ts the Gulf in Atchafalaya
Bay. A few miles above the railway terminus at Berwick's there enters
from the west the Teche, loveliest of Southern streams. Navigable for
more than a hundred miles, preserving at all seasons an equal breadth
and depth, so gentle is its flow that it might be taken for a canal, did
not the charming and graceful curves, by which it separates the
undulating prairies of Attakapas from the alluvion of the Atchafalaya,
mark it as the handiwork of Nature. Before the war, the Teche for fifty
miles, from Berwick's Bay to New Iberia, passed through one field of
sugar canes, the fertile and well-cultivated estates succeeding each
other. The mansions of the opulent planters, as well as the villages of
their slaves, were situated on the west bank of the bayou overlooking
the broad, verdant prairie, where countless herds roamed. On the east
bank, the dense forest had given way to fields of luxuriant canes; and
to connect the two parts of estates, floating bridges were constructed,
with openings in the center for the passage of steamers. Stately live
oaks, the growth of centuries, orange groves, and flowers of every hue
and fragrance surrounded the abodes of the _seigneurs_; while within,
one found the grace of the _salon_ combined with the healthy cheeriness
of country life. Abundance and variety of game encouraged field sports,
and the waters, fresh and salt, swarmed with fish. With the sky and
temperature of Sicily, the breezes from prairie and Gulf were as
health-giving as those that ripple the heather on Scotch moors. In all
my wanderings, and they have been many and wide, I can not recall so
fair, so bountiful, and so happy a land.

The upper or northern Teche waters the parishes of St. Landry,
Lafayette, and St. Martin's--the Attakapas, home of the "Acadians." What
the gentle, contented creole was to the restless, pushing American, that
and more was the Acadian to the creole. In the middle of the past
century, when the victories of Wolfe and Amherst deprived France of her
Northern possessions, the inhabitants of Nouvelle Acadie, the present
Nova Scotia, migrated to the genial clime of the Attakapas, where
beneath the flag of the lilies they could preserve their allegiance,
their traditions, and their faith. Isolated up to the time of the war,
they spoke no language but their own _patois_; and, reading and writing
not having come to them by nature, they were dependent for news on their
cures and occas