I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New Orleans this
morning at eight o'clock. She was crowded with passengers, in uniform. In my
cabin was a notice of the rules and regulations of the steamer. No. 6 was as
follows: “All slave servants must be cleared at the Custom House. Passengers
having slaves will please report as soon as they come on board.”
A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right,
entered one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole of the coast, called “Grant's
Pass.” An ingenious person has rendered it navigable by an artificial cut; but
as he was not an universal philanthropist, and possibly may have come from
north of the Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers, which can only be
cleared by means of a little pepper-castor iron lighthouse; and he charges toll
on all passing vessels. A small island at the pass, just above water-level,
about twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long, was being
fortified. Some of our military friends landed here ; and it required a good
deal of patriotism to look cheerfully at the prospect of remaining cooped up
among the mosquitoes in a box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell would
suffice to blow into atoms.
Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind
of internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on the left, by a
chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with sand, and exceedingly narrow,
so that the surf of the ocean rollers at the other side could be seen through the
foliage of the pine-trees which line them. On our right the endless pines
closed up the land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced by creeks without
number, called bayous; and it was curious to watch the white sails of the
little schooners gliding in and out among the trees along the green meadows
that seemed to stretch as an impassable barrier to their exit. Immense troops
of pelicans flapped over the sea, dropping incessantly on the fish which
abounded in the inner water; and long rows of the same birds stood digesting
their plentiful meals on the white beach by the ocean foam.
There was some anxiety in the passengers' minds, as it was
reported that the United States cruisers had been seen inside, and that they
had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We saw nothing of a character
more formidable than coasting craft and a return steamer from New Orleans till
we approached the entrance to Pontchartrain, when a large schooner, which
sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, attracted our attention. Through
the glass I could make out two guns on her deck, and quite reason enough for
any well-filled merchantman sailing under the Stars and Stripes to avoid her
close companionship.
The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets
and scattered towns along the seashore, hid in the piney woods, which offer a
retreat to the merchants and their families from the fervid heat of the
unwholesome city in summer time. As seen from the sea, these sanitary
settlements have a picturesque effect, and an air of charming freshness and
lightness. There are detached villas of every variety of architecture in which
timber can be constructed, painted in the brightest hues — greens, and blues,
and rose tints — each embowered in magnolias and rhododendrons. From every
garden a very long and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box, stretches
into the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these houses, with the light
domes and spires of churches rising above the lines of white railings set in
the dark green of the pines, is light and novel. To each of these cities there
is a jetty, at two of which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or
discharged a few bales of goods, and were off again.
Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were
blacks — the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and armed. A near
approach did not induce me to think that any agencies less powerful than
epidemics and summer-heats could render Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi
City, and the rest of these settlements very eligible residences for people of
an active turn of mind.
The livelong day my fellow-passengers never ceased talking
politics, except when they were eating and drinking, because the horrible
chewing and spitting are not at all incompatible with the maintenance of active
discussion. The fiercest of them all was a thin, fiery-eyed little woman, who
at dinner expressed a fervid desire for bits of “Old Abe” — his ear, his hair;
but whether for the purpose of eating or as curious relics, she did not
enlighten the company.
After dinner there was some slight difficulty among the
military gentlemen, though whether of a political or personal character, I
could not determine; but it was much aggravated by the appearance of a
six-shooter on the scene, which, to my no small perturbation, was presented in
a right line with my berth, out of the window of which I was looking at the
combatants. I am happy to say the immediate delivery of the fire was averted by
an amicable arrangement that the disputants should meet at the St. Charles
Hotel at twelve o'clock on the second day after their arrival, in order to fix
time, place, and conditions of a more orthodox and regular encounter.
At night the steamer entered a dismal canal, through a swamp
which is infamous as the most mosquito haunted place along the infested shore;
the mouths of the Mississippi themselves being quite innocent, compared to the
entrance of Lake Pontchartrain. When I woke up at daylight, I found the vessel
lying alongside a wharf with a railway train alongside, which is to take us to
the city of New Orleans, six miles distant.
A village of restaurants or “restaurants,” as they are
called here, and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus; all the
names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being French. Outside the
settlement the railroad passes through a swamp, like an Indian jungle, through
which the over-flowings of the Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires
of New Orleans rise above the underwood and semi-tropical vegetation of this
swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle, up to
the belly in the soft earth are floundering among the clumps of vegetation. The
nearer approach to New Orleans by rail lies through a suburb of exceedingly
broad lanes, lined on each side by rows of miserable mean one-storied houses,
inhabited, if I am to judge from the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly
population.
A great number of the men and women had evident traces of
negro blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites many had the
peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of the Levantine towns, and all
were pale and lean. The railway terminus is marked by a dirty, barrack-like
shed in the city. Selecting one of the numerous tumble-down hackney carriages
which crowded the street outside the station, I directed the man to drive me to
the house of Mr. Mure, the British consul, who had been kind enough to invite
me as his guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.
The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the
American cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects
they are more worthy of a great city than are those of New York There is an air
thoroughly French about the people — cafes, restaurants, billiard-rooms
abound, with oyster and lager-bier saloons interspersed. The shops are all magazines;
the people in the streets are speaking French, particularly the negroes,
who are going out shopping with their masters and mistresses, exceedingly well
dressed, noisy, and not unhappy looking. The extent of the drive gave an
imposing idea of the size of New Orleans — the richness of some of the shops,
the vehicles in the streets, and the multitude of well-dressed people on the
pavements, an impression of its wealth and the comfort of the inhabitants, The
Confederate flag was flying from the public buildings and from many private
houses. Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large proportion
of men were in uniform.
In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of
introduction, paid visits, and examined the shops and the public places; but
there is such a whirl of secession and politics surrounding one it is
impossible to discern much of the outer world.
Whatever may be the number of the Unionists or of the
non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been directed by
the popular party against the friends of the federal government. The agent of
Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed their office and is going
away in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is here, the
“excitement of the citizens,” on hearing of the subscription made by the firm
to the New York fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent in Mobile
has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other houses follow their example,
but as most business transactions are over for the season, the mercantile
community hope the contest will be ended before the next season, by the
recognition of Southern Independence.
The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls
are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are Pickwick rifles, La
Fayette/Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and
native volunteers, among whom the Meagher rifles, indignant with the gentleman
from whom they took their name, because of his adhesion to the North, are going
to rebaptize themselves and to seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact,
New Orleans looks like a suburb of the camp at Chalons. Tailors are busy night
and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the consul for some shirts —
the mistress and all her seamstresses were busy preparing flags as hard as the
sewing-machine could stitch them, and could attend to no business for the
present. The Irish population, finding themselves unable to migrate northwards,
and being without work, have rushed to arms with enthusiasm to support Southern
institutions, and Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand opposed to each other
in hostile camps.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 227-31
