ell to New Orleans.

It is easy to imagine the total want of beauty in such a
landscape; but yet the form and hue of the trees and plants, so
new to us, added to the long privation we had endured of all
sights and sounds of land, made even these swampy shores seem
beautiful. We were, however, impatient to touch as well as see
the land; but the navigation from the Balize to New Orleans is
difficult and tedious, and the two days that it occupied appeared
longer than any we had passed on board.

In truth, to those who have pleasure in contemplating the
phenomena of nature, a sea voyage may endure many weeks without
wearying. Perhaps some may think that the first glance of ocean
and of sky shew all they have to offer; nay, even that that first
glance may suggest more of dreariness than sublimity; but to me,
their variety appeared endless, and their beauty unfailing. The
attempt to describe scenery, even where the objects are prominent
and tangible, is very rarely successful; but where the effect is
so subtile and so varying, it must be vain. The impression,
nevertheless, is perhaps deeper than any other; I think it
possible I may forget the sensations with which I watched the
long course of the gigantic Mississippi; the Ohio and the Potomac
may mingle and be confounded with other streams in my memory, I
may even recall with difficulty the blue outline of the Alleghany
mountains, but never, while I remember any thing, can I forget
the first and last hour of light on the Atlantic.

The ocean, however, and all its indescribable charm, no longer
surrounded us; we began to feel that our walk on the quarter-deck
was very like the exercise of an ass in a mill; that our books
had lost half their pages, and that the other half were known by
rote; that our beef was very salt, and our biscuits very hard; in
short, that having studied the good ship, Edward, from stem to
stern till we knew the name of every sail, and the use of every
pulley, we had had enough of her, and as we laid down, head to
head, in our tiny beds for the last time, I exclaimed with no
small pleasure,

"Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new."

CHAPTER 2

New Orleans--Society--
Creoles and Quadroons Voyage up the Mississippi

On first touching the soil of a new land, of a new continent, of
a new world, it is impossible not to feel considerable excitement
and deep interest in almost every object that meets us. New
Orleans presents very l