When I woke up at daylight, I found the vessel lying alongside a wharf with a railway train alongside, which is to take us to the city of New Orleans, six miles distant.
A village of restaurants or “restaurats,” as they are called here, and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus; all the names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being French. Outside the settlement the railroad passes through a swamp, like an Indian jungle, through which the overflowings of the Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires of New Orleans rise above the underwood and semitropical vegetation of this swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle, up to the belly in the soft earth are floundering among the clumps of vegetation. The nearer approach to New Orleans by rail lies through a suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined on each side by rows of miserable mean one-storied houses, inhabited, if I am to judge from the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly population.
A great number of the men and women had evident traces of negro blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites many had the peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of the Levantine towns, and all were pale and lean. The railway terminus is marked by a dirty, barrack-like shed in the city. Selecting one of the numerous tumble-down hackney carriages which crowded the street outside the station, I, directed the man to drive me to the house of Mr. Mure, the British consul, who had been kind enough to invite me as his guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.
The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the American cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects they are more worthy of a great city than are those of New York. There is an air thoroughly French about the people—cafes, restaurants, billiard-rooms abound, with oyster and lager-bier saloons interspersed. The shops are all magazins; the people in the streets are speaking French, particularly the negroes, who are going out shopping with their masters and mistresses, exceedingly well dressed, noisy, and not unhappy looking. The extent of the drive gave an imposing idea of the size of New Orleans—the richness of some of the shops, the vehicles in the streets and the multitude of well dressed people on the pavements, an impression of its wealth and the comfort of the inhabitants. The Confederate flag was flying from the public buildings and from many private houses. Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large proportion of men were in uniform.
In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of introduction, paid visits, and examined the shops and the public places; but there is such a whirl of secession and politics surrounding one it is impossible to discern much of the outer world.
Whatever may be the number of the unionists or of the non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been directed by the popular party against the friends of the Federal government. The agent of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed their office and is going away in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is here, the “excitement of the citizens,” on hearing of the subscription made by the firm to the New York fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent in Mobile has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other houses follow their example, but as most business transactions are over for the season, the mercantile community hope the contest will be ended before the next season, by the recognition of Southern independence.
The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are Pickwick rifles, La Fayette, Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and native volunteers, among whom the Meagher rifles, indignant with the gentleman from whom they took their name, because of his adhesion to the North, are going to rebaptize themselves and to seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact, New Orleans looks like a suburb of the camp at Chalons. Tailors are busy night and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the consul for some shirts—the mistress and all her seamstresses were busy preparing flags as hard as the sewing machine could stitch them, and could attend to no business for the present. The Irish population, finding themselves unable to migrate Northwards, and being without work, have rushed to arms with enthusiasm to support Southern institutions, and Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand opposed to each other in hostile camps.