His shops for the construction of railroad stock, and for the repairing of his steamships, are in Louisiana, where he employs over one thousand workmen.  In compliment to the virtues of this modest, energetic man, to whom the people of the Southwest owe so much, the citizens of Brashear, in the southwestern part of Louisiana, have changed the name of their town to Morgan City.  May the last days of Charles Morgan be blessed with the happy consciousness that he deserves the reward of a well-spent life!

The winter climate of New Orleans is delightful, and many persons leave New England’s cruel east winds to breathe its soft air and rejoice in its sunshine.  These pale-faced invalids are strangely grouped in the quaint old streets with the peculiar people of the city, and add another to the many types already there.  The New Orleans market furnishes, perhaps, the best opportunity for the ethnological student, for there strange motley groups are always to be found.  Even the cries are in the quaint voices of a foreign city, and it seems almost impossible to imagine that one is in America.

We see the Sicilian fruit-seller with his native dialect; the brisk French madame with her dainty stall; the mild-eyed Louisiana Indian woman with her sack of gumbo spread out before her; the fish-dealer with his wooden bench and odd patois; the dark-haired creole lady with her servant gliding here and there; the old Spanish gentleman with the blood of Castile tingling in his veins; the graceful French dame in her becoming toilet; the Hebrew woman with her dark eyes and rich olive complexion; the pure Anglo-Saxon type, ever distinguishable from all others; and, swarming among them all, the irrepressible negro,—­ him you find in every size, shape, and shade, from the tiny yellow pickaninny to his rotund and inky grandmother, from the lazy wharf-darky, half clad in both mind and body, to the dignified colored policeman, who patrols with officious gravity the city streets,—­in freedom or slavery, north or south, in sunshine or out of it, ever the same easy, improvident race; ever the same gleaming teeth and ready “Yes, sah! ’pon my word, sah!” and ever the same tardiness to do.

Leaving the busy, surging mass of humanity, each so eager to buy or sell, the visitor to New Orleans will find a great contrast of scene in the quiet cemeteries with their high walls of shelves, where the dead are laid away in closely cemented tombs built one over the other, and all above the ground, to be safe from the encroachment of water, the ever-pervading foe of New Orleans.  Not only must the dead be stowed away above-ground, but the living must wage a daily war against this insidious foe, and watch with vigilance their levees.

Notwithstanding all that has been said in regard to the enervating effects of a southern climate, the inhabitants of the state of Louisiana have shown a pertinacity in maintaining their levee system which is almost unexampled.  They have always asserted their rights to the lowlands in which they live, and have under the most trying circumstances braved inundation.  They have built more than one thousand five hundred miles of levees within the state limits.  The state engineer corps is always at work along the banks of the Mississippi and its important bayous.