capital. The choice of site proved a disastrous one, and the
seat of government was moved to New Biloxi, further up the river.
Meantime, Bienville, his younger brother, laid out a little
parallelogram of streets and ditches on a crescent-shaped shore of the
river, in the midst of cypress swamps and willow jungles. A colony of
fifty persons, many of them galley slaves, formed this new settlement.
Houses were built, a fort added, and the little town received its
present name, in honor of the Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans. In
the same year John Law sent eight hundred men from La Rochelle. They had
no sooner landed than they scattered to the four winds, a number of
Germans among them alone remaining in or near the promised city. Amid
many discouragements the town prospered, and when, one after another,
three cargoes of women were sent out from the old country, to furnish
wives for the new settlers, their content was complete. Thus many of the
proudest aristocrats of New Orleans trace their descent from these
"_Filles de Casette_," as they were called, each one being endowed with
a small chest of property.
Here the French Creoles were born, and lived a wild, unrestrained life,
valorous but uneducated, and became such men and women as one would
expect to find in a military outpost so far from the civilized world.
For sixty-three years the little colony struggled for life, enduring
floods and famines, and the terrors of Indian warfare, when, in 1762,
the province of Louisiana was transferred by an unprincipled king to
Spain. The news did not reach the remote American settlement until 1764.
It was hardly to be expected that a colony so separated by time and
distance from the mother country should be intensely loyal, but the
people felt themselves to be French and French only, and they resented
this unwitting transfer of their allegiance as an unendurable grievance.
The Spanish Governor, Ulloa, did not land in New Orleans until two years
later; and though he showed himself to be a man of great discretion, and
inclined to adopt a conciliatory policy, the people made the little town
so hot for him, that in two more years he was glad to return to Spain.
They sent a memorial after him, which, being a most unique document, is
worth recording, in substance. Says a recent historian, Mr. George W.
Cable:--
"It enumerated real wrongs, for which France and Spain, but not Ulloa,
were to blame. Again, with these it mingled such charges against the
banished Governor as--that he had a chapel in his own house; that he
absented himself from the French churches; that he inclosed a fourth of
the public common to pasture his private horses; that he sent to Havana
for a wet nurse; that he ordered the abandonment of a brick-yard near
the town, on account of its pools of putrid water; that he removed
leprous children from the town to the inhospitable settlement at the
mouth of the river; that he forbade the public whipping of slaves in the
town; that masters had to go six miles to get a negro flogged; that he
had landed in New Orleans during a thunder and rain storm, and under
other ill omens; that he claimed to be king of the colony; that he
offended the people with evidences of sordid avarice; and that he added
to these crimes--as the text has it--'many others, equally just and
terrible!'"
In 1769 the colony was in open revolt, and was considering the project
of forming a republic. But the arrival of a Spanish fleet of twenty-four
sail checked their aspirations towards independence, and paralyzed their
efforts, and they yielded without a struggle.
In 1768 New Orleans was a town of 3,200 persons, a third of whom were
black slaves. After the establishment of Spanish rule, although the
population was thoroughly Creole, and opposed to the presence of English
traders, the government at first winked at their appearance, and finally
openly tolerated them, so that English boats supplied the planters with
goods and slaves, and English warehouses moored upon the river opposite
the town disposed of merchandise.
In 1776, at the breaking out of the American Revolution, the Creole and
Anglo-American came into active relations with each other, a relation
which has since qualified every public question in Louisiana. The
British traders were suddenly cut off from communication, and French
merchants commanded the trade of the Mississippi. Americans followed
close after the French, and the tide of immigration became Anglo-Saxon.
France was openly supporting the American colonies in their rebellion
against England, and in 1779 Spain declared war against Great Britain,
so that the sympathies of the Creoles were led, by every tie, to the
rebels. Galvez, then Governor of Louisiana, and also son of the Viceroy
of Mexico, a young man, brave, talented and sagacious, who had adopted a
most liberal policy in his administration, discovered that the British
were planning the surprise of New Orleans. Making hasty but efficient
preparations, with a little army of 1,430 men, and with a miniature gun
fleet of but ten guns, he marched, on the twenty-second of August, 1779,
against the British forts on the Mississippi. On the seventh of
September, Fort Bute, on Bayou Manchac, yielded to the first assault of
the Creole Militia. The Fort of Baton Rouge was garrisoned by five
hundred men with thirteen heavy guns. On the twenty-first of September,
after an engagement of ten hours, Galvez reached the fort. Its
capitulation included the surrender of Fort Panmure, a place which, by
its position, would have been very difficult of assault. In the
Mississippi and Manchac, four English schooners, a brig and two cutters
were captured. On the fourteenth of the following March, Galvez, with an
army of two thousand men, having set sail down the Mississippi, captured
Fort Charlotte, on the Mobile River. On the eighth of May, 1781,
Pensacola, with a garrison of eight hundred men, and the whole of West
Florida, surrendered to Galvez. One of the rewards bestowed upon her
Governor for his valorous achievements was the Captain-generalship of
Louisiana and West Florida. He never returned to New Orleans, however,
and four years later succeeded his father as Viceroy of Mexico. Thus,
while Andrew Jackson was yet a child, New Orleans was defended from
British conquest by this gallant Spanish soldier.
In 1803 Louisiana was transferred to France by Spain, and great was the
rejoicing of the Creole colonists, who, during the forty years of their
Spanish domination, had never forgotten their French origin. But their
joy was quickly turned to bitterness by the news which speedily
followed, that Louisiana had been sold, by Napoleon I, to the United
States. The younger generation, and those who had a clear apprehension
of all in the way of prosperity which this change might mean to them,
were quickly reconciled, and set about the business of life with renewed
interest. But to the French Creoles, as a class, who, during their long
alienation had still at heart been thoroughly French, to become a part
of a republic, and that republic English in its origin, was intensely
distasteful. This was the deluge indeed, which Providence had not kindly
stayed until after their time. They withdrew into a little community of
their own, and refused companionship with such as sacrificed their caste
by accepting the situation, and adapting themselves to it. But in spite
of these disaffected persons, the prosperity of the city dated from that
time. Its population increased, and its commerce made its first small
beginnings.
New Orleans was incorporated as a city in 1804, having then a population
of about 8,000 inhabitants. In 1812 the first steamboat was put upon the
Mississippi, though it was not until several years later that, after a
period of experiment and disaster, success was attained with them. Yet
without steamboats the development of the great Mississippi Valley, and
the creation of the extended cities upon its banks, would have been
well-nigh impossible. Its winding course, its swift current, its
shifting channel, and the snags which line its bottom, make navigation
by other craft than steamboats well-nigh impossible. Canoes, batteaux
and flat-boats might make the voyage down the river with tolerable speed
and safety, but to return against the current was a difficult thing to
do; and a trip from St. Louis or Louisville to New Orleans and return
required months. Where, then, would have been the mighty commerce of the
West, but for the timely invention of the steam engine, and its
application to water craft?
On January eighth, 1815, New Orleans was successfully defended against
the British by General Jackson, who threw up a strong line of defences
around the city, protected by batteries, and who, with a force of
scarcely six thousand men, defeated fifteen thousand British, under Sir
Edward Packenham, the enemy sustaining a loss of seven hundred killed,
fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners, while the
American loss was but seven men killed and six wounded. The old battle
field is still retained as a historic spot. It is four and one-half
miles south of Canal street, washed by the waters of the Mississippi,
and extends backward about a mile, to the cedar swamps. A marble
monument, seventy feet in height, and yet unfinished, commemorative of
the victory, overlooks the ground. In the southwest corner of the field
is a national cemetery.
The old city bears the impress of the two nations to which it at
different times belonged. Many of the streets still retain the old
French and Spanish names, as, for instance, Tchapitoulas, Baronne,
Perdido, Toulouse, Bourbon and Burgundy streets. There are still, here
and there, the old houses, sandwiched in between those of a later
generation--quaint, dilapidated, and picturesque. Sometimes they are
rickety, wooden structures, with overhanging porticoes, and with windows
and doors all out of perpendicular, and ready to crumble to ruin with
age. Others are massive stone or brick structures, with great arched
doorways, and paved floors, worn by the feet of many generations,
dilapidated and heavy, and possessing no beauty save that which is lent
them by time.
The city is made up of strange compounds, which even yet, after the
lapse of more than three-quarters of a century since it became an
American city, do not perfectly assimilate. Spanish, French, Italians,
Mexicans and Indians, Creoles, West Indians, Negroes and Mulattoes of
every shade, from shiny black to a faint creamy hue, Southerners who
have forgotten their foreign blood, Northerners, Westerners, Germans,
Irish and Scandinavians, all come together here, and jostle one another
in the busy pursuits of life. The levee at New Orleans represents all
spoken languages; and the popular levee clerk must have a knowledge of
multitudinous tongues, which would have secured him a high and
authoritative position at Babel. The Romish devotee, the mild-faced
"sister," in her ugly black habiliments and picturesque head-gear, the
disciple of Confucius, the descendant of the New England Puritan, the
dusky savage, who still looks to the Great Spirit as the giver of all
life and light, the modern skeptic, and the black devotee of Voodoo, all
meet and pass and repass each other. All nationalities, all religions,
all civilizations, meet and mingle to make up this city, which,
upholding the cross to indicate its religion, still, in its municipal
character, accepts the Mohammedan symbol of the crescent. Added to the
throng which comes and goes upon the levee, merchants, clerks, hotel
runners, hackmen, stevedores, and river men of all grades, keep up a
general motion and excitement, while piled upon the platforms which
serve as a connecting link between the water-craft and the shore, are
packages of merchandise in every conceivable shape, cotton bales seeming
to be most numerous.
Along the river front are congregated hundreds of steamers, and
thousands of nondescript boats, among them numerous barges and
flat-boats, thickly interspersed with ships of the largest size, from
whose masts float the colors of every nation in the civilized world. New
Orleans is emphatically a commercial town, depending in only a small
degree, for her success, upon manufactures.
[Illustration: JACKSON SQUARE AND OLD CATHEDRAL, NEW ORLEANS.]
New Orleans is not a handsome city, architecturally speaking, though it
has a number of fine buildings. Its situation is such that it could
never become imposing, under the most favorable circumstances. The
Custom House, a magnificent structure, built of Quincy granite, is, next
to the Capitol at Washington, the largest building in the United States.
It occupies an entire square, its main front being on Canal street, the
broadest and handsomest thoroughfare in the city. The Post Office
occupies its basement, and is one of the most commodious in the country.
The State House is located on St. Louis street, between Royal and
Chartres streets, and was known, until 1874, as the St. Louis Hotel. The
old dining hall is one of the most beautiful rooms in the country,
and the great inner circle of the dome is richly frescoed, with
allegorical scenes and busts of eminent Americans. The United States
Branch Mint, at the corner of Esplanade and Decatur streets, is an
imposing building, in the Ionian style. The City Hall, at the
intersection of St. Charles and Lafayette streets, is the most artistic
of the public buildings of the city. It is of white marble, in the Ionic
style, with a wide and high flight of granite steps, leading to a
beautiful portico. The old Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Louis is the
most interesting church edifice in New Orleans. It stands in Chartres
street, on the east side of Jackson Square. The foundations were laid in
1793, and the building completed in 1794, by Don Andre Almonaster,
perpetual _regidor_ of the province. It was altered and enlarged in
1850. The paintings in the roof of the building are by Canova and Rossi.
The old Ursuline Convent, in Conde street, a quaint and venerable
building, erected in 1787, during the reign of Carlos III, by Don Andre
Almonaster, is one of the most interesting relics of the early Church
history of New Orleans. It is now occupied as a residence by the Bishop.
The Charity Hospital, on Common street, was founded in 1784, has stood
on its present site since 1832, and is one of the most famous
institutions of the kind in the country. Roman Catholic churches,
schools, hospitals and asylums abound, some of them dating back for
nearly or quite a century.
The St. Charles Hotel is one of the institutions of New Orleans, and one
of the largest and finest hotels in the United States. It occupies half
a square, and is bounded by St. Charles, Gravior and Common streets. The
city has a French opera house, an academy of music, and several
theatres and halls. Like those of St. Louis, its inhabitants are
passionately fond of gayety, and places of amusement are well
patronized. Sunday, as in all Catholic cities, is devoted to recreation,
and the inhabitants, in their holiday garments, give themselves up to
enjoyment. Theatres, concert rooms and beer gardens are filled with
pleasure-seekers.
Canal street, the main business thoroughfare and promenade of New
Orleans, is nearly two hundred feet wide, and has a grass plot
twenty-five feet wide, in the centre, bordered on each side by trees.
Claiborne, Rampart, St. Charles and Esplanade streets are similarly
embellished. They all contain many fine stores and handsome residences.
Royal, Rampart and Esplanade streets are the principal promenades of the
French quarter. The favorite drives are out the Shell Road to Lake
Pontchartrain, and out a similar road to Carrollton. The lake is about
five miles north of the city, forty miles long and twenty-four wide, and
is famous for its fish and game. Cypress swamps, the trees covered with
the long, gray Spanish moss peculiar to the latitude, lie between the
lake and the city, and render the drive in that direction an interesting
one.
Carrollton, in the north suburbs, has many fine public gardens and
private residences. On the opposite shore of the river is Algiers, where
there are extensive dry docks and ship-yards. A little further up the
river, on the same side, is Gretna, where, during Spanish rule, lay
moored two large floating English warehouses, fitted up with counters
and shelves, and stocked with assorted merchandise.
New Orleans has a few small, tastefully laid out squares, among which
are Jackson, Lafayette, Douglass, Annunciation and Tivoli Circle. The
City Park, near the northeast boundary, contains one hundred and fifty
acres, which are tastefully laid out, but which is little frequented.
Jackson Square has a historic interest, it having been the old Place
d'Armes of colonial times. It was here that Ulloa landed in that
ill-omened thunder storm, and here that public meetings were held and
the colony's small armies gathered together. The inclosure, though
small, is adorned with beautiful trees and shrubbery, and shell-strewn
paths, and in the centre stands Mills' equestrian statue of General
Jackson.
The city is not without other objects of historic interest. During the
Indian wars barracks arose on either side of the Place d'Armes, and in
1758 other barracks were added, a part of whose ruin still stands, in
the neighborhood of Barracks street. Then there is the battle field,
already referred to, and many buildings belonging to a past century,
some of which have distinctive historic associations. Near Jackson
Square is the site of the oldest Capuchin Monastery in the United
States. Sailing down the Mississippi, the voyager will reach a portion
of the stream which flows almost directly south. Here is a point in the
river which bears the name, to this day, of the English Turn. Up the
mouth of the Mississippi sailed one day, in the seventeenth century, a
proud English vessel, bent on exploration and acquisition of territory
to England. Threading for a hundred miles the comparatively direct
course of the stream, it had then made two abrupt right-angled turns,
when, coming around a third point, in advance of it, it saw a French
ship, armed and equipped, and bearing down stream under full sail. The
English ship was given to understand that the Mississippi was "no
thoroughfare" for boats of its nationality, and commanded to turn and
retrace its course, which it reluctantly, but no less surely did. Hence
the name "English Turn."
The Cemeteries of New Orleans are most peculiar in their arrangement and
modes of interment. The ground is filled with water up to within two or
three feet of the surface, and the tombs are all above ground. A great
majority of them are also placed one above another. Each "oven," as it
is called, is just large enough to admit a coffin, and is hermetically
sealed when the funeral rites are over. A marble tablet is usually
placed upon the brick opening. Some of the structures are, however,
costly and beautiful, being made of marble, granite or iron. There are
thirty-three cemeteries in and near the city, and of these the Cypress
Grove and Greenwood are best worth visiting.
The most picturesque and characteristic feature of New Orleans is the
French Market, on the Levee, near Jackson Square. The gathering begins
at break of day on week-days and a little later on Sunday morning, and
comprises people of every nationality represented in the city. French is
the prevailing language, but it will be heard in every variety, from the
pure Parisian to the childish jargon of the negroes.
Mardi-Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, is observed in New Orleans by peculiar
rites and ceremonies. Rex, King of the Carnival, takes possession of the
city, and passes through the streets, accompanied by a large retinue,
his staff and courtiers robed in Oriental splendor. The city gives
itself up to mirth and gayety, with an abandon only paralleled by that
witnessed in Italy on the same occasion; and the day is concluded by
receptions, tableaux and balls.
[Illustration: NIGHT PARADE OF THE MYSTIC CREW--MARDI-GRAS FESTIVAL,
NEW ORLEANS.]
New Orleans boasts a semi-tropical climate, being situated in latitude
29 deg. 58' north. The summers are oppressively hot, but the winters are
mild and pleasant, with just sufficient frost to kill any germs of
disease engendered by her unhealthful situation. Semi-tropical fruits,
such as the orange, banana, fig and pine-apple, grow readily in her
gardens, where are also cultivated many of the productions of the
temperate zone. The neighboring country is clothed with a rich and
luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation, and forests of perennial green, in
which the cypress and live-oak predominate.
New Orleans had a population, in 1820, of 27,000. In 1850 it had
increased to 116,375, and in 1860 to 168,675. In common with other
cities of the South, New Orleans suffered in her business interests
severely during the war of the Rebellion. Louisiana having seceded from
the Union in 1861, New Orleans was closely blockaded by the Federal
fleet, and on April twenty-fourth, 1862, the defences near the mouth of
the river were forced by Commodore Farragut, in command of an expedition
of gunboats. On the surrender of the city General B. F. Butler was
appointed its military Governor, and held possession of it until the
close of the war. Its commerce was entirely destroyed during that
period, its business interests crushed, and many of its leading men
impoverished, and, in addition, the State was disturbed by intestine
troubles, which kept affairs in an unsettled condition. New Orleans did
not rally as quickly as St. Louis from the effects of the war.
Nevertheless, in 1870 its population had increased to 191,418, and in
1874 the value of its exports, including rice, flour, pork, tobacco,
sugar, etc., but excepting cotton, were estimated at $93,715,710. Its
imports the same year were valued at more than $14,000,000. It is the
chief cotton mart of the world, and its wharves are lined with ships
which bear this commodity to every quarter of the globe. In the amount
and value of its exports, it ranks second only to New York, though its
imports are not in the same proportion, which always speaks well for the
business prosperity of a city. The census of 1880 gave it a population
of 216,140, showing that its progress still continues. No longer cursed
by the presence of the "peculiar institution," its former slave marts
turned into commercial depots or abolished altogether, and its
population numbering to a greater degree every year the industrious
class, New Orleans will do more in the future than maintain her present
prosperity; she will build up new industries, and originate new schemes
of advancement; so that she is certain to continue her present supremacy
over her sister cities in the South.