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You know when one sits down, pen in hand, and with
kindly feelings, to write about what one has seen, and
wishes one's readers to see with the same eyes, that the
subject grows, enlarges, expands under the ready pen,
until what was meant for a letter only, becomes a book.
So, under my pen, enlarges my narrative of our excursion,
which I expected to stitch up for you with one needle
full of thread, but which I see will take two, and
perhaps three of them. A lady with a talkative pen is
quite as much a horror, I confess, as one with a talkative
tongue.

My last Needle left our little fleet of pleasure-barges
winding our pleasant way down the bayou Terre Bonne,
southwardly, towards the pretty village of Thibodeaux,
which please turn to your map and find in the bosom of
the delightful sugar region of Louisiana. It was a bright
autumnal day, and we all gave full rein to our wild
spirits, awaking the echoes of the groves, past which we
sailed, and causing the groups of slaves in the fields to
pause, leaning on their long-handled hoes, and gaze upon
us with shining eyes and glittering teeth; while Uncle
Ned at the helm drew himself up in the presence of these
“colored folk,” with all the dignity which his responsibility
as helmsman of our yacht entitled him to assume

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before barbarian “field niggers,” as the aristocratic
house-servant terms the cultivators of the soil.

At noon, we reached the estate of a friend; where we
landed and dined beneath the trees on the bank; the
hospitable family, seeing we would not go in, added all
sorts of luxuries, which half-a-dozen slaves brought out
to us upon waiters. It was sunset when we reached the
outlet of the bayou at the village of Thibodeaux; but as
the moon rose full and glorious before darkness could
begin to draw its starry veil over the sky, we resolved
to continue on our way and bivouac for the night at the
plantation of M. M—, a relative of my husband's, who
had been notified of our coming down upon him “in
force.” So we left the narrow bayou, passing beneath
the old French bridge that crossed it at its mouth, near
the end of the village street, and pulled out into the
broader and deeper current of the Bayou Lafourche, on
which the village stands. There was a soft haze settled
over the town, above which the spires caught the moonbeams
like minarets of silver.

When our whole fleet had got out into the broader
waters of Lafourche, there was a council of war held by
the gentlemen of the several boats, and it resulted in my
husband being chosen Admiral of the Fleet; and our
boat was therefore made the flag-ship, out of compliment
to me, a grace at their hands, which I here publicly acknowledge.
We, therefore took the lead, and the other
four boats followed joyously astern; for besides the two
yachts which joined us en voyage, we had two “transports,”
boats containing our tents, nets, fishing-poles,
guns, provisions, and dogs, and every possible extra,
that a campaign of ten days might require.

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As the town, with its sparkling window-lights, and
with here and there the distant music of a skillfully
thrummed guitar, receded, we drew near the Catholic
church, about half-a-mile below the village. Its bell was
heavily tolling across the water, and we saw a procession
coming forth with torchlights; and winding its way beneath
the trees towards the cemetery. The solemn
chanting of the service of the dead reached our ears when
we had gone far down the bayou, and, what with the
hour and associations, it all deeply impressed us. We
learned, on our return, that it was the funeral of a young
nun who had died the week previous, at the Convent du
Sacré Cœur, and her body having arrived late at her
former home, had been the same night conveyed beneath
the pure moonbeams to its last resting place by the
church in which she had, as an infant, received holy baptism.

There is something, to my imagination, extremely attractive
in the æsthetics of the Roman Catholic religion;
but not to my reason nor to my heart. I could never
bend my knee to the “Virgin Mother,” nor use words
of prayer to the “holy saints” asking their intercession,
while there stands in my Protestant Bible these words:
“There is one intercessor between God and man—the
man Christ Jesus.” Theirs is a romantic, imaginative,
and touchingly superstitious faith, and is only received
fully by an imaginative people.

Americans can never be Romanized. They are too
practical—too unimaginative, too little disposed to devotion
at all, to commit themselves voluntarily to a faith
that is ever genuflecting, ever going through the externals
of worship. A people who find it hard to

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acknowledge and pray to one God will hardly pray to a
thousand.

So the Pope and his council have decreed that the
mother of Jesus was a Divine Person, and therefore deny
that she is a woman! What a monstrous doctrine! and
it is decreed, too, by the papal “bull,” that it is heresy
to deny it. Do you not remember a place in the First
Epistle of John, chapter fourth, second and third verses;
also the Second Epistle of John, seventh verse, which
says, “For many deceivers are entered into the world,
who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and Antichrist?” Now, if Jesus'
mother was a divine and sinless being, she was not a
“woman.” But the prophecy was that Christ should be
the seed of the woman—born of a woman. If Mary was
not a woman, (but a sort of divine goddess as the Papal
decree makes her,) then Jesus was not born of woman;
and hence he is not the Christ; as he was not that “man
Christ Jesus” foretold; for he could only be man by
being born of a woman. The establishing, therefore, the
divinity of Mary, destroys the manhood of Jesus, and
ignores his having “come in the flesh.” But this is a
question for theologians, yet it is one that every Christian
may freely discuss.

Our voyage down the bayou under the splendor of the
gorgeous southern moon was delightful. Every half
mile we glided past a villa either on one hand or
the other. At one place we were serenaded, in passing,
by a party in a garden, who sang superbly and with fine
effect:—


“The bonny boat with yielding sway
Rocks lightly on the tide,” &c.

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The gentlemen and ladies of our party responded by
singing in full chorus the Canadian boat song:—

About nine o'clock we came in sight of the plantation
of M. M—, my husband's relative. We saw lights
moving upon the landing-place, for we had signalled our
near approach by a gun fired by Louis de F—.

Here we were welcomed with great enthusiasm, and
when Monsieur M. saw our large force and formidable
armament (for we had not less than seventeen guns of
all sorts and sizes), he playfully made grave objections to
our landing, asseverating that we had, no doubt, come
to invade and, peradventure, conquer his domain; but
being assured that we were bound only against piscatorial
foes, he suffered us to debark, at the same time hinting
that we were evidently on a secret Cuban expedition;
and your admiral (my husband) will be emperor, and
“your fair lady Kate,” he added, as he assisted me to
the pier, “will be empress. I much fear I shall be
called to account by my governor for aiding and abetting
a foreign invasion if I harbor you to-night.”

We passed the night at this princely home of one of
the best hearted southern gentlemen it was ever my lot
to meet; and resisting his pressing appeals to us to remain
another day and night, we took our departure,
taking Monsieur M. with us; “for,” he said, “if he
could not detain such good company, the good company
should retain him.”

We arrived, at nine o'clock at the estate of a New
Orleans gentleman, who was a non-resident. In his

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beautiful garden, which the waters of La Fourche lave,
we spread our morning meal, and never a pic-nic gathering
had so mirthful a repast. After breakfast we reembarked,
and, under the cheering command to the
rowers, “Give way heartily, boys!” we moved rapidly
down the bayou, the wide savannahs of the level sugar
fields stretching away on either hand to the horizon; the
uniformity of the immense surface of waving cane, relieved
here and there by clumps, or by single live oaks,
by groves concealing residences, and by the tall “Begasse
chimneys,” of the sugar houses, which made these
huge brick buildings look like convents.

About eleven o'clock a pleasant wind arose. I could
see its effects, as I stood upon the deck of the yacht, a
mile before we felt it, in the sea-like motion which it
communicated to the tall tops of the sugar cane, which
heaved and swelled beneath its invisible power like a
green, billowy sea.

To a northern eye, the best idea of a field of sugar-cane
here, will be conveyed by imagining a perfectly
level country, leagues in extent, without a fence, covered
with corn, just as it is ready “to tassel,” and if he
imagines through this vast domain of level savannah
a river, half the breadth of the Schuylkill, flowing
almost level with the land, with here and there a group
of trees dispersed over the green extent, and every mile
or two a villa and a tall, tower-like chimney and sugar-house
rising near it, a good idea of the country, through
which the “La Fourche” winds will be obtained.

When the breeze came to us we hoisted sail, and our
black oarsmen rested. Under the wing-like canvas our
little fleet flew cheerily onward; and as we drew nearer

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the Gulf the country became less picturesque, the sugar
fields less numerous, and the abodes of planters farther
and farther apart. At length we came, about two in the
afternoon, to the last tree that stands on the coast between
it and the Gulf, twelve miles distant. This tree
was a venerable live oak, and seemed to have stood there,
the monarch of the savannah, for centuries. Its huge
arms were broad enough to shelter five hundred men.
Its situation was “sublimely lonely and solitarily grand,”
as one of the young gentlemen of our party, who writes
poetry, said.

As we came near the oak, we startled two deer from
beneath it, which, after surveying us for an instant, took
to flight, and were lost to the eye in a moment in the
high gulf grass that grew close up to the tree, which
stood on a little island of its own, for around it was the
saline marsh that now took the place of the cultivated
sugar fields, which we had left behind.

It was decided by the “Admiral” that we should moor
our fleet beneath the tree and here dine.

You should have seen the bustle of preparation, Mr.—.
Our party consisted, all together, of descendants
of Japhet, fourteen, and of descendants of Ham, nine, in
all twenty-three persons; for to such a size had we increased
by volunteers from the estates we took in our
way. We were all friends, and knew one another well,
so that, I verily believe, everybody called everybody
(married or not) by their first name. Dignified married
lady as I am, they every soul called me “Kate,” as if I
had been everybody's sister, or at least “cousin.”

While we were dining at tables beneath the tree, with
servants in waiting, and every thing as nice and recherché

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as if we were in a dining-room, Petit Pierre, who was
drawing a cork from a bottle of Chateau Margaux, suddenly
uttered a formidable screech, dropped the bottle,
and fled yelling for the tree! We ladies, of course, were
all alarmed, and the brave gentlemen sprung to their
feet; when Uncle Ned, from the boat, called out,

“Big alligator, master!”

True enough, not fifty feet distant, a monstrous alligator
was seen swimming across the bayou, just above
us, to our side of it. Guns were in requisition! Dogs
were alert—and for a minute or more all was intense
excitement. Bang, bang, crack, bung, ping! went off
all sorts of fire-arms; but the king of the marshes did not
wait to contend matters, for he no sooner discovered into
what a snare he had inadvertently put his royalty, than
he made a queer noise like an elephant when teased,
and dived down out of sight. Close watch, with guns at
aim, was kept for his reappearance, but we saw him no
more. Petit returned from the tree to terra firma and
finished drawing the cork, and we resumed our meal,
which was interpolated by alligator stories, told by the
gentlemen.

After we had well dined, about four o'clock, we re-embarked.
The wind was fair and free, and our five boats, all
under snowy canvas, went careering onward towards the
Gulf.

In about half-an-hour one of the young gentlemen in
another yacht, who had climbed the mast, called out,

“Gulf, ho!”

At this sound we were all upon our feet, for some of us
had been taking siestas in our berths; but on going out
all I could see was the tall sea-grass spreading for miles

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around us; and even the old oak being no longer visible;
nothing but an ocean of brownish green grass eight
feet high, that tossed in the wind like a wave-moving
sea. But in a little while a bend in the bayou opened
the Gulf full before us, and with clapping hands and exclamations
of delight at its broad blue expanse and green
islands, we hailed the welcome sight.

But another letter must take up my narrative. Till
then, farewell.

p613-476

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