376 WILD SPORTS IN TJJE FAR WEST. 



only three or four being of brick. It may contain 

 about 800 inhabitants, among whom are several Ger- 

 mans, who are carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, sugar- 

 bakers, coffee-house keepers, and a large number of 

 German Jews, who by their low prices have managed 

 to get the trade in ready-made clothes completely into 

 their own hands. German shoemakers mustered very 

 strong; and here I was again struck with a peculiarity 

 which I have remarked among all the German shoe- 

 makers in America, namely the rage they have for sell- 

 ing gingerbread and sugar-plums, as well as boots and 

 shoes. 



In the United States as a matter of course, every 

 person is free to buy and sell whatever he chooses. 

 Therefore all sorts of wares are to be found at all the 

 stores. In the smaller towns, apothecaries generally 

 combine a trade in calicoes and hardware with that of 

 drugs ; and when a German shoemaker opens his shop, 

 you are sure to see some glasses with parti-colored 

 sugar-plums, and pieces of gingerbread in the little 

 window, while boots and shoes are dangling on pack- 

 thread above them. This was not only the case in 

 Bayou Sara, and St. Francisville, a town of the same 

 size on a hill about a quarter of a mile behind liayou 

 Sara, but in all the smaller towns in the United States 

 which I had visited, and even in some parts of the 

 large town of Cincinnati. It is at all events a strange 

 medley. 



I passed my time very agreeably in the society of 

 Ivean, whose employers were good kind people, until I 

 obtained a remunerative occupation in Pointe Coupee, 

 a large French settlement extending twenty miles along 



