Had we got
out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say
the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise
in the known world.

"Why! deuce take you" (I said at least that, in my wrath), "don't you
see the boat is leaky?"

"See it now for true, massa. Nobody able to tell dat till massa get in,
tho'."

Another skiff proved to be stanch. I bade good-by to my friend, and sat
down in my boat, which was soon forced along up-stream close to the
bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view,
from my lonely position, was curious, but not at all picturesque. The
landscape had disappeared at once. The world was bounded on both sides
by a high bank, and was constituted by a broad river,--just as if one
were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above
the bank rose, however, the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of
sugar-houses. A row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on
the other side. I ascended the bank, and directly in front of me, across
the road, appeared a carriage gate-way and wickets of wood, painted
white, in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up
and down the road far as the eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread
fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close
set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the
house, the porch of which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn,
with clustering flowers, rose, jasmine, and creepers clinging to the
pillars supporting the veranda.

The proprietor, who had espied my approach, issued forth with a section
of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house
was larger and better than the residences even of the richest planters,
though it was in need of some little repair, and had been built perhaps
fifty years ago, in the old Irish fashion, who built well, ate well,
drank well, and, finally, paid very well. The view from the belvedere
was one of the most striking of its kind in the world. If an English
agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one
field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most
magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane,
as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here
is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better tilled than the
finest patch in all the Lothians,