As the distance from New Orleans increased, the air of
wealth and comfort exhibited in its immediate neighbourhood
disappeared, and but for one or two clusters of wooden houses,
calling themselves towns, and borrowing some pompous name,
generally from Greece or Rome, we might have thought ourselves
the first of the human race who had ever penetrated into this
territory of bears and alligators. But still from time to time
appeared the hut of the wood-cutter, who supplies the steam-boats
with fuel, at the risk, or rather with the assurance of early
death, in exchange for dollars and whiskey. These sad dwellings
are nearly all of them inundated during the winter, and the best
of them are constructed on piles, which permit the water to reach
its highest level without drowning the wretched inhabitants.
These unhappy beings are invariably the victims of ague, which
they meet recklessly, sustained by the incessant use of ardent
spirits. The squalid look of the miserable wives and children of
these men was dreadful, and often as the spectacle was renewed I
could never look at it with indifference. Their complexion is of
a blueish white, that suggests the idea of dropsy; this is
invariable, and the poor little ones wear exactly the same
ghastly hue. A miserable cow and a few pigs standing knee-deep
in water, distinguish the more prosperous of these dwellings, and
on the whole I should say that I never witnessed human nature
reduced so low, as it appeared in the wood-cutters' huts on the
unwholesome banks of the Mississippi.
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