As this great expanse of beauty is a fairy-land to the eye, so is the hospitality of its homes a delight to the soul.  In this population, if nowhere else in America, is seen a contented and happy people—­a people whose pursuit is happiness, and not the almighty dollar.  Unambitious of that distinction which only wealth bestows, they are content with an abundance for all their comforts, and for the comfort of those who, as friends or neighbors, come to share it with them.  Unambitious of political distinction, despising the noisy tumult of the excited populace, they love their homes, and cultivate the ease of quiet in these delicious retreats, enjoying life as it passes, in social and elegant intercourse with each other, nor envying those who rush into the busy world and hunt gain or distinction from the masses, through the shrewdness of a wit cultivated and debased by trade, or a fawning, insincere sycophancy toward the dirty multitude they despise.  By such, these people are considered anomalous, devoid of energy or enterprise, contented with what they have, nor ambitious for more—­which, to an American, with whom, if the earth is obtained, the moon must be striven for, is stranger than all else—­living indolently at their ease, regardless of ephemeral worldly distinctions, but happy in the comforts of home, and striving only to make this a place for the enjoyment of themselves and those about them.

To the stranger they are open and kind, universally hospitable, never scrutinizing his whole man to learn from his manner or dress whether he comes as a gentleman or a sharper, or whether he promises from appearance to be of value to them pecuniarily in a trade.  There is nothing of the huckster in their natures.  They despise trade, because it degrades; they have only their crops for sale, and this they trust to their factors; they never scheme to build up chartered companies for gain, by preying upon the public; never seek to overreach a neighbor or a stranger, that they may increase their means by decreasing his; would scorn the libation of generous wine, if they felt the tear of the widow or the orphan mingled with it, and a thousand times would prefer to be cheated than to cheat; despising the vicious, and cultivating only the nobler attributes of the soul.

Such is the character of the educated French Creole planters of Louisiana—­a people freer from the vices of the age, and fuller of the virtues which ennoble man, than any it has fallen to my lot to find in the peregrinations of threescore years and ten.  The Creoles, and especially the Creole planters, have had little communication with any save their own people.  The chivalry of character, in them so distinguishing a trait, they have preserved as a heritage from their ancestors, whose history reads more like a romance than the lives and adventures of men, whose nobility of soul and mind was theirs from a long line of ancestors, and brought with them to be planted on the Mississippi in the character of their posterity.