things.  These dark pockets of the swamps, these earthly Hades, are famous resting-places for those who know the untenable nature of ghosts, and who have become the possessors of healthy nerves by avoiding the poisonous influences of coal-gas in furnace-heated houses, the vitiated air of crowded rooms, and other detrimental effects of a city life.  In such a camp the voyager need fear no intrusion upon his privacy, for the superstitions rife among men will prevent even Paul Pry from penetrating such recesses during the wee sma’ hours.  Of course such a camp would be safe only during the winter months, as at other seasons the invidious foe, malaria, would inevitably mark for its victim the man who slept beneath such deadly shades.

At midnight the light of the moon illuminated my dark quarters, and I stole noiselessly out of the bayou into the river, rowing until sunrise, when the small port of Bayou Sara was passed.  It was soon left in the dim distance, and the little white boat floated ten miles down a nearly straight reach in the river to the frowning heights of Port Hudson, a place that figured prominently during the late war.

The country round Port Hudson is thickly settled by descendants of the old Acadians, who came down the great rivers from Canada in the early days of Louisiana’s history.  Entering the mouth of the False River, on the west bank of the Mississippi, the traveller will penetrate the heart of an old and interesting Acadian settlement.  If his mind be full of poetic fancies, and his eyes in search of Gabriels and Evangelines as he travels along this part of the Mississippi, his ears will be startled by the unmistakable Yankee names that are given him as representing the proprietors of the various estates he passes.  Here and there the old French names appear; but in almost every such instance its possessor is a bachelor, and with him its musical accents will die away.  Searching into the cause of this patent fact, I discovered that the creole women, descendants of the old Acadians, appreciated the sterling qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race, and found in them their ideals, leaving in a state of single blessedness the more indolent, and perhaps less persuasive, creole gentlemen.  The results of these marriages are the gradual extinction of old family names; and in the not very far future the romance connected with these people will be a thing of the past, and the traveller, instead of thinking—­

“This is the little village famed of yore, with meadows rich in flocks, and plenteous grain, whose peasants knelt beside each vine-clad door, As the sweet Angelus rose over the plain,” will be introduced to Mrs. Hezekiah Skinner, and partake of her baked beans.

My informant in these matters was an educated creole gentleman, and I must have the honesty to give his remarks in regard to these persistent “Yankees,” who, he said, “were always successful with the fair maidens, but invariably selected those who owned fine plantations, having in love, as well as in war, an eye to the main chance.”