[Illustration:  PART OF FRANCOIS’S FIRST PAGE.]

When my father used to go to New Orleans he went in his skiff, with a canopy over his head to keep off the sun, and two rowers, who sang as they rowed.  Sometimes papa took me with him, and it was very entertaining.  We would pass the nights of our voyage at the houses of papa’s friends [des zami de papa].  Sometimes mamma would come, and Suzanne always—­always.  She was the daughter next older than I. She barely missed being a boy.  She was eighteen years of age, went hunting with our father, was skillful with a gun, and swam like a fish.  Papa called her “my son.”  You must understand the two boys were respectively but two years and three months old, and papa, who greatly desired a son, had easily made one of Suzanne.  My father had brought a few books with him to Louisiana, and among them, you may well suppose, were several volumes of travel.  For myself, I rarely touched them; but they were the only books that Suzanne read.  And you may well think, too, that my father had no sooner spoken of his intention than Suzanne cried: 

“I am going with you, am I not, papa?”

“Naturally,” replied my father; “and Francoise shall go also.”

Francoise—­that was I; poor child of sixteen, who had but six months before quitted the school-bench, and totally unlike my sister—­blonde, where Suzanne was dark; timid, even cowardly, while she had the hardihood and courage of a young lioness; ready to cry at sight of a wounded bird, while she, gun in hand, brought down as much game as the most skillful hunter.

I exclaimed at my father’s speech.  I had heard there were many Indians in Attakapas; the name means man-eaters.  I have a foolish terror of Indians, and a more reasonable one for man-eaters.  But papa and Suzanne mocked at my fears; and as, after all, I burned with desire for the journey, it was decided that I should go with them.

Necessarily we wanted to know how we were to go—­whether we should travel by skiff, and how many negroes and negresses would go with us.  For you see, my daughter, young people in 1795 were exactly what they are in 1822; they could do nothing by themselves, but must have a domestic to dress and undress them.  Especially in traveling, where one had to take clothes out of trunks and put them back again, assistance became an absolute necessity.  Think, then, of our astonishment, of our vexation, when papa assured us that he would not take a single slave; that my sister and I would be compelled to help each other, and that the skiff would remain behind, tied up at the landing where it then lay.

“But explain yourself, Papa, I beg of you,” cried Suzanne, with her habitual petulance.

“That is what I am trying to do,” said he.  “If you will listen in silence, I will give you all the explanation you want.”

Here, my daughter, to save time, I will borrow my father’s speech and tell of the trip he had made to New Orleans; how he had there found means to put into execution his journey to Attakapas, and the companions that were to accompany him.