morning upon the Mississippi. But why do I speak thus of a scene which
can never fade from my remembrance, but in all future years will glow
the brightest picture which nature and civilization have daguerreotyped
upon my heart?

I rose before the sun, while all the east was glowing with his refracted
light. The steamboat had made excellent progress all night, not being
obliged to stop by fog, and was only detained a short time by running
plump into the mud on the river's bank; but she soon backed out of that
scrape.

We had here, fifty miles above New Orleans, an almost tropical sunrise.
The Mississippi, as if tired of its irregularities, flowed on an even
current between its low banks, along which on each side are raised
embankments of earth from four to ten feet in height,--the levee, which
extends for hundreds of miles along the river, defending the plantations
from being overflowed at high water.

As I gained the hurricane-deck the scene was enchanting, and, alas! I
fear indescribable. On each side, as far as the eye could reach, were
scattered the beautiful houses of the planters, flanked on each side by
the huts of their negroes, with trees, shrubbery, and gardens. For miles
away, up and down the river, extended the bright green fields of
sugar-cane, looking more like great fields of Indian corn than any crop
to which a Northern eye is familiar, but surpassing that in vividness
of the tints and density of growth, the cane growing ten feet high, and
the leaves at the top covering the whole surface. Back of these immense
fields of bright green were seen the darker shades of the cypress swamp,
and, to give the most picturesque effect to the landscape, on every
side, in the midst of each great plantation, rose the tall white towers
of the sugar-mills, throwing up graceful columns of smoke and clouds of
steam. The sugar-making process was in full operation.

After the wild desolation of the Mississippi, for more than half its
course below the Ohio, you will not wonder that I gazed upon this scene
of wealth and beauty in a sort of ecstasy. Oh! how unlike our November
in the far, bleak north was this scene of life in Louisiana! The earth
seemed a paradise of fertility and loveliness. The sun rose and lighted
up with a brighter radiance a landscape of which I had not imagined half
its beauty.

The steamer stopped to wood, and I sprang on shore. Well, the air was as
soft and delicious as our last days in June,--the g