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I have opened my writing-desk and taken a nice
new pen to give a full description of our excursion to the
Gulf. As Harry is in bed fast asleep, and “dreaming
about the angels,” as Aunt Winny says all babies do, I
shall be able to write you an hour without interruption.

It was a busy time with us all, for a day or two before
we were ready to start. The gentlemen had to get their
fishing lines, dip nets, guns, and rough-weather coats,
and hats ready, and we ladies to fit ourselves with plain
substantial dresses, chip hats, stout shoes, and all things
needful for a campaign so formidable; but the gentlemen
were most concerned that we should have plenty of good
things to eat, of which department I was unanimously
appointed commissary.

Early on Monday morning, two weeks ago, we were
roused at day-dawn by the pre-concerted signal—a gun
fired off by Scipio Africanus, my husband's chief boatman.
We were soon alert, and the whole house was activity and
bustle.

“Kate, don't forget the marmalade; and are you sure
you put up the guava jelly? and did Dick pack the basket
of wines?”

These unquiries were made by my lord and husband,

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who, as you may judge, is something of an epicure, in
his way.

“Aunt Winny—don't forget the baby!” I screamed,
seeing her leaving the house without Harry.

“Lor, bless us, Missus, Mass' Harry done gone down
to de boat on de Doctor back!”

“All well aboard,” cried my husband as he handed
me in last; for I had delayed to give my orders to old
Chloe, my housekeeper and factotum, and to tell her that
if any of our friends came while we were absent, to entertain
them with the best the house held, and try and
keep them till we returned; and in order that she might
carry out this hospitality, I left her in possession of all
my keys.

It was fairly sunrise when we were safely on board the
yacht and away from the shore. And a lovely morning
it was. The eastern sky looked like a broad lake of gold
and green, stretching away into heaven and decked with
purple islets of clouds. Not a breath moved the serene
air or disturbed the placid surface of the water, over
which we glided to the music of the rippling keel and
dripping oars of two of our slaves, whose red Saracenic
turbans, blue shirts, and white full trowsers, gave them,
with their dark faces, a picturesque appearance. And
for that matter, we were all picturesque-looking enough,
to please the fancy of any romantic school-girl. Our
barge itself was a long, graceful, xebec-modeled craft of
three tons burthen, a tall tapering mast of the light
brown tint of amber, terminating, twenty feet from the
deck, in a white top-mast, crowned with a gilt arrow.
To a very long pliant yard slung across it, was suspended
a broad latteen sail, the shape of a swallow's wing.

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Never was a more bird-like looking boat, and when it
was racing before a wave-capping wind across the lake,
it looked like a swift albatross winging his way to his
covert, amid the dark shades of the forest beyond the
mere.

In the after part of the boat is a deck that covers an
apartment which sailors call a cabin, or cuddy, large
enough to hold six persons; if they are very fleshy they
will be somewhat pinched for space, and if very tall,
they will have to stoop as they sit down. On each side
are two berths, and a table in the centre. The whole
place is beautifully finished off with rosewood and gilding,
rich blue drapery conceals the sleeping places, and a
Turkish carpet and lounges add to its comfort. It is a
lady's boudoir afloat. Last, not least, it contains a little
cupboard, which holds a complete dining set for six, and
tea sets to match. The forward part of the xebec has a
covered forecastle for the steersman, two oarsmen, and
steward. The length of the whole vessel is thirty-two
feet. In the space between the forecastle and cabin, are
seats cushioned, where we sit by day, as we sail along;
and if the sun is hot, an awning is drawn over our heads,
but not so low as to prevent us from seeing the scenery
on both sides of the boat.

As for our party, it consisted of my husband; two fair
Louisiana belles, his cousins, of whom I have before
spoken, who are on a visit to us from their father's sugar
estate, near New Orleans; and young Dr. Louis de
F—, who has just returned from Europe, and lives on
the next plantation to ours, and who is very much in
love with Mathilde, the eldest cousin, a splendid dark-eyed
queen of a girl, who loves him back again with all

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her warm and generous heart, and what can a lover ask
more, Mr. —? I make the fifth member of our
party, and lastly, and the most important personage of
all, is Master Harry, my baby. Then there is good
old Aunt Winny, whose “experience” I sent you, for I
cannot stir without her, as she is Harry's ambulance,
and there is Petit Pierre, a slight, golden-skinned, girlish
looking lad, who is my page in general, and also
waits on table, draws corks for the gentlemen, baits our
hooks, and amuses Harry; a miscellaneous useful little
fellow, with a smile full of sweetness, and eyes superbly
large and expressive, like the eyes of a gazelle. His
proper appellation is Pierre, but he is so slight and under
sized, that every one calls him “Petit” also, to which
name he usually answers.

Now let me sketch you our party, as we move along in
the morning sunshine across the blue lake, towards the
narrow, tree-shadowed outlet of the bayou, into which
we are soon to enter.

At the helm stands the steersman, Uncle Ned, a tall,
grave, pious black man, whose true name is Sambo.
His visage is jet black, honest and sensible in its expression,
and withal humble and deferential. He would lay
down his life for his master, who I believe would as readily
lay down his life for him. When my husband was a child,
Sambo, then a half-broke plantation urchin, carried him
in his arms, and became his out-door nurse. They grew
up together, and when the child became a man, and the
boy-nurse a servant in his family, the attachment, which
they naturally manifested, was beautiful. At present
Uncle Ned has the responsibility of the whole party, and
his grave face shows that he feels it. His whole heart

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is upon his duty. His head is surmounted by a broad-brimmed
white hat, with a streamer of black crape far
pendant behind; for Uncle Ned has recently lost his help-meet,
Dinah, and shows the depth of his grief by the
length of his mourning weed; for your true African rejoices
in a craped beaver; and I verily believe the grief
at the loss of their kindred is compensated, in a measure,
by the idea of “the black craped hat.” Uncle Ned has
gray, military cut whiskers, and a white cravat closely
tied about his neck.

Genteel negroes like Uncle Ned affect “white ties.”
He wore a black coat and white vest, and snuff-brown
linsey-wolsey trowsers, and looked the character he was
on the plantation of a Sunday, “a colored clergyman.”
Yet he was a good coachman, a better boatman, as well
as a true gentleman, at heart and in sentiment. Old
Ned's only dissipation was his pipe. This he never was
without, out of doors, if “de ladies would let him smoke
de pipe in dere presence.”

The two girls, Mathilde and Marie, were dressed in
closely-fitting spencers, which set off their superb figures
splendidly, and made the elder, who is just nineteen,
look like a Southern Di Vernon; and her dark tresses,
stealing out beneath her wide straw hat, laughed in the
winds. Marie was a fair blonde, with an eye of blue,
like rich turquoise set in pearl, or to use a soft and tender
simile, “like a violet cupped in a lily.” The elder
was Juno, the younger Euphrosyne. One captured
hearts by the lightning of her glorious sunrise-looking
eyes; the latter won them with gentle influences, as the
moon attracts towards itself the beauteous lake, that reflects
its image. The two lovely sisters, in their flapping

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Panama hats, and gray pic-nic habits, and jaunty, half-gipsy
air, looked romantic enough for Mr. Alexander
Smith; who is the moon's own bard, and who, had there
been no moon, no poet had been.

The handsome Louis, who stands amidships, pointing
out to Marie a flight of birds, is dressed like a buccaneer,
and I believe intended to be Mr. Lafitte for the present
expedition only, inasmuch as we were bound to the neighborhood
of this celebrated sea-king's island of Barataria;
nay, we expected to pay it a visit in our absence.
Louis has a fine face, but its beauty all comes from his
heart, which is one of the noblest, and kindest, and manliest
that ever beat. His features are not regularly
formed, and his forehead is too low, but when one knows
him well, and knows what a pure soul he possesses, what
superior intellect, and commanding talent, one loves and
honors him without any reservations.

Then, there stands my husband! Of course he is not
to be paralleled or compared. He may be ugly; but if
he is, I don't know it, for my love throws a golden veil
over every defect, and illumines every feature with the
light of beauty, not beauty such as woman has, but the
beauty of a man—who stands out commandingly the
image of his Maker.

I say that my husband, Mr. —, may be ugly, but
to me he is perfect. His hazel eyes beam on me only
with love and pride, and husbandly tenderness; his
mouth speaks to me only the kindest and most pleasurable
things, his voice, when he turns to address me,
changes its tone from that he gives to others, and falls
upon my ear like some mysterious music, that thrills
and moves the heart, the dear listener knows not how or

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why. The voice may be harsh, the mouth unhandsome,
the lips without regularity, the eyes without beauty, but
to me they challenge comparison with the eyes, lips, and
voice of Apollo, or any admirable Crichton of them all.

There! my heart's confession is made, Mr. —!
You see I am not ashamed of my good husband, and I
don't intend to be; on the contrary, I mean all my
readers shall think of (I was going to say love) him as
well as I do. As to loving him (I mean the fair girls
who read this), I would simply hint that I have a monopoly
in him, and don't intend any body shall love him,
or look at him even sidewise, but me. Even the superb
Mathilde, cousin as she is, sometimes makes me feel like
pulling her ears, when I have seen her look as if she
loved him more than a cousin ought to love a cousin!
Harry I will not describe—he couldn't be described!
Imagine a perfect Cupid, (I mean, of course, sir, with a
pretty plaid frock on, tiny gaiter boots on his charming
feet, a Scotch cap and feather set aside on his curly
head, black eyes full of fun, rosy cheeks, chubby arms,
chubby hands, chubby bare legs, and lips like the rosy
lining of twin sea-shells,) and you have “Mass' Harry,”
and with him the whole “ship's company.”

We moved delightfully along the shores of the tree-fringed
lake for a half mile, when visible right ahead,
was the opening of the bayou, for which we were steering.
We soon entered, all at once, losing sight of the
sun-bright lake of my villa-home. The bayou was about
as wide as Chestnut street, with just room for meeting
boats to pass. For the first mile we moved on beneath
mammoth trunks of old live-oak trees, that threw their
gnarled arms far across from side to side. Wild vines,

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gay with strange and beautiful flowers, grew close to the
water, and winding their serpent-like folds about the
trees, climbed up and along the branches, and formed a
thousand festoons from bank to bank, beneath which we
glided, and using them to propel us onward, instead of
the oars, we darted swiftly beneath, leaving far astern a
wake of gurgling waves, agitated by our keel. A deer,
startled by our shouts of laughter, (for people in the
woods somehow are always more noisy than when at
home,) plunged into the stream, and after a dozen of
vigorous strokes with his hoofs, dashing the water high
above his antlers as he swam, landed on the wild-wood
side of the bayou. Louis raised his rifle with a true
hunter's instinct. Mathilde, with a “No, Louis, don't!
Let the poor fellow live and enjoy the freedom of his
forest home, gently laid her hand upon the gun and disarmed
him.

“It is your deer, Mademoiselle Mathilde,” he said,
gallantly,” “and when I return I will ensnare him and
present him to you alive.”

At this moment, we emerged from the entangled forest,
and on each side extended the level sugar fields a mile
broad, waving like the “green and laughing corn,” or
rather looking like an undulating emeraldine sea. In
the distance ahead, rose the lofty towers of the sugar-house,
or “sucrérie,” and amid a grove of tropical shade
trees, half a mile to the right, were visible the roof and
cupola of the mansion, where we were to receive an accession
of two more boats to our party.

In an hour after leaving the lake, we reached this
luxurious abode of refinement and wealth, were welcomed
by a happy group upon the green bank, and escorted

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with great triumph and rejoicing to the house where
breakfast was waiting for us; for it was in carte of the
day that we were to dejeuner here. By nine o'clock we
were once more on board, and with the addition of two
more ladies and three gentlemen, we voyaged a-down the
bayou, a merry fleet, steering the whole forenoon amid
sugar fields that kissed the wave, or past villas where we
were cheered by groups of friends, who followed us as
far as they could be heard, with “Bon voyage, bon voyage,
au revoir!” while little Harry, held high in air, by
proud Aunt Winny, would prettily smack his fat hands
and toss an imaginary kiss, (an accomplishment which
his father had taught the little rogue,) back to the joyous
throng. The remainder of my narrative, I will defer,
Mr. —, for another letter. Until then, adieu.

p613-467

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