There are regions of Louisiana coast whose aspect seems not of the
present, but of the immemorial past--of that epoch when low flat
reaches of primordial continent first rose into form above a Silurian
Sea. To indulge this geologic dream, any fervid and breezeless day
there, it is only necessary to ignore the evolutional protests of a few
blue asters or a few composite flowers of the coryopsis sort, which
contrive to display their rare flashes of color through the general
waving of cat-heads, blood-weeds, wild cane, and marsh grasses. For,
at a hasty glance, the general appearance of this marsh verdure is
vague enough, as it ranges away towards the sand, to convey the idea of
amphibious vegetation,--a primitive flora as yet undecided whether to
retain marine habits and forms, or to assume terrestrial ones;--and the
occasional inspection of surprising shapes might strengthen this fancy.
Queer flat-lying and many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in
juiciness and color and consistency, crackle under your feet from time
to time; the moist and weighty air seems heated rather from below than
from above,--less by the sun than by the radiation of a cooling world;
and the mists of morning or evening appear to simulate the vapory
exhalation of volcanic forces,--latent, but only dozing, and
uncomfortably close to the surface. And indeed geologists have
actually averred that those rare elevations of the soil,--which, with
their heavy coronets of evergreen foliage, not only look like islands,
but are so called in the French nomenclature of the coast,--have been
prominences created by ancient mud volcanoes.
The family of a Spanish fisherman, Feliu Viosca, once occupied and gave
its name to such an islet, quite close to the Gulf-shore,--the loftiest
bit of land along fourteen miles of just such marshy coast as I have
spoken of. Landward, it dominated a desolation that wearied the eye to
look at, a wilderness of reedy sloughs, patched at intervals with
ranges of bitter-weed, tufts of elbow-bushes, and broad reaches of
saw-grass, stretching away to a bluish-green line of woods that closed
the horizon, and imperfectly drained in the driest season by a slimy
little bayou that continually vomited foul water into the sea. The
point had been much discussed by geologists; it proved a godsend to
United States surveyors weary of attempting to take observations among
quagmires, moccasins, and arborescent weeds from fifteen to twenty feet
high. Savage fishermen, at some unrecorded time, had heaped upon the
eminence a hill of clam-shells,--refuse of a million feasts; earth
again had been formed over these, perhaps by the blind agency of worms
working through centuries unnumbered; and the new soil had given birth
to a luxuriant vegetation. Millennial oaks interknotted their roots
below its surface, and vouchsafed protection to many a frailer growth
of shrub or tree,--wild orange, water-willow, palmetto, locust,
pomegranate, and many trailing tendrilled things, both green and gray.
Then,--perhaps about half a century ago,--a few white fishermen cleared
a place for themselves in this grove, and built a few palmetto
cottages, with boat-houses and a wharf, facing the bayou. Later on
this temporary fishing station became a permanent settlement: homes
constructed of heavy timber and plaster mixed with the trailing moss of
the oaks and cypresses took the places of the frail and fragrant huts
of palmetto. Still the population itself retained a floating character:
it ebbed and came, according to season and circumstances, according to
luck or loss in the tilling of the sea. Viosca, the founder of the
settlement, always remained; he always managed to do well.
He owned several luggers and sloops, which were hired out upon
excellent terms; he could make large and profitable contracts with New
Orleans fish-dealers; and he was vaguely suspected of possessing more
occult resources. There were some confused stories current about his
having once been a daring smuggler, and having only been reformed by
the pleadings of his wife Carmen,--a little brown woman who had
followed him from Barcelona to share his fortunes in the western world.
On hot days, when the shade was full of thin sweet scents, the place
had a tropical charm, a drowsy peace. Nothing except the peculiar
appearance of the line of oaks facing the Gulf could have conveyed to
the visitor any suggestion of days in which the trilling of crickets
and the fluting of birds had ceased, of nights when the voices of the
marsh had been hushed for fear. In one enormous rank the veteran trees
stood shoulder to shoulder, but in the attitude of giants over
mastered,--forced backward towards the marsh,--made to recoil by the
might of the ghostly enemy with whom they had striven a thousand
years,--the Shrieker, the Sky-Sweeper, the awful Sea-Wind!
Never had he given them so terrible a wrestle as on the night of the
tenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. All the waves of the
excited Gulf thronged in as if to see, and lifted up their voices, and
pushed, and roared, until the cheniere was islanded by such a billowing
as no white man's eyes had ever looked upon before. Grandly the oaks
bore themselves, but every fibre of their knotted thews was strained in
the unequal contest, and two of the giants were overthrown, upturning,
as they fell, roots coiled and huge as the serpent-limbs of Titans.
Moved to its entrails, all the islet trembled, while the sea magnified
its menace, and reached out whitely to the prostrate trees; but the
rest of the oaks stood on, and strove in line, and saved the
habitations defended by them ...