green as Meath pastures, which can be
cultivated for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of
depth practically unlimited, and yielding an annual profit on what is
sold off it of at least twenty pounds an acre at the old prices and
usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the
white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and
sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And
who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and
Orange grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on
the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful
business.

When my eyes "uncurtained the early morning," I might have imagined
myself in the magic garden of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and
multifarious were the carols of the birds, which were the only happy
colored people I saw in my Southern tour, notwithstanding the assurances
of the many ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to prove to me
that the palm of terrestrial felicity must be awarded to their negroes.
As I stepped through my window upon the veranda, a sharp chirp called my
attention to a mocking-bird perched upon a rose-bush beneath, whom my
presence seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated behind my
curtain, whence I observed her flight to a nest, cunningly hid in a
creeping rose trailed around a neighboring column of the house, where
she imparted a breakfast of spiders and grasshoppers to her gaping and
clamorous offspring. While I was admiring the motherly grace of this
melodious fly-catcher, a servant brought coffee, and announced that the
horses were ready, and that I might have a three hours ride before
breakfast.

If I regretted the absence of the English agriculturist when I beheld
the six thousand acres of cane and sixteen hundred of maize unfolded
from the belvedere the day previous, I longed for his presence still
more when I saw those evidences of luxuriant fertility attained without
the use of phosphates or guano. The rich Mississippi bottoms need no
manure; a rotation of maize with cane affords them the necessary
recuperative action. The cane of last year's plant is left in stubble,
and renews its growth this spring under the title of _ratoons_. When the
maize is in tassel, cow-peas are dropped between the rows, and when the
lordly stalk, of which I measured many twelve or even fifteen feet in
height, bearing three