After leaving Natchez, we steamed away with renewed vigour towards that centre of slavery and dissipation, New Orleans, and were in due course moored to the levee, which extends the whole river-length of the city, and is about a mile in extent.  The first news I heard, and which alarmed me not a little, was that the yellow fever was at this time raging in the city.  New Orleans is just fifty-four miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, and being built at the time of the Orleans Regency, contains many ancient structures.  Its inhabitants, even to this day, are to a great extent either French or of Gaelic origin.  It lies exceedingly flat, which causes the locality to be unhealthy and ill-suited to European constitutions; the soil is, however, fertile and rich; this is, perhaps, to be accounted for by the constant irrigation it undergoes from the overflowing of the Mississippi, which, like another Nile, periodically submerges the country around its banks.  The town is situated on the east side of the river.

The vast quantity of shipping of all classes in the harbour is a very striking feature in this extensive and wealthy city.  The bad eminence to which New Orleans has attained is painful to contemplate.  Its wealth is purchased by the blood and tears of thousands of slaves, who are daily exposed like cattle in its markets; and this fact operates on the mind of an Englishman to the prejudice of its inhabitants.  I was myself filled with disgust towards the whites, as well as pity towards the blacks, on beholding, immediately on our arrival, a gang of forty or fifty negroes, of both sexes, and nearly all ages, working in shackles on the wharf.  These, I was informed, were principally captured fugitives; they looked haggard and care-worn, and as they toiled with their barrows with uncovered heads, under a burning sun, they were mercilessly lashed with a heavy slave-whip, by a tall, athletic negro, who acted as overseer, and who, with refined cruelty, dispensed the punishment alike on stout men, slender youths, and thin attenuated females.  Our arrival having attracted the notice of the gang, and induced a momentary halt in their work, the unfeeling wretch commenced a furious onslaught with the whip, each crack of which, followed, as it was, by the groans or cries of the sufferer, roused the indignant feelings of the passengers, many of whom were from the free states, and who simultaneously raised a yell of execration which made the welkin resound, and caused the cruel driver to stand aghast.  This demonstration drew a remonstrance from the captain, who represented to the passengers the danger of such conduct, and concluded by observing that if it was repeated, it would probably arouse the indignation of the citizens, who were very bigoted.  He should be sorry, he added, to be obliged to put the vessel about again, a proceeding that might be necessary for the safety of all on board, unless they were more cautious.  Some of the passengers