by where we were sitting, and a dead negro, who was a notorious ruffian, was dragged out into the street, where the body lay. No one seemed to think much of this, as we were told that seven men had been shot in this little place during the last year or so. A Northern judge who was in the cars told us the history of the Morehead County family feuds, which had developed to such an extent that after thousands had been killed the State Militia were called out to put an end to the desperate faction fight by abolishing Morehead County altogether, as there were no people to be found who were not implicated on one side or the other. When I read Huckleberry Finn, I hardly believed that the story of the fights described by Mark Twain in that wonderful book was really based on facts, but what I saw now, and in a later visit to the Alleghany Mountains, convinced me.
Late that night the tunnel was made passable and we got through safely to Chattanooga, where, having missed connections to New Orleans, we had to stay a day in that muddy and rowdy town. We passed the time by a visit to the top of Lookout Mountain, whence we had a wonderful view over a vast extent of forest-covered mountain country in which parts of five different States are included, and which was the scene of much hard fighting in the American Civil War. Though spring had not yet clothed these beautiful forests in green, yet the weather was quite mild and balmy as compared with the frost and snow we had left in New England, and when we got to New Orleans the change of scenery and climate was very marked indeed.
Before reaching New Orleans we had to pass on a trestle bridge twenty- three miles long which crosses the inland sea of Lake Pontchartrain, and through gloomy marshy forests of deciduous cypress covered with masses of the Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) which covers the trees in many parts of Louisiana.
We found good quarters in the old St. Charles Hotel, then celebrated as the best hotel in the Southern States, and Mrs. Elwes was much an¬ noyed by finding a notice in our bedroom, “Beware of hotel thieves, coloured laundresses and bugs.” When we sat down to lunch, our first leisurely meal since leaving Pittsburgh, the coloured waiter was inclined to be cheeky, seeing that we were Britishers and new to the country, and said that we must hurry up with our meal as he wanted the table for others. I had previously made the acquaintance of the proprietor, an old- time Southern Colonel,’ and went to ask him whether his guests were usually so treated by the waiters. He was very angry and at once came back to the dining-room with me and called for the head-waiter. When the culprit was pointed out he told the head-waiter: "Fire that fellow at once, and if you bring any more like him into my house I will fire the lot of you.”
Though I came to know the ways of coloured waiters later, I never liked their attitude, which among the younger generation at least is usually a mixture of servility and bumptiousness, the former when they think their tip depends on it, the latter when they think you are a stranger who is not acquainted with their position, I have been served by many coloured races in Asia and America and prefer them all to the American negro. Chinamen are, in my judgment, by far the best servants in the United
