for any country. A few acres, though half
cultivated, were found sufficient to yield an ample support, and the
mildness of the climate required but little provision for clothing.
Here, in this Eden upon earth, these people continued to live in a
simplicity of primitive ignorance and indolence scarcely to be believed
by any but an actual observer. Their implements of agriculture were
those of two centuries before. More than half the population wore
wooden shoes, when they wore any at all. Their wants were few, and were
all supplied at home. Save a little flour, powder, and shot, they
purchased nothing. These were paid for by the sale of the produce of
the poultry-yard--the prudent savings from the labor of the women--to
the market-boats from the city.

There were, at the period of which I write, but half a dozen Americans
upon the bayou. These had found the country illy adapted to the growth
of cotton, and some of them had commenced the planting of sugar-cane.
The results from this were very satisfactory, and consequently
stimulating to the enterprise of men of means, who felt they could be
more profitably employed in this new culture than in cotton, even in
the very best cotton regions.

There was one man of high intelligence and long experience who denied
this--Stephen Duncan, of Natchez--and the subsequent experience of many
brought bitter regret that they had not yielded to the counsels of Dr.
Duncan.

The great flood of 1828 had not touched the La Fourche or Teche, while
the entire alluvial plain above had been covered many feet, and for
many months. This was the most terrible inundation, perhaps, ever
experienced in that region; and every one appeared to be now satisfied
that to continue to cultivate lands already reduced to man's dominion,
or to open and prepare any more, subject to this scourge, was madness.
Hence the emigration from this chosen section to the new El Dorado.
Lands rose rapidly in South Louisiana as an effect of this, while
above, in the flooded district, they were to be bought for almost a
nominal price. Those who ventured to purchase these and reduce them to
cultivation realized fortunes rapidly; for there was not a sufficient
flood to reach them again for ten years. The levees by this time had
become so extended as to afford almost entire immunity against the
floods of annual occurrence. The culture of sugar received a new
impetus and began rapidly to increase, and capital came flowing in.