New Orleans, “The Paris of the South.”--French quarters.--Tropical
street scene.--To Carrolton.--The Levées.--Classical
architecture.--A coloured funeral.--The dismal swamp.--Lake
Ponchartrain.--A gambling population.
The Hotel St. Charles is a very fine impressive building in the centre
of the city of New Orleans. It is of white stone, and the simple
colonnaded front, with its tall straight fluted columns, gives it quite
a classical appearance. It is the best hotel in the town, but it might
be better; it has spacious corridors, and handsomely furnished rooms,
but the cuisine is not so good as it should be in an hotel of such
pretensions, the table is poorly served, and it is wanting in that
liberality which is characteristic of the South. The service is very
scanty; one servant seems to have to do the work of six. Our waiter was
a simple biped--a mere man, when he ought to have had as many arms and
legs as a devil fish; he had need of them, he was always wanted here,
there, and everywhere, and seemed to flash about on invisible telegraph
wires.
We start in the early morning on a pedestrian excursion through this
“Paris of the South.” We almost fancy that we have gone to sleep in the
new world, and woke up in the old fair and familiar city across the sea.
It is the same, yet not the same; there is a similarity in the general
features, especially in the vicinity of Canal Street, to which I shall
allude more fully by and by, and an insouciant gaiety in the aspect of
the people, which pervades the very air they breathe; an electric
current seems always playing upon their spirits, moving their emotional
nature, sometimes to laughter, sometimes to tears. It seems as though
the two cities had been built on the same model, only differently draped
and garnished, decorated with different orders, and stamped with a
different die. Coming down a narrow lane, we met a typical old
Frenchwoman, her mahogany coloured face scored like the bark of an old
tree scarcely visible beneath her flapping sun-bonnet. She wore short
petticoats, and came clattering along over the rough stones in her
wooden sabots, while her tall blue-bloused grandson carrying her
well-filled basket strode beside her; and a meek eyed sister of charity
bent on her errand of mercy passed in at a creaking doorway. These were
the only signs of life we saw as we first turned on our way to the
French quarter of the town, which still bears the impress of the old
colonial days. This is the most ancient portion of the city, and full
of romantic traditions of the days that are dead and gone. The long,
narrow, crooked streets, running on all sides in a spidery fashion, with
rows of shabby-looking houses, remain exactly as they were a hundred
years ago. Strict conservatism obtains here; nothing has been done in
the way of improvement; the old wooden houses are bruised and battered
as though they had been engaged in a battle with time and been worsted;
they are covered with discolorations and patches, naked and languishing
for a coat of new paint. There are no dainty green sun blinds here, but
heavy worm-eaten wooden shutters, and queer timber doors hung on clumsy
iron hinges; here and there we get a glimpse of the dingy interiors
while a few bearded men are lounging smoking in the doorways, and a few
children, chattering like French magpies, are playing on the threshold.
Everything is quiet and dull--a sort of Rip Van Winkle-ish sleep seems
drooping its drowsy wings and brooding everywhere, till a lumbering dray
comes clattering over the cobble stones, and sends a thousand echoes
flying through the lonely streets.
From these stony regions, past the little old-fashioned church where the
good Catholics worshipped a century ago and we emerge upon Canal Street,
the principal business thoroughfare of the city; it is thronged with
people at this time of day, busy crowds are passing to and fro, the
shop windows are dressed in their most attractive wares, temptingly
exposed to view. Confectioners, fruit, and fancy stores overflow into
open stalls in front and spread along the sidewalk; huge bunches of
green bananas, strawberries, peas, pines, cocoa-nuts and mangoes,
mingled with dainty vegetables, are lying in heaps. We are tempted to
try a mango, the favourite southern fruit, of whose luscious quality we
have so often heard, but the first taste of its sickening sweetness
satisfies our desires. The street is very wide, and the jingle-jangle of
the car-bells, the rattling of wheels, and the spasmodic shriek and
whistle of the steam engine--all mingle together in a not unsweet
confusion. Lumbering vehicles, elegant carriages, street-cars, and a
fussy little railway, all run in parallel lines along the wide roadway.
This is the great backbone of the city, whence all lines of vehicular
traffic branch off on their diverse tracks into all the highways and
by-ways of the land. Here we get on to a car which carries us through
the handsomest quarter of the city. Quaint, old-fashioned houses,
surrounded by gardens of glowing flowers, and magnificent magnolias, now
in full bloom, stand here and there in solitary grandeur, or sometimes
in groups like a conclave of green-limbed giants, clothed in white
raiment, and perfumed with the breath of paradise. Past lines of elegant
residences, where the _élite_ of the city have their abode, and we soon
reach a rough wooden shed yclept a “depot.” Here the horses are
unhitched, and a steam dummy attached to carry us on our way. The little
dummy looks like a big-bellied coffee-pot as it puffs fussily along, on
its way, but it does its work well, and in a little time lands us at
“Carrolton.”
We alight at the railway terminus, at the foot of the levées, the Mecca
of our morning pilgrimage. We ascend a dozen cranky steps, and stand on
the top of the levée, with the coffee-coloured flood of the great
Mississippi rolling at our feet, and look back upon the low-lying city
behind us.
This king of rivers is here wide and winding, but drowsy and sluggish;
its vast waters rolling down from the north seem to languish here in the
indolence of the South; it stretches its slow length along, like a
sleeping giant with all its wondrous strength and power hushed beneath
the summer sun.
The levées form a delightfully cool promenade, and are thronged with
people on summer evenings. Cosy benches shaded by wide spreading green
trees are placed at certain distances, and glancing across the broad
brown lazy river to the opposite side the view is picturesque in the
extreme.
The architectural beauty of New Orleans is unique, and wholly unlike any
other Southern city; the avenues are wide and beautifully planted, a
generous leafy shade spreads every way you turn. The dwelling houses
which line St. Charles’s Avenue are graceful, classical structures;
there are no Brummagem gingerbread buildings, no blending together of
ancient and modern ideas, and running wild into fancy chimney-pots,
arches, points, and angles like a twelfth-cake ornament. Some are
fashioned like Greek temples, most impressive in their chaste outline
and simplicity of form; others straight and square, with tall Corinthian
columns or fluted pillars, sometimes of marble, sometimes of stone. The
severe architectural simplicity, the pure white buildings shaded by
beautiful magnolias and surrounded by brilliant shrubs and flowers, form
a vista charming to the eye and soothing to the senses, and all stands
silhouetted against the brightest of blue skies--a blue before which the
bluest of Italian skies would seem pale.
The aspect of the city changes on every side; we leave the fashionable
residential regions, and enter broad avenues lined with grand old forest
trees, sometimes in double rows, the thick leaved branches meeting and
forming a canopy overhead. The ground is carpeted with soft green turf,
and bare-legged urchins, black and white, are playing merry games; a
broken down horse is quietly grazing, and a cow is being milked under
the trees, while a company of pretty white goats, with a fierce looking
Billie at their head, are careering about close by. Pretty pastoral
bits of landscape on every side cling to the skirts, and fringe the
sides of this quaint city. As we get farther away from St. Charles’s
Avenue the better class of residences grow fewer and fewer, till they
cease altogether, and we come upon pretty green-shuttered cottages, with
their porches covered with blossoms, and rows of the old-fashioned straw
beehives in front. Here and there are tall tenement houses built of
cherry-red bricks, which are let out in flats to the labouring classes.
We happen to be the only occupants of the car, and our driver, glancing
back at us through the sliding door, and realising that we are strangers
in the land, divides his attention between his horses and his
passengers. He has a pale, fair, melancholy face and dreamy eyes--a kind
of blond Henry Irving--and we cannot get rid of an idea that Hamlet the
Dane has followed his lamented father’s custom of “revisiting the
glimpses of the moon,” and is doing us the honour of driving our car.
Presently we come upon a procession that attracts our interest. A party
of people, chiefly of the gentler sex--I cannot in this case say the
fairer, as they are all black as coals--are slowly parading the
sidewalk, the girls, even down to little children three or four years
old, all clad in white. It has been raining and the streets are still
wet; they are tramping over muddy crossings in white satin slippers,
their white dresses draggling in the damp, while their brown or black
faces and black shining eyes beam with a kind of grotesque incongruity
through their white veils.
“A bridal party?” we remark interrogatively to our Hamlet. The Prince of
Denmark shakes his head, and vouchsafes a grave and dreamy smile as he
corrects our mistake: “No, ma’am. It’s a coloured funeral.”
Turning into Claiborne Street we fancy it must be the entrance-gate to
the forest primeval; as far as the eye can reach we gaze through long
vistas of ancient trees, whose huge trunks are gnarled and knotted and
scarred by the passing ages. This delightful avenue has four rows of
these glorious trees, with double car-tracks running under their cool
and welcome shade; down the centre, and crossed by rude rustic bridges,
runs what we supposed to be a narrow canal or natural running stream,
but we learn that it is an open sewer, the peculiar soil and sanitary
arrangements of the city necessitating a system of open drainage--which
is, however, by no means unsightly or offensive; and through the
arteries of the city there run these narrow sewers, carrying all the
impurities and refuse as a kind of tributary offering to the glorious
Mississippi.
The burial grounds or cemeteries we pass on our way have a strange
appearance, as in consequence of the peculiarities of the soil and
climate, the dead are not buried under the earth, but are laid upon its
surface with the stone monument raised above them.
Another day we have a light springy carriage, and avoiding the
car-tracks bowl over the soft green turf, beneath the arching trees,
with the sunlight glinting through. We drive out of the city, and wind
about among its picturesque suburbs--a charming drive, though the air is
moist and warm, and our strength seems oozing from our finger-tips. We
can imagine what New Orleans must be in summer time, when even in these
April days our vital forces grow faint and feeble.
The public buildings, state offices, and churches, are remarkably fine
architectural features of the city. There is no need to describe them
here, for the written description of one church, unless indeed there is
some special history connected therewith, sounds much the same as
another; and any visitor to the city can get an excellent guide thereto
and familiarise himself with their appearance so far as he desires, and
some are interesting enough to repay him for his trouble.
There is one very favourite excursion, largely patronised by the
inhabitants of the city on warm summer evenings, and one which the most
casual tourist should not fail to take. We enter the little railway
train in Canal Street, the very heart of the city, and steaming
leisurely along we soon reach the outskirts, and run through pretty
woodland scenery, with dainty dwellings scattered here and there among
the full-foliaged trees. Presently we come upon a long stretch of open
country; on one side is the canal, with a wide roadway and spacious
tracts of cultivated lands beyond it. On the other side of the railway
track, on our right, there runs a similar carriage road and footway
running along the edge of a luxuriant thicket of green low-lying bushes,
which seem like the ragged fringe of the virgin forest; then there rises
clusters of slight willowy slips; a part of the pristine family of oaks
and alders which have grown and developed into gigantic trees,
thickening and twining their long arms together till they form an
impenetrable mass of green, but instead of a bit of forest primeval, we
are told that this is a most dismal swamp of many miles extent, utterly
impassable for either man or beast, and varying from two to eight or ten
feet deep, the abode of repulsive reptiles and other obnoxious
creatures. They say that it is no uncommon thing at certain seasons of
the year for a huge black or green snake to wriggle out of its home of
slush and slime and coil itself up on the pathway, or an alligator will
sometimes be found stretched along the railway track, its lidless eyes
staring stupidly at the sun.
The whole of this part of New Orleans has been reclaimed from these
extensive swamps, and no doubt, if the necessity should arise, the whole
ground may be reclaimed and cultivated or built over; but such a
proceeding could only be carried out at an almost fabulous expense, and
as the great lungs of the city have plenty of breathing room in other
directions, it will no doubt be left, for this century at least, in the
occupation of noisome reptiles, the refuse of God’s creatures.
Lake Ponchartrain, where we are presently safely deposited, is one of
the most picturesque spots in all this region; a silver shining sheet of
water, on whose surface the passing clouds seem softly sailing, for the
skies are reflected therein as in a mirror. We look across the water
upon wide stretches of undulating cultivated lands, “with verdure clad,”
a soft mossy carpet with purple flags and long lance-like grasses
reaching down to the water’s edge. A lovely garden, artistically
arranged with tropical flowers, fully half a mile long, runs along this
side of the lake, and among the beds of gorgeous blossoms there are
pretty winding walks, and rustic benches are arranged beneath
wide-spreading shady trees. A glorious promenade runs like a golden band
along the borders, and a pretty fancifully-built hotel and restaurant
stands at the head of the lake. It is a perfect nest of a place, hung
round with balconies and covered with climbing plants, the luxurious
Virginian creeper with its wealth of purple bloom with white star-like
flowers mingling between. Surrounding the hotel is a wide space studded
with little marble-topped tables, dedicated to the convenience of the
hungry and thirsty multitudes who flock thither up from the hot, dusty
town on summer evenings, to breathe the fresh cool air which blows
across the surface of the lake.
Tables and chairs are set in all kinds of shady nooks and corners, and
merry parties are sipping sherbet, lemonade, and ice-cream; even the
democratic “lager beer” is served in foaming goblets, and while the band
is playing people stroll to and fro or group under the trees eating
ices, and not always confining themselves to the above harmless
beverages. They enjoy themselves each after his own fashion, and it is
generally midnight before the last train returns with its living freight
towards the town.
We take our last evening stroll through the streets of New Orleans,
which have a fascination unknown to them by day. They are everywhere
brilliantly illuminated; we fancy it must be some special occasion, but
it is always the same; electric lights and gas-jets in quaint devices
are flaring everywhere, strains of music are floating on the air, the
shops and stalls are ablaze with brilliant colouring, and appear in
fancy dress--as a lady throws off her morning robes and appears _en
grande toilette_ for the evening festivities; open air performances,
shows, and theatres are in full swing. Strange to say, places that have
seemed quiet and harmless, even dingy, during the daytime, bloom out
into gambling dens, where the rattling of dice and the rolling of
billiard balls make deadly music through the night. How often some
haggard form, hunted by ruin and despair, slips like a shadow from these
lighted halls; a pistol-shot, a groan, and he vanishes into a darker
night, “where never more the sun shall rise or set.” There are no laws
against gambling; they are a free people here, and are allowed to choose
each his own road to ruin, consequently gambling is carried on to a
frightful extent, and by all kinds and conditions of men. It seems
indigenous to the soil, for while men stake houses and lands, nay, the
very last coin from their pockets, the very children gamble over their
tops and marbles or dirt pies in the gutter.
The inhabitants of New Orleans are never tired of expatiating on the
beauties of their city, and dilating on the golden history of its
romantic past, or the prosperous record of its present day. Their
devotion further insists on the general healthiness of its climate; they
admit there are occasional epidemics, but then at certain seasons
epidemics rage everywhere, they are not specially improvised for New
Orleans, and the black population suffers always more than the white.
Lovely though it be--a most quaint, picturesque old city, with its
bright skies and gorgeous growth of tropical flowers--no sane person
could have faith in its sanitary perfections. A beautiful human nest it
is; low-lying, as in a hole scooped out of the solid earth, many feet
below the waters of the Mississippi, partially surrounded by swamps of
the rankest kind, and girdled by silver streams and deep flowing rivers,
it must necessarily be the favourite resort of the malarial fiend. Here
that scourge of the South, the yellow fever, too, rising from sweltering
earth, sends forth his scorching, blighting breath, and clothes the land
in mourning. But every man clings to his own soil; no matter whether it
brings forth thorns or roses, he is satisfied with the gathering
thereof.
“Well,” exclaimed a devoted citizen as he cheerfully discussed the
subject with us, “in every country there is an occasional force which
carries off the surplus population; sometimes it is fire, or flood,
earthquakes or mining explosions. Nature sends us the yellow fever; of
course it is not a pleasant visitor, but it does its work well enough,
and I don’t know but it is as well to get out of the world that way as
any other.”
It is impossible to enumerate half the pleasant excursions which may be
taken from New Orleans. Its wonderful watery highways are among the
finest in the world, and wind through the land in all directions. By
them you may travel anywhere and everywhere through the loveliest
scenery of the South, as pleasantly as though the panorama were passing
the windows of your own drawing-room.
Splendid steamers--floating palaces indeed of gigantic proportions,
luxuriously upholstered, and fitted with all the carving and gilding so
dear to some travellers’ hearts--are eternally passing to and fro. We
were strongly disposed to take a trip on the “Natchez,” the sovereign
vessel, but time pressed, and we were compelled to move on.