Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/101

 "Bigger 'n New Orleans? It must be a bully city."

"Yes; the largest in America."

"Sickly there now, sir?"

"No, not now; it is sometimes."

"Like New Orleans, I suppose?"

"No, never so bad as New Orleans sometimes is."

"Right healthy place, I expect, sir?"

"Yes, I believe so, for a place of its size."

"What diseases do you have there, sir?"

"All sorts of diseases—not so much fever, however, as you have hereabouts."

"Measles and hooping-cough, sometimes, I reckon?"

"Yes, 'most all the time, I dare say."

"All the time! People must die there right smart. Some is dyin' 'most every day, I expect, sir?"

"More than a hundred every day, I suppose."

"Gosh! a hundred every day! Almighty sickly place 't must be?"

"It is such a large place, you see—seven hundred thousand people."

"Seven hundred thousand—expect that's a heap of people, ain't it?"

His father, a portly, well-dressed man, soon came in, and learning that I had been in Mexico, said, "I suppose there's a heap of Americans flocking in and settling up that country along on the line, ain't there, sir?"

"No, sir, very few. I saw none, in fact—only a few Irishmen and Frenchmen, who called themselves Americans. Those were the only foreigners I saw, except negroes."

"Niggers! Where were they from?"

"They were runaways from Texas."

"But their masters go there and get them again, don't they?"