The people had lost the rosy, hearty look of the blue grass country, and were pale and sallow, while increasingly numerous everywhere were the ebony-hued negroes. We were passing from the latitude of the mulattoes to that of the jet-blacks, the pure blooded Africans.
Leaving Memphis, we turned southeastward and then due south, through the central portions of the state of Mississippi. Here spreads a flat country, with thin, yellow soil in corn and cotton. Everywhere were multitudes of negroes, all black as night. Negro women and children were picking cotton in the fields. There were wide stretches of apparently abandoned land, once under cultivation, much of it now growing up in underbrush and much of it white with ripened seedling cotton. In many places the blacks were gathering this cotton, apparently for themselves. There were a few small towns, at long intervals. Everywhere bales of cotton were piled on the railway station platforms; generally the big, old-fashioned bales, occasionally the small bale made by the modern compress. This is the shipping season, and we frequently passed teams of four and six mules, hauling large wagons piled high with cotton bales coming toward the railway stations. We passed through great forests of the long-leaved yellow pine, interspersed with much cottonwood and magnolia, while the leaves of the sumach marked with vivid red the divisions of the clearings and the fields. The day was dull and cloudy and a chill lingered in the air. The two lady travelers sat all day long with their curtains down and never left their books. The scenery and life of Mississippi held no interest for them.
In the late afternoon we passed through Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, and could see in the distance the rising walls of the new statehouse, to be a white stone building of some pretentions. Here a number of Italians and Jews, well dressed and evidently well-to-do, entered our sleeper en route to New Orleans. The country trade of Mississippi is said to be now almost altogether in the hands of Jews and of Italians. The latter coming up from New Orleans, are acquiring many of the plantations in both Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as, in many cases, pushing out the blacks from the work on the plantations by reason of their superior intelligence, industry and thrift. A lull in Italian immigration followed the New Orleans massacre of the Mafia plotters some years ago, but that tragedy is now quite forgotten, and a steady influx of Italians of a better type has set in.
In the dining car, I sat at midday lunch with a round-faced, pleasant mannered man some forty years of age, with whom I fell into table chat. He was a writer on the staff of a western monthly magazine and was well acquainted with the country we were traversing. He pointed out places of local interest as we hurried southward, while many incidents of history were awakened in my own mind. All of this land of swamp and bayou and cotton field had been marched and fought over by the contending armies during the Civil War. Here Grant skirmished with Johnston and won his first great triumphs of strategy in the capture of Vicksburg. Here the cotton planters in “ye olden time” lived like lords and applauded their senators in Congress for declaring in public speech that “Mississippi and Louisiana wanted no public roads.” Here Spain and France contended for supremacy and finally yielded to the irresistible advance of the English-speaking American pioneer, pressing southwestward from Georgia, Carolina and Tennessee.
It was still the same flat country when, near dusk, we entered Louisiana. At the first station where we stopped an old man was offering for sale jugs of “new molasses” and sticks of sugar cane – the first hint that we were surely below the latitude of the frosts.
It was a murky night, no stars were out, only a flash of distant electric lights told us that we were approaching New Orleans. We were in the city before I was aware. Quickly passing many unlighted streets, we were suddenly among dimly lighted houses, and then drew into an old-time depot, a wooden building yet more dilapidated than that of Memphis. We were instantly surrounded by a swarm of negroes. There were acres of them with scarcely a white face to be seen. I made out one of the swarthy blacks to be the porter of the new St. Charles Hotel. Giving him my bags, I was piloted to an old-fashioned ’bus and was soon driving over well asphalted streets amidst electric lights, and found myself in the thoroughfares of a really great city. From broad Canal Street we turned down a narrow alley and drew up in front of a fine modern hotel. This is an edifice of iron, stone and tile, with seemingly no wood in its structure, large, spacious and filled with guests, the chief hostelry of New Orleans, and worthy of the modern conditions now prevailing in this Spanish-French-American metropolis of the Gulf States.
II
The Life and Color of New Orleans
After a well-served dinner in the spacious dining-room of the hotel, where palms and orange trees yellow with ripened fruit and exhaling the fragrance of living growth were set about in great pots, I lighted my cigar and strolled out upon narrow St. Charles street. Following the tide of travel I soon found myself upon that chief artery of the city’s life, – boulevard, avenue and business thoroughfare all in one – stately Canal street. It was crowded with a slowly moving multitude, which flowed and ebbed and eddied, enjoying the soft warm air beneath the electric lights and stars. I quickly became a part of it, taking pleasure in its leisurely sauntering company.
The typical countenance about me was of the dark, swarthy Latin south, and tall men were rarely met. Among the gossiping, good natured promenaders of Canal street there is none of the haste which marks New York’s lively “Rialto;” none of the scurry and jam which jostles you in brusque Chicago. In New Orleans there is an air of contented ease in the movement of the most poorly clad. Even the beggars lack the energy to be importunate.
At a later hour, crossing the wide thoroughfare, I was at once among narrow streets, the rues of the Vieux Carré, the Quartier Francais, – the Quartier now, but once all that there was of New Orleans. The transition was sharp. The buildings hinted of Quebec and Montreal, and of Old France. Balconies clung to second stories, high adoby and stucco walls were entered by narrow, close-barred doorways, latticed windows looked down upon the passer-by, and now and then, I fancied behind their jalousies the flash of dark eyes. My ear, too, caught softly sonorous accents which are foreign to the harsher palatals and sibilants of English. Beneath a glaring electric arc two swarthy pickaninnies were pitching coppers and eagerly ejaculating in curious, soft French. A man and a woman were chaffering at a corner meat shop, seller and buyer both vociferating in an unfamiliar tongue. I was hearing, for the first time, the Creole patois of old New Orleans.
Along one narrow rue– all streets are rues and all rues are narrow here – were many brilliant lights. It was the rue – where cafés and wine shops and quiet restaurants abound. When last in New York M B, had posted me and said, “If ever you shall be in New Orleans, go to the Café – . Go there and if you care to taste a pompano before you die, a pompano cooked as only one mortal on this earth can do the job, go there and whisper to the chef that ‘I’m your friend.’” So I went and found the chef and ever since have dreamed about that fish. The room was large; its floor was sanded and scrupulously clean. Many little tables were set along the walls. Pangs of hunger griped me the instant I peered within that door. I grew hungrier as I sat and watched the zest and relish with which those about me stowed away each dainty fragment. I was ready for that pompano when at last it came. I have eaten this fish in New York, in Baltimore, in Washington and in Richmond, and ever as I came further south did the delicacy of its flesh and flavor grow. Now, the long leap to New Orleans has given me this gourmet’s joy fresh taken from the waters of the Gulf. I ate with slow and leisurely delight, letting my enamored palate revel in the symphony of flavor, sipping my claret, and watching the strange company which filled the room. The men were mostly in evening dress – lawyers, bankers and business men. They had come in from the theatre or, perhaps, had spent the evening over cards. At some of the tables were only men, at others ladies were present, young, comely and, many of them, elegantly gowned. Black eyes were dominant among these belles, and here and there I fancied that I caught the echo, in some of their complexions, of that warmer splendor of the tropics which just a dash of African blood when mixed with white, so often gives, and which has made the octoroon demoiselles of New Orleans famous
