ehension that I might have turned upon my
steps, and it required some moments of consideration to reassure me. At
length, seating myself upon a fallen pine within the shadow of a tall
magnolia, I resolved to abide with patience the coming up of the coach.

Resting here, strange fancies connected with the forest and its savage
denizens came thronging upon my mind. Here, within a very few years, the
Choctaw alone had wandered, and the only path was the scarce traceable
line leading to the village of his tribe. Where are these hunters now?
gone swiftly away, borne like autumn's leaves, upon the irrepressible
flood of enterprise and intelligence which is taming the wilderness with
a rapidity Europe has yet no adequate appreciation of. The hunter and
his prey have alike been scattered or rooted wholly out; the forest
still remains to witness for their existence, and, although assailed in
every quarter, the woodman's axe ringing from east to west, from north
to south, it yet appears to defy the activity of its assailants.

So rapid is vegetation in this climate, so prompt is Nature to repair
any waste in this favoured domain of hers, that even where places have
been completely bared by the axe or by the whirlwind, a very few years
of repose clothes them once more, a luxuriant growth of forest, vigorous
and healthful, spreads rapidly over the waste, asserting its ancient
claim, and eagerly repossessing itself of its heritage.

We reached Portersville at four o'clock, having been just six hours
coming thirty-two miles: here we found the Government steamer, the
Watchman, and five passengers, who had left Mobile on the 31st ultimo.
They had been detained here two days, living in a log-house; their only
amusement watching the ducks and snipe whirling in search of fresh
feeding-ground over the dreary waters of Lac Pontchartrain.

Over a long fragile pier, carried far into the lake on piles, and
breached in fifty places, we gained the deck of the Watchman, and in
five minutes after were heading towards the setting sun, whose rays,
brilliant though they were, failed to invest with cheerfulness this
desolate, half-drowned land.

I walked to and fro upon the ample deck of the vessel until my limbs
were fatigued and my eyes sick of the eternal sameness of the scene;
and then sought my berth, a very comfortable one, where I lay till
roused next morning with the intelligence that we were before the
railroad.

_Jan. 3rd._--On landing