Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/30

Rh On the outskirts of the market you found Indians. Little Indian girls were seated on the ground, wrapped in their blankets, with their serious, uniform, stiff countenances, and downcast eyes riveted upon an outspread cloth before them, on which were laid out wild roots and herbs which they had brought hither for sale. Behind them, and outside the market-place, Indian boys were shooting with bows and arrows to induce young, white gentlemen to purchase their toy-weapons. These red boys were adorned with some kind of brilliant ribbon round their brows, and with feathers, forming here also, a strong contrast to those pale, modest, and unadorned girls. These Indians were of the Chocta and Chickasaw tribes, many families of which may still be met with in Western Louisiana.

In the light of the ascending sun, for the sun was also at this market festival, and sucking the juice of delicious oranges, Lerner H. and I left the cheerful scene, and returned leisurely home by the harbour, where immense sugar hogsheads were stored.

Late in the forenoon I went to church. The minister, who is said to be “a genius,” preached of human love, in a heathenish way, by introducing the words of a celebrated romance:—

“If a man does not trouble himself more about his neighbours than about his cattle and his slaves, he does not deserve the name of a good man.”

This will suffice for the sermon and the preacher, who was not devoid of talent, especially in delivery, although that was accompanied by too much gesticulation.

Mr. G. took me in the afternoon to see the French burial-ground. It is really “a city of the dead;” whole streets and squares of tombs and graves, all standing above-ground, from the fear of the waters below, as the whole ground here is very dropsical; and among these no trees, no grass-plots, nothing green, with the exception of