nd, with the
numerous slaves necessary to their cultivation, were largely under the
charge of overseers, while the proprietors resided in distant and more
healthy localities. Abundant facilities for navigation afforded by
countless streams superseded the necessity for railways, and but one
line of some eighty miles existed. This extended from Monroe on the
Washita to a point opposite Vicksburg on the Mississippi; but the great
flood of 1862 had broken the eastern half of the line. Finally, the
lower Washita, at Trinity, where it receives the Tensas from the east
and Little River from the west, takes the name of Black River. And it
may be well to add that in Louisiana counties are called parishes, dikes
levees, and streams bayous.

South of the Red River, population and industries change. The first is
largely composed of descendants of French colonists, termed creoles,
with some Spanish intermixed, and the sugar cane is the staple crop,
changing as the Gulf is approached to rice. At the point where the
united Red and Washita Rivers join the Mississippi, which here changes
direction to the east, the Atchafalaya leaves it, and, flowing due south
through Grand Lake and Berwick's Bay, reaches the Gulf at Atchafalaya
Bay, two degrees west of its parent stream, and by a more direct course.
Continuing the line of the Red and Washita, it not only discharges much
of their waters, but draws largely from the Mississippi when this last
is in flood. Midway between the Atchafalaya and the city of New Orleans,
some eighty miles from either point, another outlet of the great river,
the Bayou Lafourche, discharges into the Gulf after passing through a
densely populated district, devoted to the culture of sugar cane and
rice. A large lake, Des Allemands, collects the waters from the higher
lands on the river and bayou, and by an outlet of the same name carries
them to Barataria Bay. Lying many feet below the flood level of the
streams, protected by heavy dikes, with numerous steam-engines for
crushing canes and pumping water, and canals and ditches in every
direction, this region resembles a tropical Holland. At the lower end of
Lake Des Allemands passed the only line of railway in southern
Louisiana, from a point on the west bank of the river opposite New
Orleans to Berwick's Bay, eighty miles. Berwick's Bay, which is but the
Atchafalaya after it issues from Grand Lake, is eight hundred yards
wide, with great depth of water, and soon mee