the countries of Attakapas on the east and Opelousas on the west.
On its west bank, at its head of navigation, lies the sorry little
town of Vermilionville, near about which on the north and east the
prairie rises and falls with a gentle swell, from whose crests one
may, as from the top of a wave, somewhat overlook the surrounding
regions.

Until a few years ago, stand on whichever one you might, the prospect
stretched away, fair and distant, in broad level or gently undulating
expanses of crisp, compact turf, dotted at remote intervals by farms,
each with its low-roofed house nestled in a planted grove of oaks, or,
oftener, Pride of China trees. Far and near herds of horses and
cattle roamed at will over the plain. If for a moment, as you passed
from one point of view to another, the eye was shut in, it was only
where in some lane you were walled in by fields of dense tall
sugar-cane or cotton, or by huge green Chickasaw hedges, studded with
their white-petalled, golden-centred roses. Eastward the plain broke
into slight ridges, which, by comparison with the general level, were
called hills; while toward the north it spread away in quieter swells,
with more frequent fields and larger houses.

North, south, east, and west, far beyond the circle of these horizons,
not this parish of Lafayette only, but St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberia,
St. Mary's, Vermilion,--all are the land of the Acadians. This quarter
off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian exiles, in memory
of the land from which they were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small
homestead groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes of
their children. Here is this one on a smooth green billow of the land,
just without the town. It is not like the rest,--a large brick house,
its Greek porch half hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day,
more than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie shut into
the chapel the villagers of Grand Pre, a certain widow fled with her
children to the woods, and there subsisted for ten days on roots and
berries, until finally, the standing crops as well as the houses being
destroyed, she was compelled to accept exile, and in time found her
way, with others, to these prairies. Her son founded Vermilionville.
Her grandson rose to power,--sat in the Senate of the United States.
From early manhood to hale gray age, the people of his State were
pleased to hold him, now in one capacity, now in another, in their
ho