314 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



It was a hot and sultry day when our wanderers 

 landed at Bayou Sara, 11 a small settlement at the junc- 

 tion of the sluggish stream which bears that name and 

 the Mississippi, and proceeded to climb to St. Francis- 

 ville, the village a mile away on the hill. Mrs. Pirrie, 

 who seems to have preceded the travelers by carriage, 

 sent some of her servants to relieve them of their lug- 

 gage, which Audubon said they found light. They 

 rested in the village at the house of Mr. Benjamin 

 Swift, where they were invited to stay to dinner, then 

 at the point of being served, but feeling somewhat ill 

 at ease, they thanked their host and again took to the 

 road. Following their leisurely guides, they now 

 traversed a country so new, so strange, and so enchant- 

 ing, that the five miles to the Pirrie house seemed short 

 indeed, "The rich magnolias, covered with fragrant 

 blossoms, the holly, the beech, the tall yellow poplar, the 

 hilly ground, and even the red clay," to quote Audu- 

 bon's record made at the time, "all excited my admira- 

 tion. Such an entire change in the face of nature, in 

 so short a time, seems almost supernatural, and sur- 

 rounded once more by numerous warblers and thrushes, 

 I enjoyed the scene." 



In passing up the Mississippi from New Orleans, 

 the topography of the country suddenly changes at 



11 "Bayou," in Louisiana, is a term commonly applied to any slow- 

 running stream. According to the tradition gathered on the spot by Mr. 

 Stanley C. Arthur, both stream and settlement were formerly called "New 

 Valentia," while the present name was derived from an old woman called 

 "Sara," who many years ago lived at the mouth of the Bayou, where she 

 practiced some sort of spurious physic. St. Francisville, on the hill, re- 

 ceived its name from the circumstance that the brothers of St. Francis, 

 who had a mission at Pointe Coupee, on the opposite bank, were in the 

 habit of ferrying their dead over the river, in order to bury them on 

 the high ground; "Bayou Sara" and "St. Francisville" are used interchange- 

 ably by the inhabitants. See S. C. Arthur (Bibl. No. 230), Times-Picayune, 

 New Orleans, August 6, 1916. 



