FLORIDA.

299 The soil bordering the streams is peculiarly fertile, and well suited to the production of cotton and maize; but, generally, it is considered better adapted for grazing than for agriculture, The climate is one perpetual spring. Vegetation never ceases. The trees and meadows are crowned with constant verdure. All tropical fruits and plants are produced in abundance, as also some of more northern origin. Florida, however, unlike Georgia, is not celebrated for its mineral productions; but great varieties of beautiful shells and corals, madrepores, together with other ornaments of the sea, may be gathered on its shores, which are also studded with white and brown rocks of various quality and formation.

St. Augustine, a large town built in the Spanish style, is one of the oldest of the Union, and its climate is so salubrious, and therefore so attractive to valetudinarians, that it may be said to contain a convalescent establishment. Tolahape, or Tallahassee, is the new capital. The town of St. Mark is situated on Apalache Bay. The tides on this coast are remarkable. Among other peculiarities, and especially as compared with the same phenomenon in other places within the tropics, they run here, as it is termed in nautical language, "tide and half tide," in the same manner as at Plymouth, the Needles, and the Isle of Wight, viz., three hours' flood, succeeded by three hours' ebb; next nine hours' flood, and nine hours' ebb. They do not rise, however, to an equal height in all places, nor do they run with equal rapidity in every part of the coast.

In the direction south-westward along the sea-coast, as a vessel stands into its beautiful bay, is the town of Pensacola. It is situated on a plain extending along a beach, is of an oblong form, and contains some spacious and elegant buildings. Its situation is romantic, commanding a noble prospect from the harbour. Some parts of the coast are iron-bound by rocks piled up to a great elevation, which receive the breakers of the Atlantic as they burst after their long sweep over the ocean. In other directions the sea rolls over an immense beach of bright and polished sand, and in the storms that rage there in winter throws in numerous wrecks on its enormous billows.

Still advancing along the south-western shore is the town of Mobile, in the State of Alabama. It stands at the head of a bay, and is of considerable commercial importance, although greatly inferior, in all respects, to others that have been more recently founded. It occupies the side of a hill at the mouth

of the river Tombigbec or Mobile River. It is regularly built, of an oblong form, but stands in the midst of marshes and lagoons, largely productive of fevers, agues, and numerous other diseases. Alligators and other noxious reptiles and insects are also found in the vicinity. Near the entrance of the bay are several islands, the principal of which are called Dauphin and Pelican islands. On the latter of these the soil is in some places arid, but in others covered with pine trees down to the beach.* The water is very shallow at a distance, and the bottom, which can be distinctly seen from its surface in fine weather, presents a moving picture of various animals gliding along in quick succession over the rocky points and accumulations of coral that there abound.

The principal agricultural products of the State are corn, cotton, and tobacco. Mobile itself may be said to be only a place of trade—the great mart of this celebrated cotton-growing State. Its merchants are wealthy, spending nothing in luxuries. Its exports are only second in extent to those of New Orleans. No elegant houses are here to be seen, nor equipages, but a crowded harbour. The inhabitants have no public amusements, and comparatively, it is said, very little of religion.

* The Bayous of Alabama and Florida are celebrated for having been formerly the rendezvous of pirates.

CHAPTER XXIV.

NEW ORLEANS. STATE OF LOUISIANA.-New Orleans, how situated. Its importance. General description of its appearance. Causes of its peculiar and picturesque architecture. Public places of recreation and amusement. Origin of the city. Early possession by France. Original European population. Their discouraging prospects. Various character and motley aspect of its present inhabitants. Proportion between white and black, slave and free. Principal agricultural products. Market. Levee. Places of worship. Contrast between New Orleans and the cities of the North. Comparative paucity of benevolent institutions. Vast commerce. Acquisition of wealth the all-engrossing object of pursuit. Prevailing demoralization. Causes. Influence of slavery. Duelling. Desecration of the Sabbath. Climate and seasons. Infectious diseases. Remarkable public burial-place. Slave auctions. Slavery. Mississippi, its source, magnitude, extent, and grandeur. Cincinnati, Ohio river, &c.

The next principal city, as the voyager passes along the great Atlantic sea-board, after Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah, is New Orleans, leaving to the north-east, as already signified, Pensacola in West Florida, and Mobile in Alabama, both situated in the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans is the capital of the State of Louisiana, and is called "the Crescent City." It is situated on the banks of the Mississippi, about one hundred miles from the mouth of the -river, one thousand six hundred and forty-four miles from New York by the shortest route, and is one of the most flourishing cities of the Republic. As a commercial depôt it is unrivalled, as are also the activity and bustle on the river and on the shore. It is built on a level bed of alluvium, on a surface that slightly dips southward, which was formerly a cypress swamp, and is at high water but from two to four feet above the surface of the river. The plain on which the city is built rises only nine feet above the level of the sea. Excavations are often made far below the level of the Gulf of Mexico. To prevent inundations, a high bank, called "the Levee," has been raised, extending along the city, and reaching a considerable distance beyond it, forming an extensive and pleasant promenade.

The city stands on the left bank of the river, being a tongue of land between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, into which great inland sea the waters of the Gulf of Mexico enter.

It extends round the elbow of the stream, forming a curve nearly in the shape of a half moon, and has from this latter circumstance received the designation of "the Crescent City," as intimated above.

The city is in the form of a parallelogram, extending a distance of five miles on a line parallel with the river, and may be said to be divided into two portions, French and Anglo-American, or, politically, into three municipalities.

It was originally formed of heavy-roofed, old French and Spanish houses, and the streets were laid out as nearly as possible at right angles, running the whole length and depth of this great city. They are still in general narrow, a style which was judged by the Spaniards, and not without reason, best adapted to a warm climate. But at the same time they are always filthy; their condition is an absolute nuisance, and in wet weather they are almost impassable. There are brick causeways (the trottoirs of the French), but the carriage-ways are left in a state of nature.

The houses are principally constructed of wood, and the architecture of the older sections of the city is Spanish. When Louisiana came into possession of the French, the original taste in building seems to have been retained and to have preponderated for a long time:

As a security against hurricanes, as is supposed, the houses. in general are but one story high; they are ornamented with green verandahs and balconies, and the principal apartments open to the street. While, however, most of the houses are built of wood, and exhibit the architecture of an earlier day, there are edifices of greater pretensions covered with stucco, adorned with verandahs, centered in plots of garden-ground, half-hidden with oleanders, magnolias, palms, aloes, and the yucca gloriosa, which, added to the orange trees disposed in rows on each side, covered throughout almost the entire year with beautiful aromatic blossoms or brilliant fruit, and these again relieved by acacias and other flowering trees and shrubs, render the appearance of this part of the city truly beautiful and picturesque. The vine and various species of convolvulus grow wild on every side; while the orange, the myrtle, and the arbutus, loading the air with perfume, are often mingled with red-blossomed aloes, the prickly cactus, and variegated hollies; together with all the varieties of rubiacæ, euphorbiæ, and legumes.

There is something in the general air and tout ensemble, -the style of building, the mingling of the foliage, particularly that of the palm tree with the quaint architecture,-when seen through the vistas of the straiter streets, which calls up a confused remembrance of some of the best Spanish and French West India towns, though in some other respects they are greatly dissimilar, and more allied to towns in Flanders.

This quarter of the city is the residence of the Spanish and French part of the population. That occupied by the AngloAmericans has but little attraction of any kind, being built in a plain, monotonous line, with but little embellishment from art or nature. The streets are wider, and the houses larger, higher, and the stores more capacious; but the internal superiority of the latter, as to comfort, has been attained at the expense of external effect.

The city now contains a considerable number of public buildings, some of which, particularly the Cathedral of the Roman Catholics and the Charles's Hotel, are of very respectable architecture. Among those of the second class are the Town-House, the Churches and Chapels, the Military and general Hospitals, the Barracks, the Custom-House, and the Theatres.

One of the hotels, called Charles's Hotel, or the French Restaurant, the property, in whole or in part, of a Frenchman, is said to be the most splendid of its kind that is to be found in the Southern States, resembling in its exterior architecture the Pantheon at Rome. When at its full complement, five hundred and sixty persons dine there at the ordinary every day, three hundred and fifty of whom sleep in the house. There are one hundred and sixty servants, and seven French cooks. All the waiters are whites-Irish, English, French, German, and American. The proprietor or manager assembles them every day at noon, when they go through a regular drill, and rehearse the service of dinner. This magnificent building was finished in 1838, and cost 600,000 dollars. The gentlemen's diningroom is one hundred and twenty-nine feet by fifty feet, and is twenty-two feet high, having four ranges of tables capable of accommodating five hundred persons. The ladies' dining-room measures fifty-two feet by thirty-six. There are, altogether, three hundred and fifty rooms, which might be made to contain, with little inconvenience, between six and seven hundred people. The front consists of a projecting portico, supported by six fine Corinthian columns resting upon a rustic basement. The whole