reat thoroughfare all others diverge, and it
is the greatest mart of its extent in the world. While I was there,
THIRTY-SIX THOUSAND BARRELS OF FLOUR were sold in a few hours! And
while this astonishing transfer was going on, thousands of other
produce and commodities were changing hands. Many years ago it
was used as a fashionable promenade to enjoy the breezes of the
Mississippi. Commerce has changed its character entirely. Now scenes
of the most intensely exciting character are upon the Levee. The
very air howls with an eternal din and noise. Drays and wagons of
all descriptions, loaded with the produce of every clime, move on
continually in one unbroken chain. Ships from every nation, whose
masts tower aloft in a dense forest for five miles, with thirty
thousand sailors and stevedores, busily loading and unloading, stand
in your view. Steamboats, and crafts of every make and shape, from
every river which empties into the Mississippi, are here mingling in
the strife of commerce. The rough and homely produce of the far and
cold Iowa--of the distant Wisconsin--of the black and stormy Northern
Lakes, is here thrown upon the Levee in hurry and confusion mingled
and mixed with the sweets and luxuries of the sunny tropics. Here,
too, the various races of men astonish one. The Kentuckian with an
honest and ruddy face; the Yankee with his shrewd and enterprising
look; the rich planter of Mississippi; the elegant and chivalrous
Carolinian; the sensible and honest citizen from the "Old North
State;" the lively, fine-looking, and smart Georgian; the talented and
handsome Virginian; the swarthy creole sugar planter; the rough hunter
from the gorges of the Rocky Mountains--all natives of the Union--all
freemen alike--all meet upon this common ground of LIBERTY and
COMMERCE. And this picture must be carried out with the children of
_adoption_. Here is also the dark and mysterious Spaniard puffing his
cigar and sending up volumes of smoke through his black imperials; the
gay and frisky Frenchman; the sturdy Dutchman; the son of Erin, and
the cunning Jew. A trite adage says that "it takes all kinds of people
to make a world;" verily, then, the Levee is a world.

CHAPTER V.

THE CATHEDRAL.--ORPHAN'S ASYLUM.--THE SISTERS OF CHARITY, ETC.

Immediately opposite the Place d'Armes, and fronting the levee, rises
in solemn grandeur, the celebrated Cathedral. It must be very old, and
was said to have been erected through the zealo