ame to blows.
Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads's eyes; Roads demanded an
apology; Dick refused to give it, and it was agreed that a duel was
inevitable, but a difficulty arose; the parties had no pistols, and
it was too late at night to procure them. One of them suggested that
butcher-knives would answer the purpose, and the other accepted the
suggestion; the result was that Roads fell to the floor with a gash in
his abdomen that may or may not prove fatal. If Dick has been arrested,
the news has not reached us. He 'expressed deep regret,' and we are told
by a Staunton correspondent of the PHILADELPHIA PRESS that 'every
effort has been made to hush the matter up.'--EXTRACTS FROM THE PUBLIC
JOURNALS.]}

What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that,
probably blows it from a castle.

From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar plantations border both
sides of the river all the way, and stretch their league-wide levels
back to the dim forest-walls of bearded cypress in the rear.
Shores lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings all the way, on both
banks--standing so close together, for long distances, that the broad
river lying between the two rows, becomes a sort of spacious street.
A most home-like and happy-looking region. And now and then you see a
pillared and porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. Here is
testimony of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists that filed
along here half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope says--

'The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued
unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and
luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange,
were everywhere to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary of
looking at them.'

Captain Basil Hall--

'The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, in
the lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar
planters, whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous
slave-villages, all clean and neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to
the river scenery.

All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way. The
descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a word changed in
order to exactly describe the same region as it appears to-day--except
as to the 'trigness' of the houses. The whitewash is gone from the
negro cabins now; and many, possibly most, of the big mansions, onc