A most
home-like and happy-looking region. And now and then you see a pillared
and porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. Here is testimony
of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists that filed along
here half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope says -
'The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued
unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and
luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange, were
everywhere to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary of
looking at them.'
Captain Basil Hall -
'The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, in the
lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar
planters, whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous
slave-villages, all clean and neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to
the river scenery.
All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way. The
descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a word changed in
order to exactly describe the same region as it appears to-day - except
as to the 'trigness' of the houses. The whitewash is gone from the negro
cabins now; and many, possibly most, of the big mansions, once so
shining white, have worn out their paint and have a decayed, neglected
look.
