 | XXIV. The South-west |  |
24. XXIV.
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
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
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,
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
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
journied 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
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 phenix 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
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 Levée
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
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
Deity was dead, and that nature had clothed herself
in mourning.
| XXIV. The South-west | |