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arpents* instead of feet are the units; thence they stretch back to the trackless swamp which shuts in the horizon. At close intervals the stream is spanned by neat white floating bridges, which swing open to allow the boat to pass. These features alternate with lonely reaches, overhung by the dark, massive foliage of live-oak and cypress, and the graybeard Spanish moss, which drapes every bough; here the solemn hush is broken only by the booming snort of the engine, and the churning of the paddles seems to disturb for the first time the imperceptible current of coffee-colored water. The continually narrowing channel seems as if it would close with every bend, but the sun goes down, and the dark shores grow duskier, and still we hold on our course, until, sometime in the short hours of the morning, the boat ties up to the levee at New Iberia, the terminus of our journey by

water.

From the narrow, tortuous bayou, with its dense growth, to the free, open prairie, which loses itself in the horizon back of the little town, the transition is startling. Just now we were constrained within the limits of the straitest of thoroughfares; all at

*An arpent is four thousand and eighty-eight yards. One and one-sixth arpents are equivalent to an acre. Both measurements are used in Louisiana-the French prevailing in the Creole parishes, and along the Têche.

once, we are in the enjoyment of a latitude of roads which gives one a vague sense of having put to sea in a buggy. In spite of the assurance of the livery man that we "can't miss the road," we do compass that impossible thing before we are clear of the suburbs, and continue to do so at frequent intervals thereafter. The total absence of landmarks, the infrequency of sources of information, and the perplexities of Acadian patois, which is the medium of intercourse, combine to prolong a ten-mile drive throughout the forenoon. One element of confusion, as we presently discover, lies in the comprehensiveness of the name Petite Anse. An old woman knitting, and tending a flock of geese, with a huge closed green umbrella lying on top of her head by way of sun

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and at the farther end of a causeway right before us.

Petite Anse is one of the "Five Islands" which, standing in the midst of a level country of marsh and prairie, extend in a straight line, and at almost equal intervals, from near the Têche seaward to Atchafalaya Bay. Geologically, they are considered a part of the bluff formation seen elsewhere in Louisiana and along the Upper Mississippi, though there are several conflicting theories to account for their origin, whose respective pros and cons lie beyond the limit and purpose of the present article. Our preconceptions as to the social constituents of the locality proved entirely misleading; the whole island comprised but a single plantation, the estate of the late Judge Avery, of whose death we had only learned from a paper of the day before, as we

in which this region abounds. Our installation was effected without more ado and quite as a matter of course, and by the time we retired to the galérie to discuss our black coffee and perique cigarettes, after dinner, we were quite domesticated. The blazing fervor of a Louisiana June day gave place to delicious coolness as the sun went down, and the strong Gulf breeze swept across the wide expanse of sea-marsh spread out before us miles on miles, with the silver thread of the little Bayou Petite Anse gleaming here and there, as its windings opened a reach to our view elsewhere obscured by the tall reeds, and an occasional small "island" of timber showing in darker contrast with the verdure. On the sloping lawn in front of the house, the children were playing at lassoing each other, in emulation of the feats of their pastoral

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neighbors the Acadians, and their lively chatter chimed well with the soughing of the wind through the live-oaks. With this last lulling whisper in our ears as accompaniment to the shrill treble of baffled mosquitoes outside our bar, we dropped into the sleep | of the weary, from which we were aroused by Jules, the mulatto valet, with admonition and foretaste of breakfast in the shape of coffee.

above the broad sheet of Vermillion Bay, some nine miles distant. Around to the west a gleam of water among the trees indicates the position of Lake Simonette and Orange Island, the last of the five, where Mr. Charles Jefferson, a son of the famous actor, resides. Here the original and only Rip Van Winkle occasionally seeks and finds the realization of his big duck-story, and proves himself, let us hope, a more successful sportsman than when he so incensed Dame Gretchen by his unlucky shot.

An exploration of the island reveals its general form to be an irregular oval, bounded on the west and south by the bayou, and insulated elsewhere from terra firma by the impassable sea-marsh. Though comprising in its upland extent but a little more than twenty-two hundred acres, it reaches an elevation of one hundred and eighty feet above tide level at its highest point, Prospect Hill. Thence the ground falls away in minor undulations, diversified by clumps of timber, fields of cane and corn, and open pasture-land, with herds of the sleek, clean-limbed, long-horned cattle of the country grazing or chewing the cud of satiety as they stand belly-deep in the small ponds between the hills. To the east, the boundaries of the island are merged in the dense cyprière, beyond which the neighboring island of Grande Côte juts

Curiously enough, the chief industries at Petite Anse arise from the production and preparation of the three principal condiments which minister to the comfort of civilized man-pepper, sugar, and salt. A feature of these hill-tops is the crop of red pepper, which seems to find a most congenial soil thus near the sun. A concentrated essence is prepared, put up, and sent to market from a small laboratory on the island, and, under the title of Tabasco Sauce, is well known both at home and abroad as a most agreeable seasoning. A single drop will make itself manifest in a plate of soup. A story is related of a casual visitor to the island, who, seeing a bottle on the table, partock of the contents as lavishly as if he had been using catsup, which it

closely resembles in appearance. A few moments later, he was obliged to excuse himself, and was found rolling on the grass in the shade. Being asked why he had come out-of-doors, his answer was, "To bask, O!"

But the pepper crop is of the least importance-a mere "side speculation," as Colonel Sellers would say when compared to the island's other exports. Sugar, of course, is the main agricultural feature here as elsewhere in southern Louisiana, where the talk is of hogsheads, kettles, vacuum pans, fuel, and machinery, rather than of the things which enter into the conversation of bucolic folk generally. A successful planter must needs be a chemist and practical machinist, besides possessing administrative ability of no mean order.

But-quoting Sellers again, with a slight amendment-" if you want something with the real ring in it,"-Salt! As early as 1812, Mr. John C. Marsh, the grandfather of the present proprietors, then resident upon the island, made salt by evaporation

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BEARS' PAWS.

of the water from a brine spring near the site of the present works. He endeavored to increase the supply by sinking a well, but was interrupted by a bed of quicksand, and abandoned the attempt. For a half-century the enterprise was neglected, as the limited supply did not seem to warrant its development, except under such pressure as the necessities of war brought to bear. Events of later date supplied the requisite conditions, and it was owing to the extreme stringency of war times that, in the spring of 1862, Mr. John M. Avery undertook to procure salt as his grandfather had done in the "war of '12." This gentleman, holding the opinion that the whole island rested on a foundation of salt, and that the bed followed generally the configuration of the surface, undertook to avoid the annoyance caused by the filling of the wells already sunk with fresh water after rains, by sinking another, where the ground was more elevated. After some progress, the negro workman reported that he had struck a stump, and that he could not dig around it. Mr. Avery was unwilling to abandon the work at this stage, and setting the man

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to clear away all the earth, found a smooth, dark material filling all the bottom of the pit, upon which the spade made no impression. The first blow of an ax, however, brought out a chip of pure white salt, under a thin coating of naphtha, and established the salt industry of Petite Anse upon a solid basis. The lucky find speedily became noised abroad, and several States, as well as the Confederate Government, at once established works there for supplying their respective populations, and the armies in the field, with the much-needed condiment. Large quantities were taken out, and one of the most pressing necessities of the Confederacy was in a fair way to be relieved, when, in April, 1863, the Federal authorities sent a flotilla of gun-boats, with a force sufficient to drive off the workmen and destroy the works, which remained dismantled until after the conclusion of hostilities.

When we visited the island, two years ago, the mine was being worked on a limited scale by a Galveston company, which had but recently commenced operations. Their appliances and general facilities were very inadequate-a single engine of twentyfive horse-power was employed for raising, crushing, and grinding the salt, which was then conveyed by tram-way one and a quarter miles to the bayou, and shipped by vessel to Galveston.

The salt-bed is found at a distance ranging from eleven to thirty feet below the surface, and is therefore mostly below tide-level. Its thickness is not known, but no bottom has been found at a depth of sixty-five feet through solid salt, from the naphtha crust which overlies it, and protects it from infiltrations from the quicksand invariably encountered a few feet above. Professor Richard Owen believes that the deposit has been formed "by saline inundations caused by storm-tides," which even now sometimes flood the whole marsh and prairie, as in the case of the famous "Last Island storm,” which wrought such devastation to that summer resort of the local population some years ago. The fact that the layers, so far as known, follow the lines of the other strata overlying them, would seem to sustain the theory of Professor Streeruwitz, the resident mining engineer and chemist, that a violent upheaval of the sea-bed has been the cause. In support of this view he argues that, while in the mines of Saltzburg, Germany, "the upper layers of salt are not pure chloride of sodium, but mixed with compounds of potassium, magnesium, and containing sulphur-the Petite Anse salt, so far as explored, is from top to bottom chloride of sodium, with traces only of potassium, magnesium, iron, and lime in the form of gypsum." The proportion of these foreign

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