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an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the furthest point to the north at which
oranges ripen in the open air, or endure the winter without shelter. With
the exception of this sweet spot, I thought all the little towns and villages
we passed wretched-looking in the extreme.'

Natchez, like her near and far river neighbours, has railways now,
and is adding to them—pushing them hither and thither into all rich
outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her. And like Ticks-
burg and New Orleans, she has h?r ice-factory: she makes thirty tons

NATCHEZ.
of ice a day. In Yicksburg and Natchez, in my time, ice was jewel-
lery i none but the rich could wear it. But anybody and everybody can
have it now. I visited one of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see
what the polar regions might look like when lugged into the edge of
the tropics. But there was nothing striking in the aspect of tfee
place. It was merely a spacious house, with some innocent steam
machinery in one end of it and some big porcelain pipes running here
and there. No, not porcelain—they merely seemed to be ; they weare