to the Gulf through Berwick’s Bay.  They are interspersed with small islands:  these have narrow strips of tillable land, but are generally too low for cultivation; and when the Mississippi is at flood, they are all under water, and most of them many feet.  The La Fourche goes immediately to the Gulf, between Lake Barataria and these lakes, affording land high enough, when protected as they now are, for settlement, and cultivation to a very great extent.  Its length is some one hundred miles, and the settlements extend along it for eighty miles.  These are continuous, and nowhere does the forest intervene.

At irregular distances between these Acadian settlements, large sugar plantations are found.  These have been extending for years, and increasing, absorbing the habitats of these primitive and innocent people, who retire to some little ridge of land deeper in the swamp, a few inches higher than the plane of the swamp, where they surround their little mud-houses with an acre or so of open land, from the products of which, and the trophies of the gun and fishing-line and hook, and an occasional frog, and the abundance of crawfish, they contrive to eke out a miserable livelihood, and afford the fullest illustration of the adage, “Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise.”

The contrast between these princely estates, and the palatial mansions which adorn them, and make a home of luxuriant beauty, and the little log huts, their immediate neighbors, tells at once that the population is either very rich or very poor, and that under such circumstances the communication must be extremely limited; for the ignorance of the poor unfits them for social and intelligent intercourse with their more wealthy and more cultivated neighbors.  This is true whether the planter is French or American.  The remarkable salubrity of the climate, combined with the comforts and luxuries of home, causes the planter to spend most of his time there, where he can give his attention to his business and mingle with his brother planters in a style and manner peculiar to Louisiana and the tastes of her people.  Intercommunication is facilitated by steamboat travel, and as every plantation is located upon a navigable stream, the planter and family can at any time suiting his business go with little trouble to visit his friends, though they may be hundreds of miles apart.  Similarity of pursuit and interest draw these together.  There is no rivalry, and consequently no jealousy between them.  All their relations are harmonious, and their intercourse during the summer is continuous, for at that season the business of the plantation may be safely trusted to a manager, one of whom is found on every plantation.