rd with chickens, dogs, and
calves. A sallow-faced, slatternly woman, bareheaded, with uncared-for
hair, long, tangled, and black, with her dress tucked up to her knees,
bare-footed and bare-legged, is wading through the mud from the bayou,
with a dirty pail full of muddy Mississippi water.

A diminutive specimen of a man, clad in blue cottonade pants and
hickory shirt, barefooted, with a palm-leaf hat upon his head, and an
old rusty shot-gun in his hands, stands upon the levee, casting an
inquiring look, first up and then down the bayou, deeply desiring and
most ardently expecting a wandering duck or crane, as they fly along
the course of the bayou. If unfortunately they come within reach of his
fusee, he almost invariably brings them down. Then there is a shout
from the children, a yelp from the dogs, and all run to secure the
game; for too often, "No duck, no dinner." Such a home and such
inhabitants were to be seen on Bayou La Fourche forty years ago, and
even now specimens of the genuine breed may there be found, as
primitive as were their ancestors who first ventured a home in the
Mississippi swamps.

The stream known as Bayou La Fourche, or The Fork, is a large stream,
some one hundred yards wide, leaving the Mississippi at the town of
Donaldsonville, eighty miles above the city of New Orleans, running
south-southeast, emptying into the Gulf, through Timbalier Bay, and may
properly be termed one of the mouths of the Mississippi. Its current
movement does not in high water exceed three miles an hour, and when
the Mississippi is at low water, it is almost imperceptible. Large
steamers, brigs, and schooners come into it when the river is at flood,
and carry out three or four hundred tons of freight each at a time.

The lands upon the banks of this stream are remarkably fertile,
entirely alluvial, and decline from the bank to the swamp, generally
some one or two miles distant. This Acadian population was sent here
during the Spanish domination, and with a view to opening up to
cultivation this important tract of country. It was supposed they would
become--under the favorable auspices of their emigration to the
country, and with such facilities for accumulating money--a wealthy and
intelligent population. This calculation was sadly disappointed. The
mildness of the climate and the fruitfulness of the soil combined to
enervate, instead of stimulating them to active industry, without which
there can be no prosperity