After Leaving Natchez, We Steamed Away With Renewed Vigour Towards That Centre Of Slavery And Dissipation, New Orleans, And Were In Due Course Moored To The Levee, Which Extends The Whole River-Length Of The City, And Is About A Mile In Extent.

The first news I heard, and which alarmed me not a little, was that the yellow fever was at this time raging in the city.

New Orleans is just fifty-four miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, and being built at the time of the Orleans Regency, contains many ancient structures. Its inhabitants, even to this day, are to a great extent either French or of Gaelic origin. It lies exceedingly flat, which causes the locality to be unhealthy and ill-suited to European constitutions; the soil is, however, fertile and rich; this is, perhaps, to be accounted for by the constant irrigation it undergoes from the overflowing of the Mississippi, which, like another Nile, periodically submerges the country around its banks. The town is situated on the east side of the river.

The vast quantity of shipping of all classes in the harbour is a very striking feature in this extensive and wealthy city. The bad eminence to which New Orleans has attained is painful to contemplate. Its wealth is purchased by the blood and tears of thousands of slaves, who are daily exposed like cattle in its markets; and this fact operates on the mind of an Englishman to the prejudice of its inhabitants.

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