Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/147

 to fill the sails, a black-browed dago would leap ashore, and, lashing himself to the tow-rope, would trudge along the bank, singing as he went in a language strange as those rude dialects of Italy from one of which it is derived. A small boat filled with oranges floats by, its guardian, a red-haired mulatto boy, sound asleep, his head resting upon his cargo of fruit. Far off, the white-shell carriage-road follows the winding of the bayou, and between the two thoroughfares lie stretches of swampy land splendid with the royal flowers of France. Nowhere in the world does the flower-de-luce bloom as it does on the plains about New Orleans,—splendid dark purple masses of it here, and again rows of pure white lilies, with sometimes a blood-red flower, and more often one of pale lavender. The land looks like the royal carpet of the throne of France, with its thick-sprinkled fleur-de-lis, below which, as beneath that splendid tapestry, lurk many a quagmire and pitfall for the unwary who would strive to grasp at the 'imperial flowers. And now the bayou widens and comes to an end, for they have followed it to the lake into which it flows. On the borders of Pontchartrain are many cool retreats, where in the pleasant spring weather, and later in the burning summer-tide, people come from the city and breathe the fresh lake-air, plunge into the cool waters, or