Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/348

 so ropy and slimy as to make it difficult with either knife, spoon or fork, to carry it to the mouth, without the plate and mouth being connected by a long string, so that it is a most awkward dish to a stranger, who besides, seldom relishes it, but it is a standing dish among the French creoles, as much as soup and bouilli is in France, or the olla in Spain.

A bed was prepared for me in the front gallery or piazza, where Madame Le Gendre assured me I should be less troubled with musquitoes than in the interior of the house, and that I should also find it more cool and agreeable. I mention this as a trait of French character, particularly the female, to make a virtue of necessity, and to turn even their inconveniences to advantage, for notwithstanding her assertion that it was solely ''pour l'accommodation de Mons. l'Etranger'', had there been any other place for a bed in her small house, one would not have been prepared for me in the gallery. The musquitoes were sufficiently ennuyants to make me rejoice at perceiving the first dawn of day, when I hurried on my clothes, and sallied out to view the seat of government of the western division of West Florida.[216]

About half a dozen tolerably good frame (or wooden) houses scattered on an extensive plain surrounded on three sides by woods at a little distance, first {312} made their appearance, while a dirty little town of 60 cabins crouded together in a narrow street on the river bank, penned in between the Mississippi and a low steep hill descending from