I pass thy last great affluent, whose crimson flood just tinges the hue of thy waters. Down thy delta I glide, amid scenes rendered classic by the sufferings of De Soto by the adventurous daring of Iberville and La Salle.
And here my soul reaches the acmé of its admiration. Dead to beauty must be heart and eye that could behold thee here, in this thy southern land, without a thrill of sublimest emotion!
I gaze upon lovely landscapes ever changing, like scenes of enchantment, or the pictures of a panorama. They are the loveliest upon earth for where are views to compare with thine? Not upon the Rhine, with its castled rocks not upon the shores of that ancient inland sea not among the Isles of the Ind. No. In no part of the world are scenes like these; nowhere is soft beauty blended so harmoniously with wild picturesqueness.
And yet not a mountain meets the eye not even a hill but the dark cyprières , draped with the silvery tillandsia , form a background to the picture with all the grandeur of the pyrogenous granite!
The forest no longer fringes thee here. It has long since fallen before the planters axe; and the golden sugar-cane, the silvery rice, and the snowy cotton-plant, flourish in its stead. Forest enough has been left to adorn the picture. I behold vegetable forms of tropic aspect, with broad shining foliage the Sabal palm, the anona, the water-loving tupelo, the catalpa with its large trumpet flowers, the melting liquidambar , and the wax-leaved mangolia. Blending their foliage with these fair indigènes are an hundred lovely exotics the orange, lemon, and fig; the Indian-lilac and tamarind; olives, myrtles, and bromelias; while the Babylonian willow contrasts its drooping fronds with the erect reeds of the giant cane, or the lance-like blades of the yucca gloriosa .
Embowered amidst these beautiful forms I behold villas and mansions; of grand and varied aspect varied as the races of men who dwell beneath their roofs. And varied are they; for the nations of the world dwell together upon thy banks each having sent its tribute to adorn thee with the emblems of a glorious and universal civilisation. Father of Waters, farewell!
Though not born in this fair southern land, I have long lingered there; and I love it even better than the land of my birth . I have there spent the hours of bright youth, of adventurous manhood; and the retrospect of these hours is fraught with a thousand memories tinged with a romance that can never die. There my young heart yielded to the influence of Love a first and virgin love. No wonder the spot should be to me the most hallowed on earth!
Reader! listen to the story of that love!
Chapter Two Six Months in the Crescent City
at homeMy longing was soon to be gratified; and without a sigh I beheld the hills of my native land sink behind the black waves not much caring whether I should ever see them again.
Though emerging from the walls of a classic college, I was far from being tinctured with classic sympathies. Ten years spent in pondering over the wild hyperbole of Homer, the mechanical verse-work of Virgil, and the dry indelicacies of Horatius Flaccus, had failed to imbue me with a perception of that classic beauty felt, or pretended to be felt, by the spectacled savant . My mind was not formed to live on the ideal, or dream
over the past. I delight rather in the real, the positive, and the present. Don Quixotes may play the troubadour among ruined castles, and mincing misses cover the ground of the guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish for the romance of rags.
And yet it was a yearning for the romantic that called me from home. I longed for the poetic and picturesque, for I was just at that age when the mind is imbued with its strongest faith in their reality. Ha! mine is not yet disabused of this belief. I am older now, but the hour of disenchantment has not yet come upon me nor ever will. There is a romance in life, that is no illusion. It lives not in the effete forms and childish ceremonies of the fashionable drawing-room it has no illustration in the tinsel trappings and gaudy puerilities of a Court. Stars, garters, and titles are its antidotes; red cloth and plush the upas-trees of its existence.
Its home is elsewhere, amid the grand and sublime scenes of Nature though these are not necessary accompaniments. It is no more incidental to field and forest, rock, river, and mountain, than to the well-trodden ways of the trading-town. Its home is in human hearts hearts that throb with high aspirations bosoms that burn with the noble passions of Liberty and Love!