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Updated: May 4, 2025
The long bright hours of this particular day were spent in exploring bayous and marshes, and in paddling among the ledges and around the lovely islands of Lake Couchiching. The dazzling blue expanse mirror of a sky as blue was broadly edged with reeds and rushes, flags and water-lilies, and framed by the thickly wooded shore and the green still cliffs that overhung the quiet waves.
For days they steamed on under the spreading branches of trees, that often spanned the bayous in a mighty arch overhead, shutting out all sunlight. For a time this navigation of placid, shady waterways was pleasant enough; but, as they penetrated farther into the interior, the jackies sighed for the blue waters of the ocean, or even for the turbid current of the Mississippi.
It is true that a number of French still live on the banks of the great river, that many a little village where a French patois is spoken lies hidden in the sequestered bayous of the South, and that no part of the old city of New Orleans possesses so much interest for the European stranger as the French or Creole quarter, with its quaint balconied houses and luxuriant gardens; but despite all this, it is generally admitted that the time is not far distant when the French language will disappear from Louisiana, and few evidences will be found of the days of the French occupancy of that beautiful State of the Union.
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St.
But Uncle Joshua, which the negro said was his only name, seemed to need no light. In and out among the creeks, rivers, and bayous he directed Russ to steer, until finally, making a turn in a stream, there burst out on the eager eyes of the refugees the lights of the steamer. "Magnolia ahoy!" "Here we are!" "Oh, Daddy, Daddy!" "On board the Magnolia!"
In front of it flowed the Mississippi, twisting and turning in such snake-like conditions that it could be navigated only by boats of a certain length and build, and on either side of the city stretched wide swamp lands and bayous completely commanded by batteries well posted on the high ground occupied by the town.
"As you are doubtless aware, by a series of lakes, bayous, and a canal which comes out near Carrollton, just above New Orleans, water communication is open to the Mississippi River for small vessels." "Do you say that Captain Flanger has been a smuggler in these waters?" "I think the Russian said so."
On every log or bit of smaller drift that rain-swollen bayous had ever brought from the forest and thrown upon their banks some wild tenant of the jungle, hare or weasel, cat, otter, or raccoon, had taken refuge, sometimes alone, but oftener sharing it, in common misery and silent truce, with deadly foes.
Here, deep in the forest, the inset of the main current through the broken levee was arrested by the forest itself, and by the channels of many intersecting bayous. It was not a river, but a vast, shallow lake that lay about them. Water was everywhere, and in this wide expanse Eddring confessed to himself that he had lost his course and had no definite knowledge of the way to find it.
An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly be identical with the vast and ugly beasts of the lower bayous and the Gulf? We leave the identification for some reptile-loving philosopher.
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