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Louis the Fourteenth was always open; and that the other beautiful lake, so near the city, was named in memory of Maurepas, the wily adviser of Louis the Sixteenth and - unlucky. I like to remember that Louisiana itself owes its pretentious name to the devotion of its discoverer to the Great Monarch whom the joyous La Salle could not refrain from calling "the most puissant, most high, most invincible and victorious prince." I like to picture to myself Allouez and Father Dablon, Marquette and Joliet, La Salle, Iberville, and Bienville, following in the footsteps of Garay and Leon, Cordova and Narvaez, De Vaca and Friar Mark; and finally tracing and identifying the current of the wild, mysterious Mississippi, which had been but a tradition for ages, until every nook and cranny, from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico, re-echoed to French words of command and prayer, as well as to gayest of French chansons. The French held out vigorously and merrily against the encroaching English and the intriguing Spaniards; and Bienville himself could not refrain from a Yankee trick, when in early days he was anxious to turn back an English vessel, whose commander, having entered the river, wished to found a British colony thereabouts. We can well afford to feel friendlier towards the French now than did our ancestors when they were encroaching on the northwest; and we almost forget that Napoleon the Great and Marbois abominated us as much as they admired the growing power of the United States, even when, in 1803, "on the tenth day of Floreal,

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in the eleventh year of the French Republic," they ceded to us the tract then understood under the name of Louisiana, in consideration of the sum of sixty millions of francs.

Let us take another picture of New Orleans, from 1792 to 1797, thirty years after the King of France had bestowed upon "his cousin of Spain" the splendid gift of Louisiana, ceding it, "without any exception or reservation whatever, from the pure impulse of his generous heart." That a country should by a simple stroke of the pen strip herself of possessions extending from the mouth of the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, is almost incomprehensible. Possibly, France had already learned that her people had not in their breasts that eternal hunger for travel, that feverish unrest, which has made the Anglo-Saxon the most successful of colonists, and has given half the world to him and to his descendants. the French had nobly done the work of pioneering. Sauvolle, grimly defying death at Biloxi; Bienville, urging the adventurous prow of his ship through the reeds at the Mississippi's mouth, are among the most heroic figures in the early history of our common country.

But

New Orleans from 1792 to 1797. Its civilization has changed; it is fitted into the iron groove of Spanish domination, and has become bigoted, narrow, and hostile to all innovations. Along the streets, now lined with low, flat-roofed, balconied houses, out of whose construction peep little hints of Moorish architecture, stalks the lean and haughty Spanish cavalier, with his hand upon his sword; and the quavering voice of the night watchman, equipped with his traditional spear and lantern, is heard through the night hours proclaiming that all is "serene," although at each corner lurks a fugitive from justice, waiting only until the watchman has passed to commit new crime. Six thousand souls now inhabit the city; there are hints in the air of a plague, and the Intendant has written home to the Council of State that "some affirm that the yellow fever is to be feared." The priests and friars are half-mad with despair because the mixed population pays so very little attention to its salvation from eternal damnation; and because the roystering officers and soldiers of the regiment of Louisiana admit that they have not been to mass for three years. The French hover about the few taverns and coffee houses permitted in the city, and mutter rebellion against the Spaniard, whom they have always disliked. The Spanish and French schools are in perpetual collision; so are the manners, cus

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toms, diets, and languages of the respective nations. The Ursuline convent has refused to admit Spanish women who desire to become nuns, unless they learn the French language; and the ruling Governor, Baron Carondelet, has such small faith in the loyalty of the colonists that he has had the fortifications constructed with a view not only to protecting himself against attacks from without, but from within. The city has suddenly taken on a wonderful aspect of barrack-yard and camp. On the side fronting the Mississippi are two small forts commanding the road and the river. On their eighteen-feet thick brick-coated parapets, Spanish sentinels are languidly pacing; and cannon look out ominously over the town. Between these two forts, and so arranged as to cross its fires with them, fronting on the main street of the town, is a great battery commanding the river; then there are forts at each of the salient angles of the long square forming the city, and a third a little beyond them,-all armed with eight guns each. From one of these tiny forts to another, noisy dragoons are always clattering; officers are parading to and fro; government officials block the way; and the whole town looks like a Spanish garrison gradually growing, by some mysterious process of transformation, into a French city. For the Spanish civilization did not and

could not take a strong hold there. The race was started, and the Spanish character could not be grafted upon it. Spain did not give to New Orleans so many lasting historic souvenirs as France. Barracks, petty forts, dragoon stables, and many other quaint buildings have disappeared, leaving only the "Principal," next the Cathedral, and its fellow on the other side of the old church; some aged private dwellings, rapidly decaying, and a delicate imprint and suggestion of former Spanish rule scattered throughout various quarters of the city. Spanish society flourishes still; and in some parts of the old town the many-balconied, thick-walled houses for the moment mislead the visitor into the belief that he is in Spain; but echoing from those very balconies he hears the French language, or the curious Creole patois.

Or let us take still another picture of New Orleans, this time under American domination. The Spaniard has gone his ways; Ulloa and O'Reilly, Unzaga, Galvez and Miro, have held their governorships under the Spanish King. Carondelet, Gayoso, Casa Calva, and Salcedo alike have vanished. There have been insurrections on the part of the French; many longings after the old banner; and at last Napoleon the Great has determined to once more possess the grand territory. Spain knows well that it is useless to oppose his wishes; is not sorry, withal, to be rid of a colony so difficult to govern, and so near to the quarrelsome. Americans, who have many times threatened to take New Orleans by force if any farther commercial regulations are made by Spaniards at the Mississippi's outlet. Napoleon has three things to gain by the possession of the Territory: the command of the Gulf; the supply of the islands owned by France; and a place of settlement for surplus population. So that, at St. Ildefonso, on the morning of October first, 1800, a treaty of cession is signed, its third article reading as follows:

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His Catholic Majesty promises and engages, on his part, to retrocede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein relative to His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma,-the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it; and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states." This treaty is kept secret while the French fit out an expedition to sail and take sudden possession of the reacquired Territory; but

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AT THE CORNER OF JACKSON SQUARE.

the United States has sharp ears; and Minister Livingston besets the cabinet of the First Consul at Paris; fights a good battle of diplomacy; is dignified as well as aggressive; wins his cause; and Napoleon tells his counselors, on Easter Sunday, 1803, his resolve in the following words: "I know the full value of Louisiana, and I have been desirous of repairing the fault of the French negotiator who abandoned it in 1763; a few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. (The English were then hurrying their fleets into the Gulf.) But if it escapes from me, it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it than to those to whom I wish to deliver it." And it was forthwith ceded to the United States. The Spaniard and the Frenchman have gone their ways, and Governor Claiborne has taken up the power let fall by the defunct hybrid government. Half a generation has brought the conflicting national elements. into something more of harmony, and has made Louisiana a territory containing fifty thousand souls. The first steamboat has ploughed through the waters of the Mississippi, but more stirring events have also taken

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place. Great Britain has sent a hostile force to Louisiana, and fifteen thousand men have besieged it by land and sea, only to be ingloriously beaten off and sent home in disorder, by the raw troops of the river States, the stalwart Kentuckians, the gaunt men of Tennessee, the rough, hard-handed sons of Illinois, the dashing horsemen of Mississippi, and the handsome athletic Creoles of New Orleans. In front of old Almonaster's Cathedral in the square henceforth to commemorate the name of Jackson, is a grand parade, and the victorious troops of the iron, angular, unbending General are drawn up in order of review. Under a triumphal arch, on each side of which are ranged allegorical groups, and backed by glittering avenues of bayonets stretching to the river, the hero of Chalmette passes, and with laurel-crowned head bows low to receive the apostolic benediction of the venerable abbé at the Cathedral door.

Or let us take some pictures from New Orleans of to-day. The hideous nightmare dream of "the war" has passed away, leaving no pictures which we care to bring anew before the country's eyes; and the Crescent City has grown to giant proportions since the times of Claiborne and Jackson. As fast as the territory itself has shrunk, the city has gained more and more in wealth and population, until, even after the terrible crushing which it and its interests received during the war, it stands among the first commercial ports of the world. The renaissance of commerce since the close of the late struggle has been in many respects astonishing in its

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progress. The discouraged Louisianians have been startled at their own sturdy strength. The work has gone on under the most disheartening and depressing conditions; but trial seems to have brought out a reserve energy of which its possessors had never suspected themselves.

And first, we must take the gayer pictures. We will not go too deep in our analysis, until, in our quality of loungers, we have passed lightly over the picturesque and unique points of this venerable and varied city.

Step off from Canal street, that avenue of compromises which separates the French and the American cities, some bright February morning, and you are at once in a foreign atmosphere. Three paces from the corner have enchanted you; the surroundings of a Southern-American commonwealth have vanished; this might be Toulouse, or Bordeaux, or Marseilles! The houses are all of stone or solid brick, stuccoed or painted; the windows descend to the floors of each story, and open, like doors, on to airy, pretty balconies, protected by iron railings; quaint dormer windows peer from the great roofs; and the street doors of the houses are massive, and large enough to admit horses and carriage into the stone-paved court-yards, from which half-a-dozen stairways communicate with the interiors.

Sometimes,

through the portal, you catch a glimpse of a delicious garden, filled with daintiest blossoms, purple and white and red gleaming from the vines clambering over a gray wall; rose-bushes, with the grass about them strewn with loveliest petals; symmetrical green bosquets, and luxuriant hedges, arbors, and refuges, trimmed by skillful hands; banks of verbenas; bewitching profusion of peach and apple blossoms; dark green of the magnolia; in a quiet corner, the rich glow of the orange in its nest among the thick leaves of its parent tree; the defiant palmetto, the frost-fearing catalpa, and a mass of rich bloom which laps the senses in slumbrous delight, when-suddenly the door closes behind some dark-haired, flashing-eyed, slender Creole girl, clad in black, and your paradise is lost, while Eve remains inside the gate!

From the balconies hang, idly flapping in the lazy breeze, little tin painted placards, announcing "Furnish

ed apartments to rent." Alas! in too many of the old mansions you are ushered in by a gray-faced woman clad in deepest black, with little children clinging jealously to her skirts, and you instinctively note by her manners and her speech that she has never rented rooms before the war. You pity her sad heart, and think of the multitudes of these gray-faced women you have seen; of the numbers of these silent, almost desolate houses. Sometimes, too, a knock at the porter's lodge will bring to your view a bustling Creole dame, fat and fifty, redolent of garlic and new wine, and robust, in voice as in person. Hola! how cheerily she retails her misfortunes, as if they were blessings. An invalid husband-voyez-vous ça! Auguste a Confederate, of course-and is yet; but the pauvre garçon is unable to work, and we are very poor! All this merrily, and in a highpitched key, while the hybrid young negress who is the housemaid stands lazily listening to her mistress's French, with her two huge lips nervously polishing the handle of the broom she holds in her broad corded hands.

Here, too, business, as in foreign cities, has usurped only half the domain; and the shopkeepers live over their shops, and communicate a little of the aroma of home to their commerce. The dainty salon, where the ladies' hairdresser holds sway, has its doorway enlivened by the hairdresser's baby, who gambols therein; the grocer and his wife, the milliner and his daughter, are all behind the counter. Here you pass a little café, with the awning drawn down exactly as in France, and, peering in, can distinguish half-a-dozen bald, rotund old boys drinking their evening absinthe, and playing picquet and vingt-et-un. Here, perhaps, is a touch of Americanism: a lazy negro, recumbent in a two-wheeled cart, with his eyes languidly closed, and his dirty feet sprawled on the sidewalk. No! for he responds to your question in French, and is

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THE NEW URSULINE CONVENT.

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willing to do an errand for you. French signs abound; there is a warehouse for wines and brandies from the heart of Southern France; here is a funeral notice, printed in deepest black: "The friends of Jean Baptiste, etc., are respectfully invited to be present at the funeral, which will take place at precisely four o'clock on the The notice is printed on black-edged note-paper, and nailed to a post. Here pass a group of French negroes, the buxom girls dressed with a certain grace, and with gayly-colored handkerchiefs wound about an unpardonable luxuriance of wool; their cavaliers clothed mainly in antiquated garments rapidly approaching the level of rags; and their conversation resounding for half-a-dozen blocks, interspersed with a laughter which ripples like wine, effervesces like champagne. The streets are solidly paved with square blocks of stone, brought all the way, in some cases, from New England, and the surface drainage, which necessitates ugly angles of opening at street corners, is carefully attended to. Turning into a side street leading off from Royal, or Chartres, or Bourgogne, or Dauphin, or Rampart streets, you may glance at odd little shops, where the cobbler sits at his work in the shadow of a grand old Spanish arch, or a nest of curly-headed negro babies is ensconced on a tailor's bench at the window of a fine ancient mansion; you may see in a narrow room, glass-fronted, a long and well-spread table surrounded by twenty Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, all talking at once over their eleven o'clock breakfast; or you may enter more aristocratic restaurants, where the immaculate floors are only surpassed in cleanliness by the immaculate linen of the tables, where a solemn dignity, as befits the refined pleasure of dinner, prevails, and where the waiter gives you the names of the dishes in both languages, and bestows on you a napkin large enough to serve you as a shroud, if this strange melange of French and Southern cooking gives you a fatal indigestion. The French families of position usually dine at four, for the theater begins promptly at seven, Sundays and week days. There is the play-bill, in French, of course; and there are the typical Creole ladies, stopping for a moment to glance at it as they wend their way shop-ward. For it is the shopping hour; from eleven to two the streets of this old quarter are alive with elegantly, yet soberly attired ladies; always in couples, for French etiquette prevails here, and the unmarried lady is never allowed to promenade without her maid or her mother. One sees beautiful faces on the Rue Royale, Anglicé, Royal

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A BRACE OF OLD SPANISH GOVERNORS.

street; and in the balconies and lodges of the Opera House; sometimes, too, in the cool of the evening, there are fascinating little groups of the daughters of Creoles on the balconies, gayly chatting, while the veil of the superb southern twilight is torn away, and the glory of the white moonlight and the stars is showered over the quiet streets. The Creole ladies are not, as a rule, as highly educated in the education of the schools as the gracious daughters of the American quarter; but they have enviable accomplishments of manners, an indefinable grace, a charming savoir in dress, and a piquant and alluring charm in person and conversation, which makes them universal favorites in society, and they are much liked abroad. They are self-possessed, easy in manner in all company, and receive the most courtly attention abroad, as if it were customary and frequent. The French quarter will always furnish many of its most charming belles to the society of New Orleans. One of the chiefest of their charms is the staccato and queerly-colored English, grammatically correct, but French in idea and accent, which many of them speak. At the Saturday matinées, in the opera or comedy season at the French Theater, you will see hundreds of the ladies of this quarter; rarely can a finer grouping of lovely brunettes be found; nowhere a more tastefully-dressed and elegantly-mannered assembly.

It is perhaps an abnormal quiet which reigns in the old French city since the war ended; but it would be difficult to find village streets more tranquil than the main avenues of this foreign quarter after nine at night. The long splendid avenues of Rampart and Esplanade streets, with their rows of trees planted in the center of the driveways, the whitewashed trunks giving a fine effect of green and white, with their solid prepossessing twostory verandah-encircled mansions, set down

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