The population of New Orleans is about one hundred thousand, and this
includes that portion who reside there during the fall and winter
months. The number who may be regarded as residents, according to the
proper understanding of what constitutes a residence, will probably not
exceed sixty or seventy thousand. There is doubtless, every winter, a
transient population of thirty or forty thousand, who spend from six
to eight months in the city, and as soon as the warm season commences,
take their departure in swarms, as regular as wild geese do from the
North on the first appearance of a flake of snow. But on the return
of cold weather they are not all of them found to return; for, as
a general thing, a large majority get enough of New Orleans in one
season. And separate from the Creole population, or that portion who
are descendants of the first settlers, the French and Spanish, I do
not think there is one in twenty of the residents of New Orleans, men
who are now in business, who design to spend their days in the City.
They are now, however, engaged in a routine of business that fixes them
there for a time; yet they are firmly resolved, at no distant day, to
seek another home. But before that time will be determined upon, by
many who are now moving in the busy scenes of that fated City, they
will be taken to a house and a resting place that will be more certain
and unchanging than the bed of that mighty river which will forever
pour its immense flood into the bosom of the Ocean. To the man of
middle life, when he begins to turn the “descending scale,” and the
warm current of his youthful blood begins to cool, and run sluggish
through the channels of life, and before the bright visions of his
fancy begin to flit the dark clouds of the uncertain future, to such
a man will New Orleans present no charms, and the longer he remains
there, will its varied and blighting realities appear more and more
desolating. The Creole population know no other home, and consequently
have nothing before them from which to make a comparison that will
enable them to appreciate a higher and better state of existence. Hence
they will always be found there. But to the adventurer, he who has come
in from the Northern States, and whose early life is filled up with the
impressions of the pure and wholesome associations of a well educated,
refined and moral people, this City presents nothing that can call up
the pleasing and delightful scenes of his early days, but the contrast
is calculated to beget an insatiable hankering for his early home.