[figure description] Page 338.[end figure description]

Dear Sir:—How shall I describe to you this city,
so as to convey to you any thing like an adequate idea
of it? It is unlike any other city in the Union, being
foreign in air, in customs, and mainly in population.
Level as the water level of the river, above the surface
of which it is elevated but a few inches, it extends for
five miles along a grand bend of the river, which, doubling
on its course, sweeps at this point northward, and
then southward again, forming a majestic yoke, or letter
U, and hence its name Crescent City. The front of the
city is defended from floods by the Levee, which is raised
a few feet higher than the general plane of its site.
This Levee is the grandest quay in the world. Tyre
nor Carthage, Alexandria nor Genoa, those aforetime
imperial metropoles of merchant princes, boasted no quay
like the Levee of New Orleans.

Picture to your mind's eye an esplanade or open front,
a quarter of a mile broad, shaped like a new moon, its
two horns four miles apart! Behold this noble space
built up on one side by blocks of lofty brick or stone-stores,
warehouses, steam-presses, hotels, cotton and
sugar magazines, in which the mightiest energies, talents,
and riches of commerce have their fields of daily activity.
Interminably, farther than the eye can follow them, in
their recession in the distance, they extend, range

[figure description] Page 339.[end figure description]

succeeding to range. Opposite this league-front of stores
lie the various vessels which are the winged servants of
the princely merchants, who occupy these commercial
palaces. The whole Levee bank, from horn to horn of
the magnificent crescent, is lined with shipping and
steamers.

First are the cotton ships, which extend three in a
tier for a mile and a half in unbroken line, their intermingled
masts presenting the aspect of a wintry forest
stripped of its leaves. I have been along the whole
Levee in a carriage, and seen all this with my own eyes,
and as I gazed I wondered at the sublime spectacle. A
half league mass of ships! those proud ocean eagles
which swept the clouds with their snowy crests, which
rose defiant to the down pressing storm, tossed the ocean
spray upon their necks, as the horse of the desert flings
his mane, whose path has been sublimely held amid tempests
and displays of the Almighty's power, whose swiftness,
glory, and beauty of motion and form mocked that
of the sea-bird—to see these once free and independent
creatures, (ships to me always seem living things with
life in them, like the wheels in Ezekiel's vision,)—to see
those superb ocean messengers stripped of their white
plumage, tied by the bit to wooden wharves, like newly
captured elephants to strong stakes—to see them secured
and motionless, fast bound in chains of iron, prisoners
and captives, all their winged swiftness and their late
ocean freedom changed into captivity, made me feel sad.
I gazed on them with pity and sympathy. Yet, captives
as they were, tied in threes as I beheld them,
divested of their white wings as they were, there was
still left much of the spirit of their former grandeur.

[figure description] Page 340.[end figure description]

Their dark hulls, huge and massive, rising high out of
the water and overtopping the Levee houses, and which
I had to gaze up at, their curving bows and tall bulwarks,
their noble outlines and vast proportions still
lent them a dignity which commanded respect.

“Ah, brave ships,” I said, “though bound fast now in
port like caged lions, the day will come again, when, laden
with the silvery fleece of this sunny land, and the glittering
crystals of its emerald sugar fields, ye will once
more spread your broad wings to the breeze of heaven,
your now motionless keels will once more cleave the
blue waves of the illimitable ocean, and again you shall
try your oaken strength with the tornado, and do mighty
battle with the billows. Conquering and still conquering
your pathway, you shall traverse the farthest seas;
some of you penetrate the icy Baltic, to lay your treasures
at the feet of the Russian Czar; some of you pass
beneath the frowning shadow of Gibraltar, and win your
way to far Egypt, and unlade your precious burden on
the quay of the city, where once reigned Joseph and the
Pharaohs; some of you less ambitious, shall follow the
curving shores of our vast republic, and passing the
Vineyard and the Capes of New England, shall fold your
canvass within sound of the church bell of my mother's
native town.

As we rode slowly along, gazing on the poor tied up
ships, I noticed that they bore flags of every land; for a
sea captain had died that morning, and all the vessels in
port had their colors at half mast, a very touching expression
of nautical sorrow; for a flag not completely
hoisted, is, in the symbolic language of seamen, inverted,
a signal of distress at sea, of sorrow in port. My

[figure description] Page 341.[end figure description]

old friend, the Bengal captain, (who has gone to sea
again, and is now away off in India,) carried this half
masting idea so far, that being in mourning for a relation,
with black crape on a white General Jackson hat,
he always wore the strip just half way up his hat, (half-mast,
as he called it,) with a streamer half a foot long,
floating out behind. The dear good old tease of a Bengal
tiger! I wonder if he will ever write me that long
letter he promised me he would do, and tell me all about
his adventures in those far away lands and seas. If he
does keep his promise, Mr. —, the letter is yours to
put in print.

Some of the ships were Swedish, blunt, square-bowed,
high-shouldered, buffalo-looking hulks, with white-headed
and fair-skinned men on board, in blue and red woolen
caps. Their pretty flag was a white cross on a blue
ground, with a scarlet field in the upper corner, ornamented
with a small white St. Andrew's cross, (the letter
X.) I thought of sweet Jenny Lind, as I looked at
the flag of her country, which I felt would have brought
tears of joy into her eyes, to have seen it here, so far
away from her home-land.

How much Sweden owes to Jenny Lind in song, Miss
Bremer in letters, and Thorwaldsen in sculpture! But
for these three gifted children of her hills, Sweden, as
before their birth, would be obscurely known to the
world. But they have placed her first in music, first in
letters, first in art; so that now she takes her proper intellectual
rank with the cultivated nations of Europe.
If three persons can give glory to their native land in
the eyes of the world, how carefully ought every

[figure description] Page 342.[end figure description]

indivisual to live, that he may peradventure reflect honor
upon his own nation! No one is insignificant.

There were four Swedish ships, and two Norwegian
barques, showing in their flag a large blue cross on a red
ground, the flag of Ole Bull's land. A Portuguese brig,
with her pretty green and white striped colors, I also
saw. There were half a dozen Russian ships, with their
flags striped with red, white, and blue. The most part
of the vessels displayed the star-spangled banner, flashing
and glittering above the Yankee decks, as saucily as though
it felt itself at home on its own soil. The red, sanguinary-looking
ensign of old England, with its double cross in
one corner of a blue ground, floated proudly and gloomily
above full a hundred ships; for, next to the commerce
of our own ships, that of England stands confessed.
The tri-colored flag of France was visible here and there,
and the yellow and red colors of Spain flaunted above
inferior-looking vessels.

Of the Yankee ships, nearly all were from New York,
and ports north of it, the half being from New England.
The handsomest ships which I saw were from Bath,
Maine; and a captain, to whom the colonel spoke, told
me that the best ships in the world are built on the Kennebec
river in Maine. Those which I saw and admired,
were certainly models of grace, majesty, and strength.
They looked like peaceful frigates, tamed down, and
broken into the merchant service. After leaving the
long range of ships, we came to the part of the Levee
where the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, and all Northern
and interior steamers moor. For half a mile it was a
grand display of snow-white hulls, round-topped wheel-houses,
tall, black, iron chimneys, some belching forth

[figure description] Page 343.[end figure description]

clouds of murky smoke, that rolled and rolled over the
city like threatening thunder-clouds, only more awfullooking.
I never saw anything so dreadfully sable as
these volumes of smoke, which rise from furnaces crammed
with pine knots and tar-barrels.

After the steamboats, come the small Spanish and
Creole coasters, and the Texas and Florida trading
schooners, which are very numerous, with swarthy crews
in red shirts, knife in belt, and with huge beards. Then
we came to the Ocean steamers, those mammoth sea-dandies
that go steaming about the world smoking their rusty
sheet-iron cigars, and leading a very fast life, much to
the scandal of the sober-going merchantmen. These
steamers, with their jet-black aspect, and odd-looking,
shark-headed bows and huge dimensions, have a very demoniacal
appearance; and if I had been a timid person
at all, I should have hesitated about venturing within
their capacious power, recollecting how Jonah once came
too near a sea-monster of a similar species, and was swallowed
whole.

Nevertheless we went on board; but as they were taking
in coal with scores of wheel-barrows, everything was
dusty, noisy, and disagreeable; and painters being at
work in the cabin, all things were upside down, like
a New England scouring day. So we beat a retreat, and
continued our ride two miles further, again coming upon
a chain of ships nearly as extensive as the first we had
seen; both sides of the city being flanked by these wooden
marine walls and forests of masts.

Imagine every ship engaged in lading, or unlading,
every steamer discharging, or taking in freight and passengers,
and every third one letting off noisy steam and

[figure description] Page 344.[end figure description]

belching smoke; while steamboats constantly arrive
from the river above, and round to and land, or depart
amid the roars of escape pipes, and the clamor of bells.
Imagine four thousand drays aiding in loading and unloading
these thousand vessels, and moving in all directions
along the Levee, till its whole surface is alive with a
ceaseless maelstrom of motion, accompanied by a noise
of hoofs, wheels, and voices, almost deafening in their
aggregated thunderings. Imagine one broad field of
such commercial life, four miles in unbroken extent, and
you will have some idea of the “Levee” at New Orleans.
No city on earth can present such a striking scene,—and
all at one glance of the eye! No quay-view anywhere
could convey such an impression to the mind of the observer,
of the power, and might, and action, and energy
of commerce.

But as I gazed upon all this, I could not help recalling
the terrible chapter in Revelations addressed to Babylon,
“that great city wherein was made rich all that had
ships in the sea, by reason of her costliness.”

For her luxuries and sins, Babylon was terribly judged!
Will this city remember God, and glorify Him “who
maketh the merchants of the earth to wax rich,” when
they say, “What city is like unto this great city? Shall
she also be made desolate, and her crown be removed
and cast into the dust?” God forbid! Let Religion go
hand in hand with, and sanctify Commerce, and this city
need not fear what otherwise it should apprehend,—the
doom of all those hitherto which have forgotten from
whose Hand “cometh all prosperity.”

p613-350

Previous section

Next section