uted to the
causes we have already assigned, to that state of celibacy, to that
monkish life, the taste for which is extending here more and more among
the men. In witness of what I advance on this matter, one single
observation will suffice, as follows: For the two and one-half years
that I have been in this colony not thirty marriages at all notable have
occurred in New Orleans and for ten leagues about it. And in this
district there are at least six hundred white girls of virtuous estate,
of marriageable age, between fourteen and twenty-five or thirty years."

This early observer receives abundant corroboration from other
travellers of the day. Paul Alliott, drawing a contrast between New
Orleans and St. Louis, another city with a considerable number of French
inhabitants, says: "The inhabitants of the city of St. Louis, like those
old time simple and united patriarchs, do not live at all in debauchery
as do a part of those of New Orleans. Marriage is honored there, and the
children resulting from it share the inheritance of their parents
without any quarrelling."[228] But, says Berquin-Duvallon, among a large
percentage of the colonists about New Orleans, "their taste for women
extends more particularly to those of color, whom they prefer to the
white women, because such women demand fewer of those annoying
attentions which contradict their taste for independence. A great
number, accordingly, prefer to live in concubinage rather than to marry.
They find in that the double advantage of being served with the most
scrupulous exactness, and in case of discontent or unfaithfulness, of
changing their housekeeper (this is the honorable name given to that
sort of woman)." Of course, such a scheme of life was not especially
conducive to happiness among white women, and, although as Alliott
declares, the white men "have generally much more regard for (negro
girls) in their domestic economy than they do for their legitimate
wives.... the (white) women show the greatest contempt and aversion for
that sort of women."

When moral conditions could shock an eighteenth century Frenchman they
must have been exceptionally bad; but the customs of the New Orleans
men were entirely too unprincipled for Berquin-Duvallon and various
other French investigators. "Not far from the taverns are obscene
bawdy houses and dirty smoking houses where the father on one side,
and the son on the other go, openly and without embarassment as well
as wi