280 now TO GI:T A FARM, 



and desolate. The mansions, surrounded with orange 

 groves and with superb shade trees of the live-oak and the 

 cypress, are still there, and the long rows of negro dwel 

 lings, far superior to the huts and cabins of Virginia and 

 South Carolina, with their whitewashed sides still glisten 

 in the sun, and look not unlike some neat little village on 

 some Western prairie, clustered around the court-house 

 square. Indeed, all of these plantations are so large, the 

 mansions so princely, and the negro-houses so numerous, 

 that as you whirl by them in the cars it is difficult to real 

 ize that you are not passing village after village as you 

 would at the North. But the proud occupants of these 

 princely estates are gone. What they look like as you pass 

 by them in the cars, they are rapidly becoming. 



&quot; New England farmers are making them New England 

 villages. The schoolhouse and the church for the first time 

 since these bayous were diked and these vast deltas re 

 claimed from the Father of Waters and the Gulf, are be 

 coming permanent institutions. In a few years where now 

 you see but a platform alongside of the road for the accom 

 modation of the hogsheads of sugar and the bales of cotton 

 the crop of the planter through whose estate the road 

 runs villages will rise as numerous and thriving as along 

 the great Central Road of Illinois. 



&quot; Indeed, when this war is closed, and these great plan 

 tations are divided up and sold to the soldiers, the sailors, 

 and the German emigrants who will flock to these southern 

 States, Illinois, great as she is, and destined to be much 

 greater, must look out for her laurels. Louisiana could 

 and should have been the wealthiest State in the Union, 

 and when northern industry and enterprise have drained 

 all these swamps and diked all these bayous, no State in the 

 Union can surpass her in the fertility of her soil or in the 

 healthfullness of her climate.&quot; 



