Viewed at an early hour, the large market-place on the Levee is a lounge
of a most amusing kind, exhibiting at one glance a more striking picture
of the variety of people to be found here than might be attained in any
other place.
Here may be seen the Spanish creole, cloaked and capped, followed by a
half-naked slave, making, with a grave quiet air, and in slow deliberate
speech, his frugal market. Bustling along directly in his wake, but with
frequent halts and crossings from side to side, comes a lively daughter
of France, her market-slave leading a little boy fancifully dressed _a
la hussarde_; with these she holds a running fire of chatter, only
interrupted by salutations to passing friends, or nods and smiles to
those more distant. Look yet a little longer, and, yawing along in
squads of three and four abreast, you will see sailors of all kinds
cheapening fruit and vegetables, together with cooks, stewards, and all
their dingy subordinates. Here is the up-looking, dare-devil Jack of Old
England; the clean, holiday-looking, well-dressed seaman of Marseilles,
with large gold ear-rings twinkling beneath the rim of his high-crowned
bright glazed hat. Next, moving stealthily by, with an uneasy, restless
look, notice a couple of low-built, light-limbed, swarthy fellows,
moustached and bearded, one wearing a red shirt and a broad-leafed
Panama hat, the other clad in a white _blouse_ with a scarlet worsted
sash drawn about his hips, a Montero cap, naked legs, and white canvass
slippers.
These fellows might, on the high seas, be easily mistaken for pirates;
here they are understood to belong to some one of the many snaky
schooners lying here, hailing from Havannah and the various ports along
the Mexican Gulf, and whose calling may be honest enough, but which
certainly look as though the necessity of stowing a cargo had been quite
overlooked in their building.
Meantime, circling about the outside of the building, stroll a band of
twenty or thirty Indians, dressed in all the picturesque, draggled
finery it is their delight to exhibit; the men half drunk or wholly so,
thrusting, as they pass, their filthy fingers into the negro girls'
baskets, and hiccuping forth some inquiry, to be repulsed by a
monosyllable or a look of contempt and anger, the sight of which excites
sorrow that any creature wearing the form of humanity should be fallen
so low as to be subject to it. The squaws are never seen in this brutal
condition; they crawl about with a load of light wood at their backs,
or, having disposed of their venture, may be seen seated on their heels,
telling their beads, or pulling their fingers through their thick black
hair, that, if kept clean, would be beautiful, or in some other way
tricking forth their charms to all advantage; for, though generally as
ugly as sin, they are as full of coquetry as any _belle_ of May-fair,
and as vain of admiration; of the which, to say truth, they appear to
come in for more than a share from our tars, two or three of whom may
usually be seen lounging alongside the youngest of the native group,
looking things they know not how to utter.
In this market of the Levee there is also an abundant display of fish,
flesh, and fowl, with as varied a store of earth's fruits as any one
place can produce. In the month of February we had here peas, lettuces,
beans of several kinds, kale, celery, pine-apples, bananas, oranges,
limes, lemons, with sweet potatoes and edibles of various other kinds
whose names were strange to me.
The beef here is, in appearance, inferior to that of the North, although
fed on the finest pastures in nature,--those of the Ohio and Kentucky,
but injured by the neglect and ill feeding consequent upon a voyage of
ten or twelve hundred miles in a crowded steam-boat.
The creole mutton, I should say, is equal to the best in this country,
being small-boned, sweet, and very fat. The great disadvantage the
_artiste_ labours under is the not being able to keep the meat long
enough to become quite tender; such is this climate that decomposition
follows quickly on death, and here the man is buried or the mutton eaten
without waiting until either becomes cold.
The _Place d'Armes_, near this market, is a large square, having an area
enclosed with rails in the centre: here the Indians usually congregate,
and within this a curious-looking group or two may commonly be found. To
see the tribe at toilet is not a little amusing: some hair-hunting,
catching and cracking this game, with a keen sporting look and an
obvious relish of the pursuit quite _varmint_; others mixing red or
white paint for the adornment of the nose, cheek, or eye, as custom or
taste may decide.
I could not rightly discover whether these marks were simply directed by
caprice, and assumed or laid aside at pleasure, or whether they were
worn in compliance with some imperative custom, and having a
translatable meaning, as some historians assert. Certain is it that I
have noticed a little _Choctaw belle_, with whom I had established a
sort of eye-flirtation of many days' standing; on one morning appealing
to my taste by an insinuating streak of white lead over each of her
bright eyes; on the next, giving my heart a stab from under a crimson
half-moon; and on the third, killing me quite by a broadside from each
chubby cheek, the right having at me with a ball of fiery red, the left
exhibiting one of jet black.
The costume of these people, when divested of the eternal filthy
blanket, is showy, and at times even becoming, and pleasing; bright
colours, fringes, tags, beads, and feathers of the ostrich, parroquet,
and eagle, constituted the raw material which the taste natural to the
sex, and the love of finery inherent in the squaw, has to work upon.