ftly
past by night and by day, bearing along the city's front a vast commerce
on down to the blue waters of the Gulf, and enriching the city by its
cargoes from the outer world and from the plantations of the upper
river. Strangely enough, the great yellow river flows above the city,
its surface being nearly thirty feet above the streets in time of flood.
It is held in its course by vast banks of earth.

[Illustration: THE SPANISH DAGGER IN BLOOM.]

It is a cold, drear March where the north star shines high overhead; but
here, where it seems suddenly to have lost its balance and to have
dropped low in the brilliant night, March is like June. It is June
indeed, June with its wealth of grasses, its noble avenue of
magnolias, its great green spread of live-oaks--most magnificent of
Southern trees; June with its soft balm, and its sweet sunshine, and its
perfume-laden air. And if you have never seen the pole star in the sky
of the north, where the star is almost directly over your head, you
cannot realize how strange a sight it is to see it so low in the sky as
it is here.

There is a large garden in this city--it is, in fact, a part of the city
proper. It was once a beautiful faubourg, now known as the Garden
District, where the people live outdoors in a fine old aristocratic way,
and where all the beauty in nature seen in the other sections of the
city seems to be outdone. Very many rare old homes are in this garden
region, with its deep hedges and ample grounds, inclosed in high stone
walls, and a wealth of flowers and noble courts and an abounding
hospitality. But what, after all, are houses to a people that lives
outdoors? Conveniences only; for such a people, better than houses are
the air of the open, the scent of the roses, the blue of the Southern
sky, the vast, strong sweep of the brilliant stars!

If we pause here along this street where run such every-day things as
electric street-cars, we shall see on one side of the splendid avenue a
smooth-paved roadway for the carriages, on the other a course for the
horsemen, and in the center a noble inner avenue of trees set in a
velvet-like carpet of grass; and here and there along the way, almost in
touch of your hand from the open car window, appears the Spanish dagger,
with its green, sharp blades and its snowy, showy plume. Not far away
stands a lowly negro cabin, where the sun beats down hot and fierce upon
a great straggling rose-bush, reaching up to the eaves,