ut of the north and west. Yet overhead the sun still shone
vehemently through the rolling white clouds. It was grand to watch these.
They were sailing majestically hither and thither southward across the
blue, leaning now this way and now that like a fleet of great ships of the
line manoeuvring for position against the dark northern enemy's already
flashing and thundering onset. I was much above any neighboring roof. Far
to the south and south-west the newer New Orleans spread away over the
flat land. North-eastward, but near at hand, were the masts of ships and
steamers, with glimpses here and there of the water, and farther away the
open breadth of the great yellow river sweeping around Slaughterhouse
Point under an air heavy with the falling black smoke and white steam of
hurrying tugs. Closer by, there was a strange confusion of roofs, trees,
walls, vines, tiled roofs, brown and pink, and stuccoed walls, pink,
white, yellow, red, and every sort of gray. The old convent of the
Ursulines stood in the midst, and against it the old chapel of St. Mary
with a great sycamore on one side and a willow on the other. Almost under
me I noticed some of the semicircular arches of rotten red brick that were
once a part of the Spanish barracks. In the north the "Old Third" (third
city district) lay, as though I looked down upon it from a cliff--a
tempestuous gray sea of slate roofs dotted with tossing green tree-tops.
Beyond it, not far away, the deep green, ragged line of cypress swamp half
encircled it and gleamed weirdly under a sky packed with dark clouds that
flashed and growled and boomed and growled again. You could see rain
falling from one cloud over Lake Pontchartrain; the strong gale brought
the sweet smell of it. Westward, yonder, you may still descry the old
calaboose just peeping over the tops of some lofty trees; and that bunch a
little at the left is Congo Square; but the _old_, old calaboose--the one
to which this house was once strangely related--is hiding behind the
cathedral here on the south. The street that crosses Royal here and makes
the corner on which the house stands is Hospital street; and yonder,
westward, where it bends a little to the right and runs away so bright,
clean, and empty between two long lines of groves and flower gardens, it
is the old Bayou Road to the lake. It was down that road that the mistress
of this house fled in her carriage from its door with the howling mob at
her heels. Before you