BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 119 



You see hundreds of little white houses, 

 old "quarters," and all tenantless now, 

 save one or two on each plantation. Cheap 

 sugar and high wages, as compared with 

 old times of slavery but then the enor- 

 mous cost of keeping up the levees, and 

 above all, the continued peril to life and 

 property, with a mile of swift, muddy wa- 

 ter sweeping seaward high above your 

 head these things are making a desert 

 of the richest lands on earth. We are gain- 

 ing ground in the West, but we are losing 

 ground in the South, the great, silent 

 South. 



Of course, the world, we, civilization, 

 will turn back to this wondrous region 

 some day, when we have settled the West; 

 for the mouth of the mightiest river on 

 the globe is a fact; it is the mouth by 

 which this young nation was trained in its 

 younger days, and we cannot ignore it in 

 the end, however willing we may be to do 

 so now. 



Strange how wild beasts and all sorts of 



