Chinaman was found dead in a cabin.  Pretty soon after, one or two others was found floatin’ round loose, in the same way; and after that lesson or two the fellers got civilized; and you needn’t fear goin’ among ’em now, fur they’re harmless as kittens.  They don’t kill coarse fish now fur the fun of it.  Oh, shucks! there’s nothin’ like a little healthy civilization fur Chinamen and Injuns.  They both needs it, and, any way, this is a white man’s country.”

“And what of negroes?” I asked.

“Oh, the niggers is good enuf, ef you let ’em alone.  The Carpet-baggers from up north has filled their heads with all kinds of stuff, so now they think, nat’rally enuf, that they ought to be office-holders, when they can’t read or write no more than I can.  I’d like to take a hand civilizing some of them Carpet-baggers!  They needs it more than the Chinamen or Injuns.”

During part of the evening, Mr. Sewall, the nephew of the owner of the plantation, was with us round our camp-fire.  We spoke of Longfellow’s Evangeline, the bay-tree, and Atchafalaya River, which he assured me was slowly widening its current, and would in time, perhaps, become the main river of the basin, and finally deprive the Mississippi of a large portion of its waters.  From his boyhood he had watched the falling in of the banks with the widening and increasing of the strength of the current of the Atchafalaya Bayou.  Once it was impassable for steamers; but a little dredging opened the way, while the Mississippi and Red rivers had both contributed to its volume of water until it had deepened sufficiently for United States gunboats to ascend it during the late war.  It follows the shortest course from the mouth of Red River to the Gulf of Mexico.

I left White Castle Plantation early on Monday morning, when I discovered a lot of fine sweet-potatoes stowed away in the hold of my boat.  The northern cooper had purchased them during the night, and having too much delicacy to speak of his gift, secreted them in the boat.  I fully appreciated this kind act, knowing it to be a mark of the poor man’s sympathy for his northern countryman.  The levee for miles was lined with negroes and white men gathering a harvest of firewood from the drift stuff.  One old negro, catching sight of my boat, called out to his companion, “Randal, look at dat boat!  De longer we libs, de mor you sees.  What sort o’ queer boat is she?”

Twenty miles below White Castle Plantation is the valuable sugar estate called Houmas, the property of General Wade Hampton and Colonel J. T. Preston.  General Hampton does not reside upon his plantation, but makes Georgia his home.  Beyond Houmas the parish of St. James skirts the river for twenty miles.  Three miles back from the river, on the left side of the Mississippi, and fifty-five miles from New Orleans, is the little settlement of Grand Point, the place most famed in St. James for perique tobacco.