r habits of luxury and ease rendering their
constitutions too delicate for the exposure of ordinary field labour. It
is not, however, as the reader will have observed, commiseration that
saves them from that degradation. As soon as beauty begins to fade,
which in southern climes it does prematurely, the unfeeling owners of
these unfortunates succeed in ridding themselves of what is now
considered a burden, by disposing of the individual to some heartless
trader. This is done unknown to the victim, and the news, when it
reaches her, drives her almost frantic; she at once seeks her
perfidious paramour, and finds to her dismay, that he has been gone
some days on a tour to the provinces, and is, perhaps, a thousand miles
off. Tears and protestations avail her nothing, the trader is
inexorable, she belongs to him by law, and go she must; at length,
having vainly expended her entreaties, she becomes calm, and submits in
sullen apathy to her wretched fate. This is the ordinary history of such
cases.

Considering it unsafe to remain longer in this infected city, from the
reports that the fever was gaining ground, I now made preparations for
leaving New Orleans, and as I had made an engagement to manage the
affairs of a gentleman in Florida, during his absence at Washington, I
determined to proceed thither with the least possible delay. In
furtherance of this object I made inquiries for a conveyance by water to
St. Marks, giving the preference to steam. In this object I was,
however, disappointed, and was obliged to take a passage on board a
brig, about to sail for that obscure port. The vessel was towed down to
the balize or mouth of the Mississippi, in company with two others, by a
departing steamer, which had on board the mail for Bermuda and St.
George's Island. Arrived at the balize, whose banks for several miles
are overflowed by the sea, I saw a small fleet of vessels, some outward
and some inward bound. Amongst these was a United States ship of war,
of great beauty, carrying heavy guns. A boat from this vessel, in charge
of an officer, boarded us, and delivered to the captain a sealed packet,
which I understood to be a dispatch, addressed to General Taylor, the
officer in command of the troops operating against the Indians in
Florida.

The coast about the balize is low and swampy, and everywhere abounds in
rush and cane brakes which give its sea-beach a desolate appearance.
These morasses harbour thousands of alligator