kindly left a description of it. Journeying leisurely by that pretty route through the Lakes, and up the Bayou St. John, he notes on the banks of the Bayou villas in the Italian style, with pillars supporting the galleries, surrounded with gardens and approached through magnificent avenues of wild orange trees.
It was the rainy season when he arrived, and the streets were as impassable as they are now, a century later. In many quarters they were overflowed, and, he says, held abysses, in which carriages went to pieces. The sidewalks, or banquettes, as they are still called, were great planks, usually gunwales from the broken flatboats, fastened flat in the mud. Only an expert could walk upon them without damage to boots and clothing. The ditches intended for draining were often subjects of consternation, as they overflowed into lakes, and foot passengers had to make long detours to get around them. Names, of course, were not inscribed anywhere on the streets, so they went by an alias, usually given by the largest house on it. The houses were generally handsome, built of brick and some of them several stories high; those along the river front were the most desirable. As the city was filling every day with emigrants from France and fugitives from St. Domingo, lodgings were very dear. The population consisted of French, Spaniards, Anglo-Americans, Bohemians, negroes, mulattoes. The money-makers of the place were the wholesale merchants; the retailers, cabareteers, and pedlers were for the most part Catalans. The tailors, dressmakers, and bakers were French; carpentering was almost a monopoly of the coloured. "Winter is the gay season, balls are frequent. Indeed, in a place so bare of the means of
