Characteristic scenery of the Mississippi--Card-playing--
Sabbath on board a steamboat--An old sinner--A fair
Virginian--Inquisitiveness of Yankee ladies--Southern
ladies--A general--Ellis's cliffs--Mines--Atala--Natchez
in the distance--Duelling ground--Fort Rosalie--Forests--A
traveller's remark.
The rich and luxuriant character of the scenery, which charms and
attracts the eye of the traveller as he ascends the Mississippi from
New-Orleans to Baton Rouge, is now changed. A broad, turbid flood,
rolling through a land of vast forests, alone meets the eye, giving
sublime yet wild and gloomy features to the scene. On looking from the
cabin window, I see only a long, unbroken line of cotton trees, with
their pale green foliage, as dull and void of interest as a fog-bank.
The opposite shore presents the same appearance; and so it is, with the
occasional relief of a plantation and a "landing place," comprising a
few buildings, the whole distance to Natchez. A wretched cabin, now and
then, varies the wild appearance of the banks--the home of some
solitary wood-cutter. Therefore, as I cannot give you descriptions of
things abroad, I must give you an account of persons on board.
There are in the cabin about forty passengers, of both sexes. Two of the
most genteel-looking among them, so far as dress goes, I am told, are
professed "black-legs;" or, as they more courteously style themselves,
"sporting gentlemen."--There is an organized body of these _ci-devant_
gentry upon the river, who have local agents in every town, and
travelling agents on board the principal steamboats. In the guise of
gentlemen, they "take in" the unwary passenger and unskilful player,
from whom they often obtain large sums of money. I might relate many
anecdotes illustrative of their mode of operating upon their victims;
but I defer them to some future occasion. As the same sportsmen do not
go twice in the same boat, the captains do not become so familiar with
their persons as to refuse them passage, were they so inclined. It is
very seldom, however, when they are known, that they are denied a
passage, as gambling is not only permitted but encouraged on most of the
boats, by carrying a supply of cards in the bar, for the use of the
passengers. Even the sanctity of the Sabbath is no check to this
amusement: all day yesterday the tables were surrounded with players, at
two of which they were dealing "faro;" at the third playing "brag." And
this was on the Sabbath! Indeed the day was utterly disregarded by
nearly every individual on board. Travelling is a sad demoralizer. My
fellow-passengers seemed to have adopted the sailors' maxim, "no Sunday
off soundings." Their religion was laid by for shore use. One good,
clever-looking old lady, was busily engaged all the morning hemming a
handkerchief; when some one remarked near her, "This time last Sunday we
made the Balize."--"Sunday! to-day Sunday!" she exclaimed, in the utmost
consternation, "Is to-day Sunday, sir?"
"It is indeed, madam."
"Oh, me! what a wicked sinner I am! O dear, that I should sew on
Sunday!"--and away she tottered to her state-room, amidst the pitiless
laughter of the passengers, with both hands elevated in horror, and
ejaculating, "Oh me! what a wicked sinner! How _could_ I forget!" In a
short time she returned with a Bible; and I verily believe that she did
not take her eyes from it the remainder of the day, unless it might be
to wipe her spectacles.--Good old soul! she was leaven to the whole lump
of our ungodly company.
There are several French gentlemen; one important looking personage, who
bears the title of general, and seems amply to feel the dignity it
confers; three or four Mississippi cotton planters, in large,
low-crowned, broad-brimmed, white fur hats, wearing their clothes in a
careless, half sailor-like, half gentleman-like air, dashed with a small
touch of the farmer, which style of dressing is peculiar to the
Mississippi country gentleman. They are talking about negroes,
rail-roads, and towing shipping. There is also a travelling Yankee
lawyer, in a plain, stiff, black coat, closely buttoned up to his chin,
strait trowsers, narrow hat, and gloves--the very antipodes, in
appearance, to the _non chalant_, easy, care-for-nothing air of his
southern neighbours. A Methodist minister, in a bottle-green frock coat,
fancy vest, black stock, white pantaloons and white hat, is sitting
apart by the stove, deeply engaged upon the pages of a little volume,
like a hymn-book. Any other dress than uniform black for a minister,
would, at the north, be deemed highly improper, custom having thus so
decided; but here they wear just what Providence sends them or their own
taste dictates. There are two or three fat men, in gray and blue--a
brace of bluff, manly-looking Germans--a lynx-eyed, sharp-nosed New-York
speculator--four old French Jews, with those noble foreheads, arched
brows, and strange-expressioned eyes, that look as though always
weeping--the well-known and never to be mistaken characteristics of this
remarkable people. The remainder of our passengers present no
peculiarities worth remarking. So I throw them in, tall and short,
little and big, and all sorts and sizes, to complete the motley
"_ensemble_" of my fellow-travellers.
Among the ladies, besides the aged sinner of the pocket-handkerchief,
are a beautiful, dark-eyed, dark-haired Virginian, and an intelligent,
young married lady from Vermont, accompanied by her only child, a
handsome, spirited boy, between four and five years of age. The little
fellow and I soon became great friends; in testimony whereof, he is now
teasing me to allow him to scrawl his enormous pot-hooks over my sheet,
by way of assisting me in my letter. An apology for his rudeness, by
his mother, opened the way for a conversation; during which I discovered
that she possessed a highly cultivated mind, great curiosity, as a
stranger in a strange land, and her full share of Yankee
inquisitiveness. She was always upon the "guard," resolved that nothing
worthy of observation should escape her inquiring eye. She was a pure
New-England interrogative. So far as it was in my power, it afforded me
pleasure to reply to her questions, which, as a stranger to southern
scenery, manners and customs, it was very natural she should put to any
one. With a southerner I might have journeyed from Montreal to Mexico,
without being questioned so often as I have been in this short passage
from New-Orleans. But unless we _can_ answer their innumerable
questions, (which, by the way, are most usually of a strongly
intelligent cast), travelling Yankee ladies are certainly, unless young
and pretty, a little annoying. I mean, always, the inquisitive ones; for
there are some who are far from being so. When a northerner is not
inquisitive, the fact may generally be ascribed to intellectual
dullness, or an uncultivated mind: in a southerner, to constitutional
indolence and love of quiet, which are enemies to one jot more corporeal
or mental exertion than is absolutely requisite to enable them to glide
through existence. I do not rank my fellow-traveller in the class of the
troublesome inquisitives--though full of curiosity, compared with the
"daughters of the sun,"--but she is no more so than any intelligent
person should be in a strange, and by no means uninteresting country.
"The general" is quite the lion on board. It would amuse you to observe
the gaping mouths, fixed eyes, and attentive looks around, when the
general speaks. He is the oracle--the _ne plus ultra_ of excellence--the
phoenix of generals!
By this time you must be wearied with my prosing about persons of whom
you know nothing, and are probably waiting for more interesting subjects
for description. Thus far, with the exception of one bluff, with a few
buildings perched upon its summit, there has been no variety in the
monotony of the gloomy forests which overhang the river.
Ellis's cliffs, which present the wildest and most romantic scenery upon
the Mississippi below St. Louis, are now in sight. They rise proudly
from the river, and compared with the tame features of the country, are
invested with the dignity of mountains. They exhibit a white
perpendicular face to the river, and are about one hundred and fifty
feet in height. Gold and silver ore have been lately found in the strata
of the cliffs; but not in sufficient purity and quantity to induce the
proprietors to excavate in search of them. Here are discovered the first
stones--small pebbles of recent formation--that are seen on ascending
the river. The surrounding country, which is nearly on a level with the
summit of the cliffs, recedes pleasantly undulating from the river, rich
with highly cultivated cotton plantations, and ornamented with the
elegant residences of the planters. It is said that few countries in
the world possess a more beautifully diversified surface--or one more
pleasantly distributed in hills and valleys. In the vicinity also, of
this romantic spot, Chateaubriand has laid some of the scenes of his
wild and splendid fiction "Atala."
We are now within twenty miles of Natchez. The river is here very
circuitous, making the distance much greater than by land. The shores
continue to exhibit the peculiarly gloomy and inhospitable features
which, with the occasional exception of a high bluff, plantation or
village, they present nearly to the mouth of the Ohio. The loud and
startling report of a cannon in the bows of the boat, making her stagger
and tremble through every beam, is the signal that our port is in
sight--a pile of gray and white cliffs with here and there a church
steeple, a roof elevated above its summit, and a light-house hanging on
the verge! At the foot of the bluffs are long straggling lines of wooden
buildings, principally stores and store-houses; the Levee is fringed
with flat boats and steamers, and above all, tower majestically the
masts of two or three ships. The whole prospect from the deck presents
an interesting scene of commercial life and bustle. But this is not
Natchez! The city proper is built upon the summit level, the tops of
whose buildings and trees can be seen from the boat, rising higher than
the cliff. The ascent from the lower town, or as it is commonly
designated, "under the hill", is by an excavated road, of moderate
elevation. The whole appearance of the place from the deck is highly
romantic. On our left, opposite Natchez, is Vidalia, in Louisiana, a
pleasant village of a few houses, built on one street parallel with the
river. Here, in a pleasant grove above the town, is the "field of
honour," where gentlemen from Mississippi occasionally exchange leaden
cards--all in the way of friendship.
On our right, a few hundred yards below Natchez, crowning a noble
eminence, stand the ruins of Fort Rosalie, celebrated in the early
history of this country. Its garrison early in the last century was
massacred, by the Natchez tribe, to a single man, who escaped by leaping
from the precipice. Here is the principal scene of Chateaubriand's
celebrated romance. The position of the fort, in a military point of
view, commanding, as it does, a great extent of river and country, is
well chosen. Beyond the fort, a peep at rich woods, green hills, and
tasteful country-seats, is agreeably refreshing to the eye, so long
accustomed to gaze upon melancholy forests, and dead flats covered with
cane-brakes. Indeed, the mournful character of the forests along the
Mississippi, is calculated to fill the mind with gloom. The long black
moss, well known at the north as the "Carolina moss", hangs in immense
fringes from every limb, frequently enveloping the whole tree in its
sombre garb. The forests thus clothed present a dismal yet majestic
appearance. As the traveller gazes upon them his mind partakes of their
funereal character, and the imagination is ready to assent to the strong
and highly poetical remark of a gentleman on board, with whom I was
promenading the "guard," who observed that it would seem that the
DEITY was dead, and that nature had clothed herself in mourning.