pond are not disturbed, but as soon as the pigs are "through," they rush up the bank in the greatest disorder, and with loud squeals of derisive triumph.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA.

HIS is one of the most interesting cities of the United States, owing to its

semi-French, semi-Spanish origin, which gives it a special character entirely its own, and altogether distinguishing it from the other cities of the American continent. In New Orleans you meet with narrow, continental streets, substantially built houses, large airy rooms, and French windows in the Louis XV. style, also spacious corridors, with glass doors and fanlights, glass, in fine, wherever glass can be put, not forgetting looking-glass; open stone passages, in the style, though somewhat narrower, of porte cochère, and broad, low staircases, leading from an open court-yard, around which are the various domestic offices, with a broad-leafed fig-tree or clustering vine spreading over them; the floors covered with cool matting, instead of hot glaring carpet; the light, cane

seated chairs; the indispensable green contre vent or contre soleil, all so appropriate, and denoting an aptitude for making the best of whatever materials circumstances may afford that is peculiarly French, and as different as possible from the American idea, which would build a wind-proof "brown stone front" under the Equator, because "brown stone fronts" are fashionable in New York. I do not know if it is a souvenir of my childhood, but I have a clinging to these old French houses, which no other residence, however elegant or comfortable in another form, has been able to inspire; and this feeling seemed stronger after living in the American hotels, with their attempt at splendour, and dearth of all.

New Orleans retains much of its French manners and customs, especially in that portion of the city called the French Quartier, where the descendants of the old French settlers reside, adhering tenaciously to their old habits, and speaking the French language entirely.

We arrived at New Orleans by the Mississippi steamer, which discharged its passengers and cargo at the foot of the principal street of the city-Canal Street. It was evening, about nine o'clock, and we were so unfortunate as to meet with a Yankee drayman, who refused to convey our luggage some hundred yards

for less than ten and sixpence, to say nothing of another ten and sixpence for a carriage for ourselves.

Wishing to see the French part of the city, we stopped at a French hotel, where, in clean, airy rooms, and with a good table, we lived at one half the expense of an American hotel. The dishes, although not in such absurdly profuse variety as enumerated in the hotel bills of fare, were better cooked, and were sufficiently numerous for any reasonable person.

Indeed, I may say that we had excellent dinners at N-yorly-ans-the correct American pronunciation for New Orleans. The soup was always palatable-as French soup usually is— and the fish-furnished by the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico was of great variety and truly delicious. We had the red snapper, cat-fish, and many others unknown to Europe, also the prawns, as large as young lobsters, from which they make a most excellent soup, on veal stock. It is called gumba, and is so much affected by the Nyorlyanists, that it is said they invariably eat too much of it, which is the cause of their extraordinary corpulency.

There is also in this favoured climate so great a variety of vegetables and fruits, that there is no difficulty in making up a superb dinner, when the art of cooking is understood. They entirely

repudiate the canned condiments of every kind so universally in favour through the other parts of the United States. Besides the above, they have opossum, squirrel, deer, wild turkey, ricebirds, wild duck, kid, bear, and buffalo hump, from Texas. They adhere to the French custom of eating very young fat lamb, and firm white veal, whereas Americans prefer the former old and stringy, and the latter dark coloured and flabby. French dishes are in favour all over America, but they are cooked in water, instead of butter and oil, or stock, and the result is detestable.

To me it was a great comfort no longer to have my vegetables cuits à l'eau, or, still worse, floating in it, or my spinach served in a pool of green water, apparently just fished up from some quagmire. We were also able to obtain wholesome bread, in place of the fearfully doughy compounds known as "ruffles" and “doughnuts." For the first time in the United States we got really good coffee (which covers a multitude of culinary sins). A small cup of very strong black coffee is brought to your room every morning—an institution I should wish to see become universal.

New Orleans, however, was becoming less French in its habits, and the influx of Yankees since the war had brought the American ele