building fronting the
river with a gallery on one side, gardens on the other, and kitchen and
outbuildings behind. They looked longingly at it, as they desired very
much to see Bernardo Galvez at once. But presently they passed on into the
Place d'Armes, a wide open space used as a review ground. At the very
moment they entered it a company of Spanish soldiers were going through
their evolutions, and, after the fashion of to-day, children and their
dark-faced nurses were watching them. The five did not think much of the
soldiers, who seemed to them to be dwarfed and without zeal.

"Ef ever Kentucky comes down the long river," said Shif'less Sol, "it will
take bigger men than these to hold her back."

Paul's gaze wandered from the soldiers, and he saw in a corner of the
Place d'Armes a great wooden gallows that made him shudder. It was a
gallows very often used, too, and any one could have pointed out to Paul
the spot in the middle of the Place d'Armes where five gallant French
gentlemen, among the best citizens of New Orleans, had been shot not long
before for planning to throw off the rule of Spain and make Louisiana a
free republic.

They strolled on, still filled with curiosity and gratifying it. They saw
many buildings that surpassed anything hitherto in their experience, the
brick parish church, on the site of which the Cathedral of St. Louis was
afterwards built, the arsenal, the jail, and the house of the Capuchins,
who had lately triumphed over the Jesuits. The largest building of all
that they saw was the convent of the Ursuline Nuns, standing in the city
square on the river front, and this was, in fact, the largest building in
New Orleans.

While there were many houses of brick, the cheaper were of cypress wood,
and the sidewalks were only four or five feet wide, with a wooden drain
for a gutter. There was no paving of the streets, which, now deep in dust,
would turn to quagmires when the rain came. At long intervals were wooden
posts with projecting arms from which hung oil lamps, to be lighted when
nightfall came.

Long Jim uttered an exclamation of disgust, and gripped his nose firmly
between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

"I never smelt sech smells afore in all my life," he said, pointing to the
heaps of garbage scattered about. "A big town like this here is pow'ful
interestin', but it ain't clean. Paul, remember them great forests up thar
in Kentucky an' across the Ohio! Remember how c