CASTJLES .-137? CVLTCRE.

373

THE PAI*MBTTO.

the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange,
were everywhere to be seen, and it was many
days before we were weary of looking at them**
Captain Basil Hall—
* TLe district of country which lies adjacent
to the Mississippi, in the lower parts of Louisiana,
is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar planters,
whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig- garden^
and numerous slave-villages, all clean and neat,
gave an exceedingly thriving air to the river
scenery.
All the procession paint the attractive
picture in the same way. The descriptions
of fifty years ago do not need to have a word
changed in order to exactly describe the
same region as it appears to-day—except as
to the * trigness * of the houses. The white-
wash is gone from the negro cabins now;
and many, possibly most, of the big mansions,
once so shining white, have worn out their
paint and have a decayed, neglected look.
It is the blight of the war. Twenty-one
years ago everything was trim and trig and
bright along the ' coast/ just as it had been
in 1827, as described by those tourists.