Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/449

Rh the whole scene was so accordant and well arranged that it would have produced a fine effect upon any theatre whatever. The improvisation was brought finally to a close with a hint that the singers would become doubly merry, and would sing twice as well, if they could have a little brandy when they reached Louisville, and that they could buy brandy if they could have a little money, and so on.

Nor did Mr. H. allow them to be mistaken in their anticipations.

We are still in the grain-district of the Mississippi, but shall soon reach the region of cotton. We have now Arkansas on our right hand, and Tennesee on our left, both slave-states rich in natural beauty, but still rude in spiritual and material culture.

December 20th.—We are now in the region of cotton. The shores on both sides are low and swampy, covered by forests of cotton-wood trees, now leafless. Here and there however are interspersed cotton-plantations with the white slave-villages and the habitations of the planters; and one sees swarthy figures moving about on the grey soil gathering the cotton-pods that still remain upon the blackening shrubs. I went on shore to-day with Mr. Lerner H. at a cotton-plantation, and broke off some branches with tufts of cotton still hanging upon them, from shrubs which grew round a slave-hut. The tufts of cotton are extremely beautiful as they come forth from the opening capsules of the seed-pod. Every seed is embedded in a pillow of cotton. Cotton is the envelope of the seed. You shall see it when I return.

We have now Arkansas on our right, and the State of Mississippi on our left. Along the river lie the canebrakes, thick reed-like canes, which stand up as impenetrable as a wall between the water and the land.

Thus far came Father Marquetta upon his sun-bright Mississippi journey, from the North; thus far also from